Word of mouth marketing may work to some extent, but eventually you need more to reach new customers. Advertising helps you enhance brand visibility, educate consumers on the products and services you have to offer, and increase both online and offline sales. When you give advertising a local focus, you ensure that your message just reaches the right people.

Benefits of Local Advertising

1. Spread Your Message

Even if you’re based in a small town and you’ve been around a long time, there will still be people who are unaware of your business. To keep your business growing, you need new customers. This is yet more essential if you’ve only just started or if you’re opening a branch in a new location.

2. Explain Who You Are

Consumers may have seen your business but be unsure what it has to offer them. Ads help show what your business provides, where you are located, and who should be interested. Plus, ads can show consumers what to expect from your business beyond your products and services. By infusing your brand image into ads, you can present your values and demonstrate the quality of your offerings.

3. Become a Familiar Name

The majority of the time, consumers are not in the mood to buy. Local ads give your business a familiar name, putting your message in their minds when they are ready to make a purchase.

4. Keep Up With the Competition

If your competitors are advertising, you are losing out on potential sales. Even if no one else is offering the same kinds of products and services in the area, other businesses still count as your competition. After all, consumers only have so much money to spend.

5. Reconnect with Customers

Gaining a repeat sale is easier than attracting new customers. Local ads remind past customers of your business, show them that your company still exists, and encourage them to return.

6. Be Part of Your Local Community

Many consumers prefer to support local businesses over large corporations. Through local ads, you can present your company as part of the community.

Where Are Businesses Advertising?

This year, by far the most advertising dollars went into online ads. As illustrated in the infographic below, advertising spending online for our clients specifically was $128,000 compared to just $23,000 for newspaper ads, $20,000 for local TV stations, and $19,000 for radio.

The divide will only continue to increase, with online advertising set to reach $170,000 in 2023. In contrast, newspaper ads will fall to $18,000 and radio ads to $17,000. Although spending on local TV stations will rise, it will only reach $24,000 — still far behind online ads.

And we can easily assume these ratios hold true across most industries.

Why Online?

There are benefits to online ads that you cannot receive by relying on traditional advertising methods alone.

1. Target a Particular Demographic

With online ads, you can target more than just location. By specifying the demographics of your customers, you ensure that your ads reach the people who are most likely to buy.

2. It’s Cost-Effective

With online ads, you can pay per impression, click, or action. In any case, you’ll only pay when your target audience sees or reacts to your ad. Furthermore, you can set your budget from the start. Your ad stops appearing when you’ve reached this amount, which avoids overspending. When you create high-quality, impactful ads and present them to the right people, you can expect a high return on investment.

3. Increase Traffic

A major problem with traditional ads is that customers need to remember to check out your business later. This may cause a delay or the person may forget entirely. With an online ad, you send customers straight to your website. Here, they can find more information, receive the premium content they need for nurturing, or complete a purchase immediately.

4. Connect with Customers

Another advantage of ads linked to your website or social media accounts is that consumers have easy access to you. They may have questions or concerns before making a purchase, they may want clearer instructions to reach your store, or they may want to confirm that a service is available the date they want or that a product is still in stock. In all these situations, they can contact you first, increasing your chances receiving of a sale.

5. Gain Social Media Followers

Social media is one of the most popular places for local ads. Now, 85 percent of local advertisers have a local presence and most access the social stream through ads. In fact, Facebook receives 7 percent of all U.S. local advertising and 15 percent of total digital advertising.

There are good reasons why social media ads are so popular. For one thing, not only do increase awareness of your business, they also help you gain followers for your page. This enables you to keep customers up to date with your latest offers and encourage followers to share content to increase your organic visibility.

Local advertising needs to be part of your marketing strategy. Whether you have just one location or multiple stores, local ads will help you reach the people who matter the most. Plus, effective digital ads have a particularly high ROI and play a role in promoting your overall online visibility.

Check out the infographic below for the full set of statistics on local advertising. And for a free consultation about how you can boost your local presence, check out Boostability.