Residents, Tourists, Locals and Marketing Your Business in 2013

It’s that time of the year again, every business owner is making their marketing resolutions for 2013.

Usually this involves a string of muttered buzz words such as, “This is the year that I will tweet my tweeps about how much I am facebooking in response to Yelp filtering my reviews, which doesn’t help my SEO.” It makes your head spin and it is hard to even know where to start, especially when you are so busy working in your business that it is hard to make time to work on your business.

In response to this idea that you need to do it all in 2013, I thought it would be good to put together a list of marketing vehicles and explain which methods are best for your business, based on your target clientele. Not every form of marketing is necessary for every business.

So let’s start somewhere simple: San Diego is a special place.

It is unique in that it has small town values and networks with a hospitality that is open to the world. It is diverse, home to many in the military, young families and retirees alike. When it comes to marketing your business in San Diego, it takes additional consideration to develop marketing strategies that address this diverse resident base (people who live in your immediate community) mixed with a steady steam of locals (people who live in San Diego county) and tourists from out of town. Some businesses depend heavily on a flow of all three streams of clientele, while others focus primarily on catering to only residents or only to tourists.

It is also no secret that marketing has evolved over the last few decades, even the last few years, but most of the same principals remain the same. The goal is to get new customers in through your door (or now, into your “virtual store,” otherwise known as a website) and to deliver a positive experience that will have that customer or client returning in the future. While this goal remains the same, the vehicles to deliver your message to your potential customers are changing rapidly.

Below is a list of marketing avenues that make up what we like to call your “marketing ecosystem”. Every business should have a few referral streams to keep a healthy flow of potential business, but this does not mean that every avenue is applicable to every business.

When considering the marketing avenues below, note which are advantageous to your target customers. T is for tourists, R is for residents and L is for locals (people who live in San Diego County). For example, a restaurant would be considered a T/R/L, since they would want to attract residents, locals and tourists, while a dentist would likely be focused on R/L since most of their clients would be within a 20 mile radius of your office and tourists would only need a dentist in a pinch.

Take the time to consider the following ways to market your business in 2013 and identify 2-3 action items that would help your business grow:

  1. Website Presence (T/R/L) – Is your website the first impression you want to make with your business? Is it time to revamp your website so your virtual store is as nice as your physical one?
  2. SEO (T/R/L) – Does your website come up in search results on google, yahoo and bing?
  3. Digital Marketing (T/R/L) – Do you advertise and partner with local blogs and news sites?
  4. Pay per click (T/R/L) – Should you be running targeted facebook and google advertisements?
  5. Yelp (T/L) – Is your business on Yelp? If so, what kind of reviews do you have?
  6. Google Places (T/R/L) – Is your google places page optimized to help customers find you?
  7. Email Marketing (R/L) – Do you have and utilize an email list to reach your clients?
  8. Social and Physical Networking (R/L) – Are you connecting with potential referral generators?
  9. Youtube and Video Ads (R/L) – Would the power of video help sell what you do best?
  10. Branding (T/R/L) – Does your business card, website and flyers match the quality of the goods or services you provide?
  11. Print Advertisement (R/T) – Do you run newspaper and magazine ads or coupons?
  12. Mailers (R) – Do you reach residents directly through the mail?

As a resolution, let’s start with choosing one item from this list to focus on in the first 8 weeks of 2013. In future articles we will be checking in on your progress and breaking down each of these 12 marketing avenues more in depth and explore new ways of reaching potential clients.

Article by Jacques Spitzer, a San Diego Marketing Specialist. Have questions? Leave them in the comment section below or contact us!