5 Ways Ecommerce Businesses Can Create Local Business Reputation

Every business is essentially local. That’s inclusive of ecommerce business. Significantly, most consumers always have a strong affinity for local businesses. Many spend a large percentage of their disposable income patronizing local businesses. This is something ecommerce businesses can always tap into if they use the right strategy. When ecommerce businesses create a local reputation for themselves, they continue to attract local business loyalty. They can even deepen this loyalty by being overly responsive to local community needs. This means they must as a matter of policy employ local people, give back to local causes, and attract local customers. This ultimately helps to drive revenue to the area. By deliberate strategies as discussed below, ecommerce businesses can easily acquire local reputation.
 
1. Experimenting with Geo-Targeting

By way of geo-targeting, ecommerce businesses can personalize their brand to a specific local audience. This is because, with geo-targeting as a marketing technique, these businesses are able to deliver content or advertisements to users based on their location. Doing so helps to increase conversions because these businesses can translate their content into local languages. They can match local currencies, serve specific offers locally, and adapt their marketing to make it relevant to a specific area. When this technique is used through native geo-targeting options on your GMB, Google Business Profile, it is very effective. You can also use location-specific hashtags on social media or location-based apps and services like Foursquare or Yelp to reach local customers.

2. Personalizing Shopping Experience Elements

Significantly, most (more than 80%) of consumers prefer local businesses because of the personalized attention they get from such businesses. This attention comes largely by way of socializing with staff, asking for recommendations on products or being helped to pick the right gifts. Ecommerce business owners can take advantage of this by using online tools to help personalize customer experience and even to deliver the same level of care and attention to customers. Some of the tools can help suggest products based on browsing history, past purchases, and items in shoppers’ carts. Some of these tools are designed to use historical data to show relevant content based on customer interests and past interactions. These tools help ecommerce businesses to personalize practically everything from email outreach to website design and layout. Adequate care must however be taken to ensure customer data collection is not interpreted as intrusive. Obtaining permission before collecting customer data is about the best way to avoid this.
 
3. Humanizing Your Brand and Team

Most consumers really feel at home if they know they’re dealing with real humans and not just machines or robots. This is exactly why many consumers prefer to deal with product merchants they can greet by name. To humanize your ecommerce business, you can use your ecommerce site and social media pages to showcase the names and faces of the good people behind your business. In addition to showcasing your team in your content, make sure you empower your team to respond to direct messages, host live video chats, and reply to comments to keep conversations flowing. This is one great way to humanize your brand and it helps a great deal in enhancing local business reputation for your business.

4. Sponsoring Local Events

If you want patronage from locals, be there for them in a visible way. One of such ways is to sponsor local events the people really identify with. Even if you are unable to physically host such events you can sponsor an event in your target community. You can consider donating free products to a local charity for instance. Sponsoring a local sports derby or providing a specific discount for nonprofits in the area is another great idea. If you explore all ways to give back to the community, local opinion molders take note and that creates a boost in your business. It helps your business reputation a great deal if you explore all ways to give back to the local community even if you’re not physically present there.

5. Partnering with Local Influencers

Smart ecommerce business owners like to tap into prominent, famous or influential members of their target communities to facilitate local connections. They never overlook Influencers in this quest. This is because Influencers with an active geo-specific community following can help spread the word with relative ease. With relevant geographic messaging, such Influencers can always provide the authentic messaging that resonates with their audience. This can help enhance local business reputation a great deal. It is therefore advisable to focus more on local micro-influencers. They are a great resource for ecommerce businesses because they are often more affordable. They in addition have high engagement rates for their specific niches.