When you have a small business, it’s difficult to compete with the Amazons and Walmarts of the world. You can’t beat them on price or name recognition, and you can’t match their marketing budgets. The one place you do have a leg up on multi national behemoths is community engagement marketing.
According to the Customer Marketing Alliance, community engagement marketing is the process of building relationships with a community through shared values and engagements. You can think of it as going in hand in hand with something I always preach – authenticity.
While online marketing is one face of building community, when you have a local presence, what you do in that spot can truly put your community engagement over the top.
Today, we address both.
Online Community Engagement Marketing
Most of the buzzy community engagement marketing is around online stuff. And we’re not knocking that. After all, POP stands for Power-up Online Promotions, but it’s not the only way we engage, as we’ll discuss in the next section.
Online community engagement involves building up an online community, sharing who you are, and engaging with your customers and other brands.
When you’re part of a local community, you can use your profiles and/or website to share important information about other businesses and support local people. It’s a great way to remind people that you’re more than just a name and a place to get goods and/or services! You’re a real person in town – Roanoke, in our case.
For sharing, you should let people know about your company’s values. That doesn’t need to be controversial (though for some, it may be). Values can be something completely apolitical, like caring about your employees or community, or even putting creativity first.
With that said, don’t water something down so much that it has basically no meaning. And don’t use empty words.
Share what your company does to support the things you care about.
For POP, that means putting people (and animals) first, creativity, and inclusivity, among other things. Some people might not like that last one, but it’s authentic to us.
In-Person Community Engagement Marketing
When you’re a small business with a location in a local community, if you’re not leveraging your local ties, you’re missing out. Leveraging local ties can mean a lot of things, from time spent at events to donations, but you don’t need to have a hospital or museum wing in your name to make a major impact.
Charities
Chances are, a local nonprofit means something to you. Maybe you donate to a local food bank or volunteer to help kids. Maybe there’s a nonprofit that took care of someone you love during a difficult time.
Whatever the case may be for you, that’s a great place to focus your community engagement marketing. Donate to a cause. Sponsor an event. Send your employees to volunteer somewhere when you’re not having a busy day.
Show you care, and the community will care about you.
Events
The Jeff Bezoses of the world don’t have time to go to every community event in each city that uses their services. That would be impossible!
However, when you own a local business, you can make appearances at local events that are important to your community. That may be a community festival, a Chamber of Commerce dinner, or a networking meeting.
You can attend everyday events that interest you, like theater or a game at the local high school. These things go a long way toward establishing your community bona fides, as long as it’s something you actually care about.
People smell phony a mile away!
Physical Engagement
POP recently partnered with Roanoke’s Berglund Center for a one-of-a-kind collaboration. We’ve created a unique physical space within Berglund Center beside Yappy Hour and other concessions called The Power-Up Lounge.
The Power-Up Lounge is a POP-branded space where people attending hockey games, concerts, or other events can relax and enjoy a drink or some food during intermission.
What makes the lounge different from other advertising within Berglund Center is that we’re allowing our clients to show off their work within it. So you’re not just seeing an ad for Frame to Finish’s kitchen remodeling services or SML Landscape Design’s work: you’re sitting in an example of it!
Pretty cool, huh?
Hitting Multiple Fronts
We’ve also used this space for another form of community engagement marketing – supporting local charities. We dedicate one of the six spaces within the Power-Up Lounge to a local charity or nonprofit.
The nonprofit rotates out every quarter. We’re looking forward to revealing our first one!
I want to note the importance of something I already mentioned in all this – authenticity. We’re supporting charities that are already meaningful to us, not pretending we care about something to get some kind of brownie points.
In fact, we’ve got the receipts. Just check out some of the articles POP owner has written about these local nonprofits, starting with this month’s Roanoker feature.
Do Good Work
Finally, let’s not forget the marketing all social media marketing is built upon – word-of-mouth. And the best way to get people talking about you is do something memorable. Of course, memorable isn’t always good. So be sure what you make people remember is the good work you do.
Good work isn’t just giving back – though we at POP encourage that, not only this season, but throughout the year – it’s also doing your work well.
When you’re part of the community, every job you do is your marketing. As is every interaction.
So keep that in mind whenever you leave the house.
You’re not just a private citizen; you’re a representative of your company. And even more essentially, a member of the community.
