Being Local Is Not a Brand Strategy

I love local businesses.

A significant portion of my professional life revolves around working with them, promoting them, connecting them, attending their events, and helping organizations that support them.

I will happily tell you why shopping locally matters.

I also think we occasionally make a mistake in the way we talk about it.

We treat local as though it is the entire value proposition.

Being locally owned can influence someone's decision. It influences mine.

But being local is not, by itself, a brand strategy.

People still need a reason to choose you.

Nobody owes a business their money.

Small businesses are important to communities. They create jobs, occupy storefronts, sponsor organizations, contribute to local economies, support events, donate to fundraisers, and give places much of their personality.

But customers also have budgets, expectations, preferences, and choices.

“Support small business” shouldn't mean “please accept a worse experience because we're independently owned.”

In fact, that framing sells small businesses short.

Some of the best customer experiences happen precisely because a business is small. They can know customers, remember orders, make recommendations based on an actual conversation, and change something without waiting for approval from a corporate office three states away.

Those are advantages.

Use them.

Local is part of the story. Tell me the rest.

If I removed your town name from your marketing, what would be left?

There should be something else to say.

Local tells me where you belong. Your brand still needs to tell me why you.

The strongest local businesses become part of people's lives.

Think about the businesses you recommend without being asked.

Those recommendations usually have a story attached: they're so nice there, they fixed something nobody else could, the owner remembered me, you have to try this one thing, they made the whole process easy.

That's branding.

Being local can help create those relationships because proximity gives you more opportunities to become part of someone's life.

But proximity alone doesn't create loyalty.

Experience does.

Community involvement has to be more than a marketing tactic.

Sponsor the thing if you can. Attend the event. Know the businesses around you. Recommend them. Collaborate.

There is something different about a business that genuinely sees itself as part of a place rather than simply operating inside its boundaries.

The important word is genuinely.

Community is not an advertising channel.

It's a relationship.

Small businesses have an advantage big companies spend enormous amounts trying to manufacture.

Personality.

Actual personality.

The owner who knows everyone. The employee who always has a recommendation. The handwritten sign. The slightly strange tradition customers love. The story about how the business started.

Don't sand all of that personality away because you think “professional” means sounding like a corporation.

Local can get someone through the door.

Everything after that matters more. I don't want people to shop locally because they feel guilty if they don't.

I want our communities to have local businesses that are so good people would miss them if they disappeared.

Being local matters.

But local is the beginning of the story.

What you build there is the brand.