Local Marketing Automation: Top Tools, Strategies, And Examples

Nobody will dispute that small local businesses were a cornerstone of the economy before the 2010s. During the last decade, however, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, only 48.9% of them survived longer than five years.

Small local businesses were undoubtedly a cornerstone of the economy before the 2010s. However, during the last decade, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, only 48.9% of them survived longer than five years.

If you feel similar challenges are holding back your business growth, local marketing automation might be exactly what you need! 

But wait. We don’t suggest diving head-first into an unfamiliar approach. We’ve created this guide to acquaint you with local marketing automation, its tools, and strategies. Further on, you can adopt and adapt it to your business goals.

So, let’s get started.😉

What is local marketing automation?

Local marketing automation (LMA) is a technology that streamlines marketing efforts, tailoring them to the specifics of particular geographic areas. It helps you effectively engage with location-based subsegments of your target audience without sacrificing your brand’s unique voice.

Local marketing automation benefits

Now that we’ve clarified what local marketing automation is let’s see how your business can benefit from it.

Benefits of local marketing automation:

• Increased brand exposure
• Cost optimization
• Improved productivity

Increased brand exposure

Local businesses often struggle to compete with big companies, which have more outreach opportunities to win customers’ attention. Local marketing automation tools are what can help you find and utilize more channels of communication with your prospects. 

Such marketing automation software enables consistent delivery of location-relevant messages, making your brand more visible to potential clients. It also allows you to maintain a positive reputation among the existing customers, expanding your business growth horizons.

Cost optimization

No one wants to spend a budget on marketing strategies that don’t bring even more money. So, many business owners are relentlessly seeking solutions that will bring them the highest return on investment (ROI). 

Local marketing automation tools allow you to spare more costs. Imagine A/B testing various email marketing campaigns for a particular location segment and tracking their results on autopilot. You choose the best-performing campaign for your outreach and don’t waste resources on future dead ends. Isn’t it a good recipe for business growth?

Improved productivity

According to Constant Contact’s research, most small local businesses dedicate less than an hour daily to marketing. Worse, they commonly use this time to catch up on routine tasks, procrastinating on more significant ones. 

Local marketing automation software helps you save precious hours! It performs the monkey work so you may focus on boosting your business growth through analytical and more strategic activities.

Top local marketing automation software 

Choosing an appropriate local marketing automation tool may take much time and effort. To ease the job, we’ve gathered a list of the most popular software with local digital marketing automation capabilities. Explore their key features to pick the one that best suits your needs.

Best software for local marketing automation:

• Snov.io
• EngageBay
• HubSpot
• Salesforce

Snov.io

Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 on G2

Pricing: Free trial plan with core features/Paid plans start at $39/month

Snov.io is a comprehensive sales engagement and automation platform. Its versatile feature set is perfectly suited to automate all your local marketing automation strategies at a mild cost. You can find prospects based on a particular location and personalize your outreach accordingly.

No matter how many contacts are on your list, Snov.io automatically adjusts your marketing and sales outreach to all segments. 

Key features:

• Find verified email addresses of potential clients in seconds via Database Search. This feature allows you to look up prospects and their email addresses in your target industry in particular locations.
• Create successful email outreach campaigns using Snov.io cold email software. It enables you to quickly and consistently send out sequences of personalized emails. They have a higher chance of getting noticed by your target audience than sporadic or generic messages.
• Run multichannel digital campaigns to get more opportunities to make a positive impression on prospects and engage in a conversation with them. This feature lets you connect with prospects on their preferred platforms (LinkedIn or email) and significantly expand your reach.
• Track your deals and manage prospects securely with Snov.io’s free CRM. It helps you nurture your leads smoothly until the closing stage while maintaining constant communication with existing customers. On top of that, it provides real-time analytics of your sales process, helping you optimize your efforts.

EngageBay

Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 on G2

Pricing: Free basic plan/Paid plans start at $14.99/month

EngageBay is another local marketing automation platform that offers a toolset designed to improve the growth rate of small businesses.

Key features:

• Automate your sales and marketing workflows, such as prospect lookup and email sending, to save time and increase productivity.
• Create landing pages filled with SEO-optimized content relevant to the target location. Achieve a high ranking in the local search and attract your prospective clients’ attention.
• Launch personalized email campaigns for effective engagement with your target audience and the growth of your lead list.
• Utilize a lead-scoring automation system to target the hottest leads and convert more of them into paying customers.

→ Learn more about how to do B2B lead scoring effectively from our guide.

HubSpot

Reviews: 4.4 out of 5 on G2

Pricing: Free Trial plan/Paid Plans start at $20/month

HubSpot is a versatile CRM platform that offers decent local marketing automation capabilities as part of the HubSpot Marketing Hub. 

Key features:

• Attract prospects who search for companies in relevant locations with local-specific SEO tools and geo-targeted content — landing pages and ads. 
• Create personalized, location-specific outreach sequences via emails and social media to garner your prospects’ attention and turn them into leads.
• Leverage the built-in CRM to easily guide leads through the sales process and provide excellent customer service.

Salesforce

Reviews: 4.0 out of 5 on G2

Pricing: Free trial plan/Paid plans start at $25/month

Salesforce is a sophisticated CRM platform that offers marketing automation tools as a part of its Marketing Cloud software. Its feature set is best suited for large enterprises that have regional offices and need to have a different approach for each region. Therefore, the pricing may be too high for startups or small businesses.

Key features:

• Leverage segment marketing capabilities to divide your target audience based on their locations and create tailored strategies for each segment. 
• Develop location-specific email campaigns and automate social media activities to actively engage with your target audience.
• Implement inbound marketing strategies with integrated advertising and optimized landing pages to improve SEO ranking and lead acquisition. 
• Analyze campaign performance with AI-enhanced analytic tools to make your campaigns more cost-effective.
• Manage customer relationships with CRM software to close more deals and enhance customer experiences. 

With the above-mentioned local marketing automation solutions, you can set up any type of marketing automation. Below, we’ll describe the most popular types so you can pick the one for your business growth.

Types of local marketing automation

• Email marketing 
• Local SEO
• Paid search ads
• Social media 
• Digital asset management
• Review management
• Multichannel marketing automation

Email marketing 

A recent study conducted by Statista shows that 92% of Internet users communicate via email. Chances are high that most of your potential clients read emails every day. By using automated email marketing for local businesses, you can consistently reach out to your target audience without much hassle.

Local SEO

A potential client will most likely notice your website if it appears among the first in search results. The best way to achieve top positions is to optimize your landing page for search terms relevant to a particular location. Getting results with this method takes time, but as your landing page improves its search ranking, you’ll see a steadily growing inflow of leads.

Paid search ads

Geo-targeted internet advertising is also a great method to increase your visibility for nearby clients. Paid advertising can be a lifesaver for companies whose landing pages don’t rank well for some search terms. You can also use this approach effectively if you want faster results than SEO offers.

💡 Pro-tip: Configuring your ads to display only to users in specific regions also helps you optimize your ad budget.

Social media

Social media is an effective platform for business promotion. It allows you to find relevant leads and build transparent and trusting relationships with your clients. Connecting on social media feels more personal, boosting your chances for success when reaching out to a potential client. 

The good news is that you don’t have to spend hours searching for and messaging new prospects manually. Best marketing automation tools have capabilities that will help you automate this process without losing a personal touch.

Digital asset management

Crafting marketing materials from scratch for each campaign can be time-consuming and effort-consuming. It can also often lead to branding inconsistencies, especially when content is created by different people. 

Failure to preserve a brand voice may spark distrust in your clients and confuse leads. To avoid this, organize and store all digital assets, including images, videos, and brand materials, in one place. Automate your content updates across all platforms to maintain a coherent brand identity.

Review management

Another essential method of establishing credibility with local clients is to monitor your business’s online reviews across various platforms. By responding to reviews and acting on feedback promptly, you can show your customers you care about their opinions and experiences. 

The best part is that you don’t have to waste time on popular platforms in search of reviews. Instead, set up notifications about new comments and program automated responses to frequently asked questions via your marketing automation software.

Multichannel marketing automation

The best strategy is to combine different types of automation, as this increases your chances of getting desired conversions. 

For example, you may optimize your content for higher SEO ranking and automate email outreach. If you prefer to strengthen your outbound efforts, why not combine email and social media marketing automation?

💡 Pro-tip: By using Snov.io outreach automation tools, you may win your prospective clients through the perfect email and LinkedIn outreach combo. Create complex chains comprising LinkedIn activities (profile views, post likes, follows, connection requests, messages) and emails. Launch your campaigns, and the tool will automate them all while you focus on more critical issues.

Effective local marketing strategies for small businesses

Now that you know much about local marketing automation, it’s time to apply it to reach your business goals. We’ve compiled a list of tried-and-true strategies you may enhance with local marketing automation software.

Top local marketing strategies:

1. Segment your email list
2. Create personalized email campaigns
3. Send targeted promotions
4. Use social proof
5. Measure and optimize

1. Segment your email list

Your potential clients in the same geographic area may have different interests and fall into various demographics. Therefore, it’s best not to limit your target audience segmentation to location only. Other data you can use to divide your email list into categories include:

• Seniority level
• Sales funnel stage
• Interests
• Content preferences
• Communication channel preferences, etc.

2. Create personalized email campaigns

No one likes generic, useless emails. So, tailor your messaging carefully to each segment to send the most relevant content to your recipients. Use the personalization features of your email marketing automation tool to build trust and improve your relationships with a target audience. You can set up your automated emails to include the recipient’s name, reference their past orders, or mention local news and events.

💡 Pro-tip: With Snov.io personalization variables, you can make your email messages unique regardless of the number of recipients on your list.  The content of your emails will be automatically adjusted to every prospect based on the information you’ve got about them. You may choose among basic variables or rely on more advanced Dynamic content variables. They’ll help you send bulk yet targeted messages to different segments of your audience.

3. Send targeted promotions

Promotions contribute to the rapid growth of your conversion rates. Develop promotions tailored to your clients’ interests and location. This includes offering promotions for local events, discounts on special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries, or season sales.

4. Use social proof

Most people tend to work with businesses they like and trust. Display customer reviews, testimonials, awards, and recognitions from credible organizations on your business web page. This helps your company build trust and establish a positive reputation within the community. 

Set up responsive forms on your website pages and automatically request feedback via email to gather your clients’ opinions. Later, incorporate the acquired data into your marketing materials — landing pages, blog posts, and case studies.

5. Measure and optimize

To determine if your chosen local marketing strategy benefits your business, you must know how to measure its success. Start by tracking the key metrics of a single email campaign using your marketing automation software. For emails, you can monitor metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and

Local marketing automation examples

In the last chapter, we’ll review a couple of real-world localized marketing examples to motivate you for a confident take-off.

Case #1. A local B2B marketing agency A small local marketing agency in Harrisburg is struggling to stand out in a competitive market. It needs to differentiate itself from competitors and increase its brand visibility. However, its team doesn’t have time to create an updated branding strategy because it is too busy researching leads, sending emails, and performing other routine business tasks. What we recommend is: Using Email Finder and Email Verifier to quickly find high-quality leads. Automating their email outreach to create a consistent flow of targeted emails to convert leads. Managing leads throughout the whole funnel with a non-complex but user-friendly CRM.  Leveraging built-in reporting tools to assess each email campaign’s ROI to optimize the company’s budget. How it will benefit the agency: Automating routine tasks will free up creative minds, who’ll have more time to develop a new branding strategy. Meanwhile, the increased productivity and reduced operational costs will help the agency to successfully handle the inflow of new clients.

Case #2. A local IT consulting business The Portland-based IT consulting firm is lacking new clients, which hinders its business growth. The company’s stakeholders want to increase its visibility in the local community and expand its customer base. However, the organization’s small budget prevents it from paying for such strategies as extensive advertising campaigns. What we recommend is: Utilizing LinkedIn Automation Tool to improve stakeholders’ Social Selling Index and personalize LinkedIn outreach based on the location. The business will be able to connect with geo-targeted prospects, converting more leads and increasing brand visibility. Optimizing the company’s website landing pages according to local SEO to appear among the first local search results. Creating and scheduling the distribution of high-quality content across multiple channels to share the company’s expertise and attract more leads. Automating review tracking and management to rank higher on local review platforms. How it will benefit the firm: The company’s targeted outreach and content marketing efforts will improve its visibility in the local business community. The firm’s personalized approach and attention to feedback will help it build trust with prospects. When combined, these efforts will lead to acquiring more new clients.

Your next steps

Armed with the essential knowledge about local business marketing automation, you can start building your unique business roadmap. 

Determine your business goals, set clear objectives, and use this article to try the best marketing automation types and strategies. And when it comes to the local marketing automation tool, Snov.io is always here to help you run the process most effectively.