Tips for Local Durham Businesses to Promote Themselves Online This Christmas

The National Lockdown in March saw a surge in people shopping local and supporting independent businesses, especially when it came to online shopping. This is one demand that doesn’t seem to be dying, as people are sharing on social media to ‘take the pledge and shop local’ this Christmas. With the festive season quickly approaching, it’s time for Durham businesses to take advantage of this shift in seasonal demand and increase their online presence for shoppers who are eager to support their local economy.

Read below our top techniques local Durham businesses can utilise to boost their sales and cash in on the Christmas spending this year.

Build A Localised Google Search Ad Campaign

Reach people in your local area actively searching for your products or services with a Google Search Ads campaign. This will help to drive traffic to your website, bring footfall into your store and boost sales during the Christmas Season.

There are two ways to locally target your Google Search Campaigns: Keywords and Location.

Including your target areas in and around Durham in your Keywords is a good place to start, as you then know that your ads are showing to people who are actively looking for your product or service in your target area.

Alternatively, you can use the Location feature when building your Google Ad and select your desired locations on a map and define the radius that you wish to target the area. This means your Ads will only be shown to people within that area, and will exclude people outside of that area. You could choose to focus on the city of Durham and surrounding areas, and exclude areas that are possibly too far away for you to cater for.

Make sure you have defined what area(s) you are wanting to target in your campaign. It’s important to not be too specific that you risk your ads not showing (i.e. specific towns and villages in and around Durham), and also not too broad where your ads are not showing to your target audience (which can be costly).

It’s important that your Google Ads show to the right people that you want to target at the right time.

Note: your target audience might not always be in the same place as where your business is based.

Encourage Local Shoppers to Promote Your Business Through Social Media

This is a simple but effective way of promoting your business and increasing social media engagement where your buyers do most of the marketing for you!

Since the National Lockdown, social media users have been keen to share that they have been shopping local and supporting independent businesses. Users are finally seeing the instant gratification and heightened engagement they receive from shopping and interacting with smaller businesses rather than larger, established businesses.

When your shoppers receive their goods, encourage them to share their new buys on social media and to tag your business profile in their post and shop location. You can also include a personalised hashtag suited for your brand or product for them to use alongside the post as well.

You will then have your business marketed to their followers and you can re-share their post to your followers and engage with your new customer. All of this engagement and promotion from one post!

This technique works well on Instagram, but it can be effective on Facebook and Twitter as well.

How We Can Help

Tackling a marketing campaign as well as running an independent business can seem daunting and time-consuming, especially with the festive season arriving soon.

We can work with you to build a 360° Marketing Package to increase awareness of your business in Durham and surrounding areas, as well as engagement with your customers.

Our services include:

• Bespoke web design
• Building successful Google Ad Campaigns
• Writing high-ranking SEO content
• Creating content and managing engaging social media campaigns

Speak to us today to get your campaign started in time for Christmas.