Street Marketing aka Marketing at a Local Level

Let me tell you a story about a business owner who I taught how to market their business at a local level aka Street Marketing.

In March I had a discovery call with a business owner who had just joined a franchise and was due to be launching in April. They were looking for advice on how to market their business. The funny thing was they had just left the corporate world where they worked in marketing with National Brands. They had gone from a situation where they had teams of individuals and a budget to work with to be a team of one with a limited budget. For them, marketing at a local level was something they had never done before.

You see, when you’re a business owner at a local level, even if you are part of a franchise, you are flying solo when it comes to promoting your business. Your franchisor can advise you on how to market your services and products using their tried and tested methods, but you’re the one that must make it happen. If you’re an independent business owner, you don’t have the luxury of getting that advice, you must figure it out on your own.

As the ambassador of your brand at a local level, you must champion it. It’s your responsibility to market your business and you have limited time, energy, and money within the business to waste, so it’s so important to put your energy into the right areas.

I call marketing at a local level, street marketing because it involves putting yourself out there so you can be seen and heard this is even more important right now as we live in a world of technology and social media where we are all fighting to be visible.

This owner sadly wasn’t in the position to work with me at that time, so I gave them some tips and advice to get going.

In May I was delighted when this business owner signed up for the Market Like A Pop Star 5- Day Challenge as it was going to be an opportunity to work with them for a whole week. That week we had a blast and I showed them a different way to market their business.

I was super excited when they took a leap of faith and signed up for my Market Like A Pop Star Programme as a founding member and took the opportunity to upgrade their experience to work with me on a one-to-one basis through my mentoring package.

It was an investment of £1000 but the return on that investment (ROI) was £38,000 in 10 weeks. I would say that’s not a bad ROI.

So, how did we generate £38k, here are some of the actions we took.

We developed a marketing strategy that took this business owner up to the first week of their summer programme.

Now as a parent I know the guilt of sending my children to summer holiday programmes. It’s the guilt of having to work, not spending time with them because I must work. So, I knew what we had to do was showcase the fantastic activities that this provider would be running over the summer, so as a parent I felt less guilty that they had to go, because I knew they would have an amazing time.

The first thing we did was review the Easter Holiday programme to establish what worked and what didn’t work. The younger age group was oversubscribed and couldn’t be expanded due to staffing requirements. The middle age group was ok, and the older age group was struggling. We decided to focus on the middle age group. Because if we recruited children in this age group, it was likely they would stay with the business long term, and naturally they would filter into the older age group.

The next stage was to set up a targeted Meta advert for brand awareness but to also bring a new audience onto the page. This was a video-based advert, as these are the best-performing ads right now.

Then we turned to creating assets for every activity, so each day we could tell the audience what activities were planned this was backed up with live videos, reels, and stories on Facebook and Instagram the business owner took every opportunity to go live to talk about the summer programme from making slime, to making lava lamps it was a chance to promote what they had to offer and for parents to get to know the business owner.

Remember, you must build the know, like and trust factor with your audience. If I’m leaving my child with a provider. I want to know who they are. Going live and using video in your marketing is a great way to build up a rapport quickly with your audience.

We used reviews and testimonials in their content every week, to validate the business. Remember people buy on recommendations, which is why it’s so important to collect those reviews.

The business owners got themselves out into the community by attending local events and supporting PTA with their work. This was a great opportunity to speak to parents directly and build those relationships.

They also paid for a leaflet drop across the area, which worked well, and bookings could be linked to this activity, so it was worthwhile.

We set up the email marketing system and started to email past attendees on a weekly basis.

Last but not least once sales started to come in for this business I taught them elements of my Del of A Sell Sales Strategy Course, so they could drive the sales home.

Once the programme started, we moved into stage two of the marketing strategy which was all about social proof. That’s a blog for another day.

During that 10-week period over 2000 places were sold. Now that’s some achievement. It was a tall task for this business owner, but with my advice and guidance, and strategy they were able to take their business to the next level.

For me, there are two types of marketing at a local level. Firstly, you want to be found online naturally this means having good SEO (search engine optimisation) then there’s the visibility part where you have to be prepared to put yourself out there in order to engage, connect and develop relationships with your audience that’s why I call it street marketing. Remember, Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses, everyone knew him that’s because he marketed like a Pop Star.

What I love is teaching my business owners just like this one how to build a marketing system in their business. That’s what the Market Like A Pop Star Programme is all about.

I’m really excited to see how this business develops in 2023 as they now have the foundations in place to allow them to grow in new locations.

They started their journey with me by taking that first step to sign up to my FREE-5 Day Market Like A Pop Star Challenge. You can do the same. I’m hosting my last challenge of the year this month. We start on Monday 23rd January 2023.

Remember every journey, starts with a first step.