Do's and Don'ts of Marketing Your Community

Your community may be the best little – or big – community in the state, but if no one else knows about it, it might as well not be on the map. People need to know what your community has to offer. People need to know what your community culture is like. People need to know why they would want to visit – or move to. In a nutshell, people need to know your community is in business!

How do you promote your businesses, your people, and your community? It is as simple as one word – Marketing.

Marketing sounds very simple, but it requires some research, advertising, and plain old customer service. So, when you begin to develop your marketing plan, there are some do’s and don’ts that are good to know before you begin.

DO:

·         Focus on what people need, not just on what you offer. Keep your mindset on how people can best benefit from what you are offering. You want your community to fulfill needs of people and provide them with reasons to be loyal.

·         Have a website – and review it every year. Go through your website page by page and make a list of the changes that need to be made. Keep it current.

·         Evaluate your target audience. Who do you want to attract and keep in your community? If you want to focus on business and professionals, consider a strategy around LinkedIn and email marketing. Younger audiences respond better to programs such as Instagram and Snapchat.

·         Make marketing campaigns mobile friendly. A lot of people spend a lot of time on their mobile phones or devices. Many people don’t even use their computers anymore. If it isn’t a mobile user-friendly format, it won’t be used.

·         Be consistent in your marketing messages. Looks matter when it comes to branding, so be sure your marketing is consistent across all digital and print platforms.

·         Include your community members whenever possible. Community participation is not only good for business, positive community stories from community people is good for your reputation and image.

DON’T:

·         Forget the importance of knowledge. What is it about your community that is different from other communities? What nearby attractions might other communities have, but makes your community the desired location to live? Be knowledgeable about where you live.

·         Rely on just your website to spread information about your community. Too many build a website, make it active, and never look at it again. Think about working with social media platforms to drive people to your website.

·         Misuse multimedia or underestimate the power of content marketing. Studies have shown that people would prefer to watch a video than read an article, so using videos is probably one of your best marketing tools. Blogging is also an important tool, but don’t use it if it can’t be kept up to date.

·         Do something if you can’t keep up with it. It is easy to find all kinds of wonderful marketing tools and then wanting to include as many as you can in your marketing strategy. It is best to limit marketing tools to the right ones for you and your community. This goes back to knowing your community. If most people do not use Twitter, don’t use it for your local people. It’s more important to do the strategies well than having a lot of them.

The number one marketing tool, believe it or not, is still your business card. Why? Because you give it personally and your image and how you sell yourself, your business, or your community remains with the recipient long after you have put the card in a person’s hand.

In a nutshell, marketing is telling your story. People need to know you are in business. And if you are not telling the story you want others to know, someone else may tell a story you don’t want told.