4 Brick and Mortar Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Community

Are you the owner of a brick and mortar who is passionate about what you do? If there's one thing I know about local businesses, it's that they care about their community. As an online marketing strategist who loves supporting local, I'm excited to share some brick and mortar marketing strategies to grow your community—both online and in-person.

1. Optimize your Instagram account for your location.

If you're a brick and mortar business, your ideal customers are likely located in your city. If you don't use Instagram for your business, I recommend starting there because it's one of the easiest platforms to build an engaged community on! Instagram has a few key features to help target your local audience.

Keywords

First, be sure you're utilizing keywords on Instagram. In simple terms, keywords are the search terms people use when they want to find something online. These are the terms you type in the search bar. If you're a hair salon in Baltimore, your keywords may be "Baltimore hair salon". Infuse your keywords across your account in the text on your reels, captions, and bio.

Geotags

A geotag is the location that you can add to your stories and posts. Add your business's geotag (if applicable) as much as possible. If you don't have one for your business, include a geotag with your city and state. This will teach the algorithm where you're located and hopefully will get your content shown to more people in your area.

Location-specific Hashtags

While hashtags are not as important now as they were years ago, they still can make a difference for brick and mortars. Think of hashtags in a similar way to keywords. For the Baltimore hair salon example, you may want to use #baltimorehairsalon, #marylandhairsalon, #mdhairsalon, #hairsalonbaltimore, etc. Only use relevant and specific hashtags on your posts. I prefer to put hashtags in the first comment of my posts, but you can also put them in the caption.

2. Share content consistently on social media.

Social media is the perfect place to grow your community. Again, I recommend starting with Instagram for brick and mortar marketing. On social media, you strengthen your community by building trust, encouraging engagement, sharing stories, and giving your followers a behind-the-scenes look at your business.

Aren't sure what to post? Click here for 30 days of free Instagram ideas. You can tailor these ideas to your unique business! The most important component of social media marketing is that you stay consistent. Aim to post on your Instagram stories daily, even if it's just the special of the day at your store. Try to post at least once a week on your feed. Most importantly, connect with other local businesses and respond to all your comments and DMs.

3. Start an email list and send frequent emails to subscribers.

What is an email list?

An email list is a list of subscribers that opt-in to hearing from you. I'd even say it's one of the most important aspects of marketing, because the people on your email list are the most loyal members of your community. Think about it—you don't just hand your email address over to anyone!

Starting and growing your email list is crucial. It's been said that doubling your email list will double your revenue, so I hope that stat alone encourages you to start your email list today.

Email Ideas for Business

What do you send to your email list? Your emails don't have to be salesy and unnatural sounding. Write the way you speak! In terms of brick and mortar marketing, you can share a customer of the month, your own business story, new products, exclusive events, and social media posts.

As with social media, it's important to stay consistent with emailing your list. Sending emails once a week is a great goal, but it may not be possible for you at this time. If not, aim for biweekly or even monthly. Your loyal customers will want to hear from you!

Flodesk

What platform should you use to start your email list? Flodesk is my best recommendation for beginners (and truly anyone). Flodesk is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email marketing platform that is affordable, beautiful, and simple to use. I love Flodesk for its templates, landing pages, and workflows that are easy to build out.

Flodesk makes it easy to not only start your email list, but to continuously grow it. They offer landing pages (so you don't even need a website), along with in-line forms in case you prefer to use a page on your website. They're always coming up with new and improved updates, without sacrificing their affordable price point. For a 30-day free trial and 50% off your first year, click here!

4. Create a loyalty program.

Does your brick and mortar have regulars? Reward your raving fans with a loyalty program! The exact details of this program is likely dependent on your business. They may get a free gift or percentage off after a certain number of purchases or buying a certain dollar amount. They may pay to join the loyalty program and receive VIP perks or specials each month. Think about what will entice and reward your most cherished customers.

Which of these brick and mortar marketing strategies should you start with?

If you feel overwhelmed by all of these marketing strategies and aren't sure where to start, take a deep breath. I've got you! The good news is, small tweaks make a massive impact when it comes to marketing. Therefore, start small and slow. Choose one strategy that feels really aligned and exciting right now, and once you get the hang of it, add in another.

Prefer to chat about where you're at and get some guidance on where you should go from here? I offer 60-minute strategy sessions that are perfect for this! We can dive into your current brick and mortar marketing strategies, discuss what's working, what's not, and I'll give you my expert opinion and some action items to help you succeed. Click here to book your strategy session!