With Small Business Saturday coming up again in just two months (November 29th in the United States, but there are movements in other countries as well), there has been a growing momentum over the last few years to encourage consumers to shop and buy locally produced goods.

locally made product shot

As a small business, are you taking advantage of the local movement?

Local customers love to support local business. Everyone has a sense of patriotism and it extends down to the city level. I don’t know how many times I have recommended this to clients. Start gaining a following and customer base locally, then leverage that success to go national, and then once you have national success, go for worldwide sales.

Your local media also loves to support local businesses. For example, two of my Atlanta-based customers, Margaret Vera Designs and All Earz Jewelry, took my advice and pitched stories to their local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution and got press coverage in their “Made in Atlanta” section of the newspaper, dedicated specifically to supporting local businesses.

Don’t discount your local market. They will be loyal and repeat customers and they will be more likely to recommend you to friends and family. Many popular, name brand companies started with local success, such as Starbucks, and then turned that local success into national and then international success.

3 Shop Local Marketing Tactics You Can Try

  1. Approach your local media, be it your newspaper, TV station, magazines, even radio, and see if they have a regular local business feature. They are probably even starting to think about editorial for Small Business Saturday, so your timing might work out well.
  2. Approach popular local merchants and see if they will try carrying your products in a small section of their store entitled, “Support Local Small Businesses“. Sometimes you have to give them the idea, and it could result in press for them as well.
  3. Add local labelling to your products (such as the logo above) so that when you sell at local craft shows or local shops, customers are influenced by the fact that your products are home-grown.

Tell Me! What ideas or tactics will you try to get more business from your local market? Tell me in comments.

I’ll have more ideas of how you can take advantage of the local movement and Small Business Saturday in my October Marketing Insider Report, available October 1st.