Opening a new location is a huge step for small business owners. Expanding and serving a wider range of clients is exciting and signals that your business is profitable & successful. However, opening a new location can pose difficulties if you don’t have the right marketing strategy.
Promoting your business through content marketing, social media & localized SEO efforts is a major part of marketing. But when you have multiple business locations, you need to tailor marketing efforts to fit the needs of each specific local community. What works at your original location may not be as impactful elsewhere. But when you’re growing your business, you want to increase the likelihood of success. To do this, you need to create a multi-location marketing strategy that appeals to all audiences.
Before we jump in, take a quick audit of your current marketing efforts. What’s working well? What could use improvement? Is there anything you’ve wanted to experiment with? Once you have a good idea of the effectiveness of your current marketing, set measurable & actionable goals for yourself. Then read on to discover how you can effectively market your multi-location business.
Keep Branding Consistent
Expanding can seem like a prime opportunity to modify your logo or brand colors. But if you suddenly change up your visuals, you’ll have inconsistent branding which confuses customers and calls into question the credibility of your business. It can also lead to mixed messages and dilute the brand recognition & equity you’ve worked hard to establish. Consistent branding across all business locations is crucial in maintaining a strong brand image and reputation.
Instead, focus on creating brand guidelines to standardize your branding across all locations. This will streamline your marketing efforts. In your brand guidelines, you should include:
- Your brand identity. This includes the logo, color palette, typography and other visual elements that make up your brand’s unique look & feel.
- Messaging. Create a clear & consistent tone of voice that represents your brand and its values.
- How to use visuals. Write detailed instructions on how to use your brand’s visual elements in various mediums such as websites, social media, print materials, etc.
- Your brand personality. Think of your brand as a person. Then, write a description of this personality, its values & tone to ensure consistency in how your brand interacts with its audience.
- Social media guidelines. How should your brand represent itself on social media platforms? Be sure to address tone of voice, image & video usage and how to respond to comments.
Keep branding consistent across all business locations to create a strong brand identity, improve customer experience & drive business growth.
Need help with your branding? Vagaro’s got you covered! Our Customer Design Team offers packages to meet all your design needs. From your own branded app to logo design & custom website templates, our design team works with you to bring your specific branding dreams to life.
Segment Your Audience
Segmenting your audience is crucial in creating a targeted marketing strategy that reaches the right clients. Without segmentation, your marketing efforts may miss the mark, resulting in wasted resources and limited success. Segmentation allows you to divide your audience into specific groups based on common characteristics, such as age or location, so you can tailor your marketing messages and approach to meet the needs of each group. It wouldn’t do well to market curl-boosting treatments to clients with straight hair, for instance, so no need to spend on audiences where your efforts will (literally) fall flat.
Monitor Location Data for Better Insights
Monitoring data from individual locations for a multi-location business can help by providing insights into buying behavior, preferences and needs of customers at each location. Use this valuable info to tailor marketing efforts specifically to the target audience at each location, ensuring a more effective and relevant marketing strategy. For example, if one location is attracting younger clientele, marketing efforts for that location can focus on digital & social media channels that are more popular with that demographic. Need access to these insights? With advanced reporting from Vagaro, you can analyze every facet of your business to make the most informed & impactful decisions possible.
Monitoring data can also help identify any location-specific challenges that may need to be addressed. If a particular location is not generating as much traffic as other locations, data analysis can uncover the root cause of the issue and help create informed marketing efforts to address it. This data-driven approach can help to differentiate marketing materials and ensure that your marketing efforts are more effective and relevant at each location.
Create Location-Specific Webpages
Having location-specific webpages for a multi-location business helps you target and reach potential customers in each area you serve. Location-specific pages allow you to tailor your content and messaging to each market, addressing the unique needs and concerns of each community. This personalization can help build a stronger connection with potential customers, increase their likelihood of visiting your location and improve their overall experience with your brand.
Location-specific webpages can also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) by allowing you to include location-specific keywords to help your website rank higher in local search results. When customers search for businesses like yours in a specific location, having a webpage optimized for that specific area can increase your visibility and make it easier for them to find your business.
Leverage Localized SEO
Local SEO is a key part of small business marketing, especially for those with multiple locations. By optimizing your website and online presence for local search, you improve business visibility and therefore attract new customers. To maximize the impact of your local SEO efforts, it’s essential to accurately list your business information on major directories like Google & Apple Maps. You should also include relevant keywords in your website’s content & meta descriptions, and encourage customers to leave positive reviews about your business. These efforts can help you rank higher in local search results, increasing the visibility & credibility of your business.
Use Text & Email Marketing for Local Engagement Email & text marketing allow for targeted and personalized communication with customers. Sending tailored messages to specific groups based on their preferences, location and purchase history increases customer engagement and drives conversions.
Plus, email and text marketing are cost-effective compared to other forms of marketing and allow small businesses to reach a large number of customers at a low cost, making them a valuable tool for promoting new products, sales & events. The best part? Your efforts with text & email marketing are trackable and measurable by using analytics to track open rates, click-through rates & conversions, which can help you determine the effectiveness of your campaigns. That way, you can optimize future campaigns and improve your overall marketing strategy. With Vagaro’s text & email marketing, you can quickly create campaigns, create targeted lists and analyze results. From the start, we set you up with 1,000 free emails a month to help grow your marketing efforts & expand your reach.
Encourage Online Reviews to Increase Trust & Credibility Online reviews are an effective marketing tool when opening a second location for your small business because they help establish credibility and build trust with potential customers. Positive reviews from satisfied customers serve as social proof, demonstrating to others that your business provides high-quality products or services. This can lead to increased foot traffic and sales, especially if your second location is in a new area where you may not have a reputation yet.
Additionally, online reviews can provide valuable feedback for your business, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and make necessary changes. This enhances the customer experience and increases customer satisfaction, which can lead to more positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals.
Establish a Strong Online Presence with a Google Business Profile
Having a Google Business Profile for a multi-location business helps you reach potential customers searching for your products or services on Google. When someone searches for your business on Google, your Google Business Profile will appear in the search results with your business information, including the name, address, phone number, website & reviews from previous customers. By providing this information, you can help people find your business more easily and make an informed decision about visiting your location.
You can manage and update your business information across Google, including Google Maps and Google Search to ensure your information is accurate and up to date. It also gives you the ability to respond to customer reviews and engage with potential customers through the platform, building trust and strengthening your reputation.
Use Vagaro to Make Multi-Location Marketing Easy
Marketing a multi-location business can be challenging, but with a well-thought-out strategy, it can be done successfully. By understanding your audience, creating brand guidelines, focusing on local SEO efforts, utilizing email & text marketing, leveraging online reviews, setting up Google Business profiles, and monitoring data from individual locations, you can effectively market your multi-location business and reach a wider audience. Remember, don’t be afraid to experiment and make changes along the way to find what works best. Once you’ve got that nailed down, consistency is key.
And with Vagaro, managing your multi-location marketing efforts is a cinch. With automated digital marketing tools, like text & email marketing, a free Marketplace with millions of customers searching for businesses like yours, and the option to work with professionals to create the brand of your dreams, we offer an array of features to help your marketing efforts succeed. What can we say? When your business succeeds, so does ours. Let Vagaro make marketing (and managing your multi-location business) as easy as possible. Sign up for a 30-day free trial to discover just how seamless business can be!
