Local Marketing During a Pandemic: 3 Traditional Tactics To Keep Your Brand Top of Mind
The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many local marketers to shift their budgets primarily to digital tactics due to changes in buyer behavior. However, there are a few emerging ways to connect with your target audience through traditional marketing tactics during the pandemic. While these hyper-local, traditional marketing tactics may not have been as relevant pre-pandemic, the advertising landscape is changing and your local marketing strategy should evolve to reflect the current climate.
To keep your brand top of mind during the pandemic, consider leveraging these three traditional tactics in your local marketing strategy:
Pizza Box Toppers
In many households, ordering pizza is a regular occurrence. It’s a family friendly option that is convenient, affordable, and safe—especially when opting for contactless delivery. Not only do 94% of all Americans eat pizza at least once a month, but when surveyed, 63% of consumers chose pizza as their takeout food of choice during the pandemic. When you run a printed ad on pizza boxes, your brand’s message gets delivered directly to the hands of the consumer. Your ad is a focal point at the dinner table, and perhaps even the next day when people reach for leftovers in the fridge. To make pizza box toppers even more effective during a pandemic, use radial or zip code targeting to reach the right households, tailor your messaging according to the moment and your audience, and include QR codes on your advertisements as a way to track who visits your website because of the pizza box ad.Church Bulletins and Newsletters
Although in-person church attendance is down 40%, many churches are mailing their bulletins directly to parishioners, leaving them outside of their rectories for pickup, and posting them online. Advertising in church bulletins and newsletters is a straightforward way to reach families in your local communities. Plus, liturgical bulletins are a dependable community news source for many parishioners, and people typically place trust in information delivered through their church. Using this local marketing tactic, you can foster a relationship between this niche group and your brand.Gas Station Ads
Even though people are staying at home more to help slow the spread of COVID-19, gas stations remain an unavoidable, essential business. There are more than 115,000 gas stations across the country and the majority offer 15 or 30-second TV ad placements that run as customers are pumping their gas. This tactic offers an opportunity increase brand awareness, access a captive audience, and target specific areas that are most likely to serve your desired audience.For an integrated marketing approach, you can use geo-targeting to bolster the effectiveness of any of the tactics mentioned above. Geo-targeting is a method for delivering pay-per-click digital ads to an audience in specific, customized location or set of locations. This way, you can ensure your audience is exposed to your ad multiple times in multiple ways.
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Elizabeth Vales
Elizabeth Vales
Director of Performance Marketing at BrandMuscle
Liz has worked at BrandMuscle for over a decade in key positions within the client service, operations and paid media departments. As Director of Performance Marketing, she manages a team of media buyers who create and execute strategic marketing plans for local agents or franchisees of national corporations. Liz and her team are experts in local marketing and work strategically to identify the best suite of marketing tactics for each local market based on goals, objectives and budget.