Community marketing
community bulletin boards at local businesses such as cafe’s
Reaching an aligned audience with flyers is totally possible - and honestly, pretty easy!
For businesses that serve a local clientele, the goal is to get your brand in front of the ideal customers in your given area. Sure, you’ve done your search engine optimization for your website, you’ve set up a Google profile for your store…but that only helps the people who are looking for you. What about the folks who don’t know that they need what you offer, yet? What about folks who don’t even know that what you offer exists in their neighborhood?
Get some flyers in front of them! Print marketing isn’t just alive and well - it can also be pretty sustainable. Consider a flyer that’s laminated and built to last, with a QR code that you keep updated. This would allow you to replace the flyer never, or seasonally, or quarterly, or whatever suits you.
discover your target market
Step one - understand who you’re trying to reach
In order to reach them, you’ve got to know who they are. You know your ideal client - the one who is happy to pay your rates, benefits from your product, gets your vibe, and tells their friends. I bet you’re also familiar with your not-so-ideal clients…and I bet you want to avoid them. This whole getting to know your ideal, aligned, target client, is elementary my dear; you need this to be the foundation of your brand and marketing strategy.
You need to know how old they are, what they do for work, how much they make, where they live, what they drive, what they eat, what time they leave for work, if they have kids, a spouse, a dog, where they buy coffee, where they buy their clothes, what they’re excited about, what they’re afraid of, what they value.
If you don’t know them, you won’t reach them. Get super duper ultra crystal fucking clear on who they are. You do NOT want to sPeAk to eVeRyOnE, so speak directly to your target.
become familiar with - and recognized - in the community you serve
Step two - know your neighborhood
Hopefully, it’s not terribly far from home. Regardless, you’ll need to hang out there yourself. If you have a storefront or a service area, you should be buying coffee there, going to the library there, buying groceries there, attending the local Santa Claus Parade, street festivals…whatever your neighborhood is in to, you’re in to it too. Once you’ve made your way around a few times, you should consider getting more involved - specifically, in the spots where your target clients are hanging out. If your client gets facials, and you noticed the local med spa is doing a raffle? Donate something from your brand. If your target client has kids, maybe a Santa Claus parade float? More on community marketing in general in the future, but for now, I think you’re probably picking up what I’m putting down.
the design process should be strategic - but fun!
Step three - design
Now to design a flyer that catches their attention when they walk past it! Hopefully, you designed your brand (the colours, the fonts, the graphics, the tone, the vibe!) around what stands out to your ideal client (because you made sure you understood exactly who they are, before you designed your brand…right?), so your branding should hit the ground running. Consider key words, or your slogan, that will catch their attention along with the branding. You want your flyer to introduce your brand, make your offer obvious, and include a call to action - the case of the mindful flyer, tell them to scan your QR code!
Don’t forget to make sure the QR leads to something exciting and relevant that builds connection, whether it’s a well branded link extension like linktree or linkinbio, or your website landing page. Tip - lean in to email subscription pops ups or buttons to build an email list to stay connected!
Stay tuned for more tips and depth in some of the concepts covered here!
