Local marketing is a strategy that targets potential customers within a specific radius – typically 50 miles – of the physical location of a business. It’s also known as location-based marketing, neighborhood marketing, or local store marketing.
Local marketing is especially important for small and medium-sized businesses that rely on people visiting their physical location to purchase goods or access a service, including shops, dentists, physiotherapists, bars, restaurants, and car dealerships.
Local marketing allows a company to develop a repeat customer base in the immediate vicinity of the business’s location. The standard radius of influence is about 10 miles, but could be even less than that in more urban areas, where local traffic and neighborhood density is much higher. (See also Close-Range Marketing)
People like to shop and eat near their homes; it saves time and is more convenient. Residents create their own “mental maps” of the surrounding area, with favorite restaurants and particular stores quickly and easily remembered. They develop shopping and eating habits based upon these maps, engaging in a great deal of repeat business.
Yet at the same time, new businesses are always moving in (and other businesses are closing), so these maps are constantly updated. Therefore, any store or restaurant—and particularly new ones—has to work to advertise its presence even in its own surrounding neighborhood, in order to get onto these mental maps.