13 Methods To Reach Customers Beyond Your Community

Post Written By Expert Panel® Forbes Councils Member

Businesses usually start within their local community. Small and medium enterprises draw a lot of their customers from their local region, and many even hire within the area as well. However, as a business expands, it quickly realizes that the local region may be holding back its growth. There is only a finite amount of consumers within the local catchment area, and the company needs to reach out to more people if it wants to realize its full potential.

Small businesses now have many tools at their disposal to help them reach out to areas outside of their home region. Technological advances and networking have helped small businesses expand their boundaries and get in touch with consumers outside of their communities. Below, 14 members of Forbes Business Council discuss several crucial methods of reaching consumers outside of a business’s local space.

1. Understand How The Community Is Different

Understand how the local community you started in differs from your target market. Are these differences major enough to warrant a change of how you communicate with your audience beyond your local community? It is critical to always speak to local markets when developing new business, so trying to use your old collateral just may not work. Localize your content and your communication methods! – Maurice Harary, The Bid Lab

2. Ensure Your Product Fits The New Market

Being Canadian, we’ve always had to think of means to sell into the U.S. and the rest of the world as our own market is far too small. As such, the first thing any company should do is to make sure the products or services are suitable for clients outside your own local community to select the right target market and approach. Hockey doesn’t sell in Hong Kong. – Carl Hung, Season Group

3. Start With Your Current Network

Look to where you’ve lived in the past, where you graduated from college or where you have family. It’s much easier to break into markets you are already familiar with than to start from scratch. – Beth Trejo, Chatterkick

4. Build Relationships And A Reputation

Build relationships where you want to expand. Building a network and reputation comes before sourcing the first client in a territory. Are complimentary service or product providers aware of your brand? Do they have a positive connotation of it? Peer endorsements and client endorsements go much farther than any fancy marketing campaign. – Robert Depalo, National Financial Network

5. Focus On Solving Their Problem

I see many people reach out to me, my colleagues and my network with long paragraphs of what they do, how passionate they are and requests to meet. People want people that solve their problems, so you need to solve their problems. Maybe create a whitepaper, a video or an article that solves a problem they have right now. In essence, people are asking, “What’s in it for me?” – Darren A. Smith, Making Business Matter

6. Associate Yourself With Big Brands

Associate yourself with the big boys or girls. Part of what this does is elevate the visibility of great businesses globally by associating them with the most respected and well-regarded brands and organizations to solve sustainability, climate change mitigation and the adaptation and enablement of deep tech, transformational industries. Find the right global platform. – Scott Amyx, Astor Perkins

7. Join Relevant Industry Associations

Become involved in the industry associations your potential customers belong to for business-to-business. Attend conferences and apply for speaking engagements, but don’t sell there—just learn what the language of the industry is and be a valuable resource. In the same vein, ask your current customers to introduce you to others in their industry. – Melissa Pepper, Total Solutions, Inc.

8. Build A Personal Brand

Build a strong online personal brand. Utilize different social platforms to make strategic connections. The internet allows for a global reach. Engage an international branding agency that has a proven history of supporting surrounding areas in your region or country. They may be able to also leverage your product or service into the countries they service, helping you both win. – Paul L. Gunn, KUOG Corporation

9. Build Out Your Online Presence

Building out your online presence is key. Start by optimizing your website as that is one of the first places people will check out first. Then research your competition, seeing what platforms they are on and the types of content they are creating that resonates with your target market. Mirror their strategy and start creating better content to serve your audience. – Marcus Chan, Venli Consulting Group

10. Leverage Content Marketing

Content marketing is major when it comes to helping generate leads. For example, you can create cool videos that explain why your company or products are essential nowadays. The more entertaining your video is, the more people will share it, especially now that everyone’s attention span is very short. Plus, people are likely to buy products if it’s explained properly as vision is our most dominant sense. – Abigail Aboitiz, 247 Health Solution LLC

11. Find Collaborative Solutions

Focus on collaborative solutions. How can you and your best customers help each other? Rural communities thrive on close relationships and on trust. Get together with your best customers and work on a user-generated content strategy. User-generated content can bring incredible dividends through its synergizing nature. – Francois Devillez, AlphaSwap

12. Promote Your Brand Via Google Ads 

Google Ads are a great way to market your business and target whatever community you are interested in. You can target both keywords as well as geographies and demographics. Use targeting tools to get as specific as you can so you don’t waste any money, and be sure to set up conversion tracking so you know what is working. – Adam Viener, Yazing

13. Make Use Of Physical Advertising

Make use of physical advertising through flyers and include the use of the digital campaign as a means to reach further. You should then proceed to give promotions and free samples to gain followers. – Kevin Leyes, Leyes Media

Forbes Article Link: 13 Methods To Reach Customers Beyond Your Community