When a business expands, it inevitably faces the challenge of marketing to a new audience in a different location. These new customers won’t necessarily respond the same way to the usual content, so new content should be tailored to them for best effect.
Agency Stack knows the trials of expansion well, after years of providing design, copywriting, account management, PPC, and SEO outsourcing Australia-wide.
These days, we have offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, and New York, giving us the expansion experience to offer our clients the same journey.
This blog will naturally use the phrase “meet them where they are” a concerning number of times, but trust us, this advice is golden.
Combining such a mantra with targeted ads and a pinch of audience empathy should put any business in good stead to expand.
If this blog doesn’t answer all your questions, however, get in touch and let’s talk it out!
How specific are we talking?
You’d be surprised just how targeted our modern day marketing tools can become, but is this useful for everyone?
The specificity of your location-based marketing will depend on the size and general nature of your business. If you’re a small business that can’t actually manage more than a dozen jobs at once, perhaps you’d be best sticking around your suburb and its neighbours.
On the other hand, a medium-sized business with a solid reputation and a widely-applicable product may be able to expand its horizons a little more.
It all depends on your capacity and the new region’s demand for your product, tempering ambition with a realistic sense of what’s achievable.
“Meet them where they are”
Well, that didn’t take long, did it?
The meaning behind the mantra is to understand the settings in which your target audience spends most of its time. In which forum will they be best exposed to your product, and more importantly, where will they be in the mindset to consume and process your messaging?
An information-rich, technologically-complex product may not suit a highway billboard where drivers have little time to process the information. But this same product may suit the same drivers as they sit on the couch with some spare time and a laptop.
This ethos can also be conceived in the context of social media. The target audience for this same techy product may be spending more time on LinkedIn than on TikTok, helping you to decide where you spend more of your ad budget.
Meet them where they are!
Targeted ads
Once you’ve decided which channels to market through, you’ll be prompted to tailor each ad to a specific segment. If you have existing data on the demographics of your audience, their purchasing habits, and their interests, you’ll be much better placed to target them on social media or in Google Ads.
Obviously, when we’re talking about location-based marketing, a customer’s location is one of the most important data points, but the more information the merrier.
The volume of information required to remarket will depend on how far afield you expand. If you’ve simply moved one suburb over, then you can probably keep the basic metrics of age, gender, interests, etc. and change the location slightly.
Conversely, if you’ve moved into a new state or country, then the new audience will come with its own set of pain points and values for you to consider. This will greatly affect the way you target them and the kinds of content they respond well to.
For example, as Agency Stack expanded from Australia into the United States, we were forced to consider a whole new way of thinking. Compared to Australia’s reputation as a relaxed larrikin, U.S. audiences are highly performance-based and appreciate a higher level of professionalism. It’s a task to balance our marketing towards these two audiences but it’s one we have enjoyed tackling.
Local pain points and personalities
About those pain points, it may be worth your time to consult with a local about your new region. Someone who knows the area will better understand the sociopolitics, economy, and overall community much better than you could from afar.
Even if you are only moving a few suburbs over, there may have been a hyperlocal dispute that relates to your product and your lack of knowledge could lead to tasteless or tone deaf content.
Agency Stack eases the task of getting to know its new locales by hiring local talent who already knew the region. We highly advise you to do the same as you expand, rather than stretching yourself thin and relocating existing employees.
In the case of our local account managers, it has been especially helpful to have local staff on hand who can speak the language and temperament of their compatriots.
Get in Touch – Wherever You Are
Australia, New Zealand, the United States. Hell, get in touch no matter which country you’re from. Wherever your agency is based, prepare yourself for dedicated account management and more digital marketing services than you can poke a stick at.