How Do You Effectively Regionalize Your Marketing?
31 March 2010
Running any type of business can be a daunting task, and dealing with online business specifically, the competitive field is overwhelmingly large. This might lead you to try different
Marketing tactics to get your brand out there. Regionalized marketing can be a great tactic to use in order to drive up your numbers. Basically, regionalized marketing deals with targeting your marketing efforts by focusing on an immediate area instead of marketing globally you choose a regional market and work on tapping into it. For instance, if you were running a business in the UK and wanted that market, you would focus your marketing efforts there. With the Internet being world wide, exactly how is this regionalized marketing accomplished? It all has to do with search engines, domain names and the way you set up your site's pages. Starting first with the search engine aspect, there are many regional search engines out there that are primarily accessed by individuals within that region. These smaller, local directories will offer higher placement to your business almost immediately. You're no longer competing on a global level; you're focusing on a particular region. If the regional search engine is UK-specific, you will want to make sure your domain name is based in that specific region. Domain names are highly valuable but relatively inexpensive. Use .co.uk domain names for targeting that region; likewise, basic .com for the US, eu.com for other European countries and .ca for Canada. Now that you've decided on a regional search engine and have your domains in order, you need to focus on the actual text. Use territory-specific language to write your pageswhether they be ad pages or your main site's pagesand be sure to use the region's respective currency. The more important thing to remember is never to neglect any smaller regional search engines and/or directories. For instance, if you're targeting an American audience, there are search engines and directories out there that will list your site in individual counties in all 50 American states. This is about as regional as you can get. Targeting regional markets is a win-win situation. Not only is your particular business more relevant in that area, but the local engines and directories will also submit your pages to main engines like Yahoo! and Google (as most are part of these main engines to begin with). Directory finders exist all over the web. Using the UK Search Engine Spy for example, you can break down sites to the local town and target an exact area. For the US, the chamber of commerce will help you do the same thing.Now it's all about how you choose to market. You know where to submit your material; you know how to submit your material. All that's left is honing your craft and working on your marketing and conversion language. By advertising with regional directories, you will be found soon enough. It's an inexpensive and quick way to focus your efforts and build a market.
