3 guidelines to empower your local marketing

I was reading a recent issue of Forbes India where they enlightened readers on the FDI and one of the statements caught my eye. That statement was by a FMCG/Retail executive who stated that consumers’ tastes and preferences vary every few hundred kilometers. Infact there is a sea-change of difference between consumers of Pune and Chennai.
The question is: What are you doing to interact with your audience on a local level?

1. Create a platform for community NOT for your brand

When I started tradusADS, one of the strategies was to attract and talk to users on neighbourhood or local level. We went on to defy the convention and applied common sense. If our product is local in nature and if our audience differ every few hundred kilometers- WHY DO WE HAVE ONE SINGLE FACEBOOK PAGE?

Create a local presence with your consumer in mind.

2. Respect your audiences’ intellect and identity

At tradusADS, we went on to create city pages on facebook- where we talked about local events, local issues, local offers, local heroes and ambassadors. It was common sensically correct. The idea was to respect consumers’ unique identity and intellect-and to interact with them on their turf.
The idea was also to build a brand and thought-leadership in such a way that people connect with us, remember us for the stuff that we are doing!
Take a look at the facebook page of some of the biggest online brands that spend millions on TV today. What do you see? Many of these brands put up images of unseen and prototype sports-cars and bikes, or movie stars. Why? You know the answer.

The question is- How can you tie your communication with your product/brand attributes and how can you interact in a relevant way-so that you can build thought-leadership and affinity for your brand?

3. Facetime marketing anyone?

Nothing beats a face-to-face experiential program which is integrated with a local-social channel. Your local employees, their friends, your local customers are all brand propagators.
At tradusADS we activated a series of programs which were experiential, local and face-to-face. We targeted home-makers in housing colonies and sponsored quite a few kitty parties where on an average 20 home-makers assembled. Our brand was in their drawing rooms! They would experience our product first hand, discuss, give feedback, post listings, play games, win branded merchandise-overall have a great time- go back and talk about it to others.
The videos and images were posted on facebook-local pages- and we asked people across cities to invite us to their localities.

Invest in face-to-face marketing and to get scale integrate with social platforms