Get local – building your corporate brand

In the early days of the internet, the oportunity was one of owning a small business, but having the new capability of selling to a global market. As online competition has increased, small businesses are getting back to their roots – providing local service to local customers, through their own website.

The problem faced by national and multi-national companies is increasingly, presenting a credible local profile.

How can a large corporate entity still put forward a local online front, that meets the expectations of local customers?

Every branch should have its own website

It’s not limited to franchises, but a franchise is a good example – the parent company creates (or helps to create) websites for businesses under its control, either by direct ownership or by licenced branding. Every business has largely the same products and/or services. Often, their only differentiation is geographic location.

So how does the parent company create unique content, in a cost-effective way, for every individual child business?

Creating multiple websites, possibly one for every franchisee, branch office, or retail outlet, helps maximise the chance your company will be found online. Geographic seperation of branches (or offices, shops etc.) increases the likelihood you’ll convert a ‘local’ website visitor to a local customer.

1. Give every ‘child business’ their own website – it might be a subdomain e.g. wagga.billsmowing.com, or it might be under its own domain name e.g. bills-mowing-wagga.com;
2. Focus on using your chosen keywords alongside the physical location of the child business – include the location e.g. Wagga, as often as reasonable, and perhaps find ways to incorporate the names of neighbouring towns and/or suburbs in the website content as well; and
3. Include other uniques content relevant to the business that you might have in the database already e.g. the name of the owner, their staff members, or business-specific products or services

Remember, you are creating multiple websites, with the objective of attracting localised website traffic – website visitors that are looking for the product or service in their local area.