The Local Marketing Handbook

The only channel that cannot be automated.

Our neighbor Kim owns a screen-printing shop. When my oldest started playing football for Ware and our family had none of the right gear, Kim hand-delivered shirts and sweatshirts for every brother, sister, parent, and grandparent. Green and black, every Friday from September to December.



Kim was not running a campaign. She was printing the home team's logo on fabric for coaches, teachers, students, and families, and she gets to do that for every sport, every season, while providing for her family. That is a local business being a rich and memorable part of a community's experience.

That same year we drove out to the tree farm we visited every Thanksgiving weekend and found an empty parking lot. No cars, no smoke from the fire pit. They had closed for good. Two businesses, same town, same year.

Everything else in this handbook makes you findable. This is what makes you worth finding.

What this actually looks like

• Join the chamber and then actually go. The membership is not the point. Showing up is. The relationships turn into referrals, and the directory listing turns into exactly the kind of third-party mention the last chapter needs.
• Sponsor something small and local. A team, a road race, a school play, a fundraiser. It costs less than most ad buys and it earns you a mention on a website you do not control, which is worth more than the ad.
• Photograph it and post it. This is the step people skip. Sponsor the team, then put the picture on your profile, your site, and your social. Now the community work is also marketing work, and it is the kind no competitor can copy.
• Say yes when a neighbor asks. Kim did not build a strategy. She answered the door.

There is something symbiotic about the relationship between families, communities, and the businesses that serve them.

They work to improve each other's lives and make the experience memorable as we travel through this life together. That was true in the first edition and no amount of technology has touched it.

Your 30-minute task

Find one local event, team, or organization in the next ninety days and email them offering to help. Then put it on the calendar to photograph it and post it when it happens.