Today, the influence of social media marketing on the consumer buying is practically a complete takeover. Digital natives of today, discover, conduct research, engage with influencers and ultimately make their buying decision based on what is out there on social platforms. As a business, this is the reality of our world today. Your imminent pre-occupation then is to ensure you influence your target audience on the channels they prefer and continue to engage with them across multiple platforms – whether it’s Insta, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok or X!

Content sharing across channels, geographies and platforms is no longer a choice – it becomes the chief way to inform and engage. The ability to engage with potential customers via social channels has now also become a key differentiator between decent and superior customer experience. Our customers are no longer giving us that choice – Understanding their preferences and engaging them via DMs provides the ultimate customer experience through social commerce.

Whether you use social media for branding & engagement or shopping or even just to operationalise customer experience processes, social has gone fully mainstream.

When a Successful Ad Campaign Could Have ‘Sucked’

Electrolux, the Swedish manufacturer of vacuum cleaners, sold its products successfully in the United Kingdom in the 1970s with the slogan – “Nothing sucks like Electrolux”. This slogan had been created by a British ad agency. When the company intended to enter the United States, they had to change their ad because ‘suck’ had a totally different meaning in the USA! It meant, “to fail, to be very bad, to be unpleasant”.

It becomes amply clear that businesses need to understand the local language, the local culture and the local consumer attitudes in depth whether it is meetings, negotiations, advertising or social media.

Understanding Localisation

Localisation is both a science and an art which involves adjusting the brand content and messaging in a manner that conveys the intended meaning to audiences from different geographies, cultures and life-experiences. As explained, it is more than translation and requires an in-depth understanding of customs and culture along with fluency in language.

Localisation becomes very important especially on social media where content can go viral. Just imagine the ‘Nothing sucks like Electrolux’ ad slipping out on social media today. A million memes and a billion jokes would have been created causing significant damage to the brand image. However, done well, it results in driving more leads and boosting conversion for your offline business. Here are 5 compelling reasons why localisation in social media is crucial:

1. To prove to your local audience that your brand’s/product’s content is aligned to their needs.
2. To avoid culturally offending potential customers.
3. To present relevant and meaningful content to the audience.
4. To ensure inclusivity on the social media pages as well.
5. To make the content memorable for people across cultures, backgrounds and geographies.

Leverage Social Media Marketing to Amplify Local SEO

Ranking high on local searches and enhancing your local SEO directly translates into better footfalls in your stores and business locations. If you are wondering how to leverage localised social content, here are some effective ways.

1. Local Social Media Page Community
   Offline businesses mainly serve local neighbourhoods in a radius of probably 15 kilometres or so. Since the offline business is local, it is only logical that the social media pages also are local! Remember that Google Maps, Facebook and Twitter offer local search options to the users. Ensure that your social media pages abound in the local-specific activities be it on-time deliveries, daily/weekly offers etc. Tag customers with their permission and encourage them to do so as well. This will help you reach more prospective customers and build community.
2. Slang & idiomatic speech
   Sprinkling the content with regional phrases, slangs and sayings is a sure-shot way to bond with local audiences. But as emphasised earlier, get the right context and intended message. It would make sense to hire and employ either multilingual content creators or localisation experts to deliver your message.
3. Pop culture references
   Create content that often makes references to holidays, events, sports teams, celebrities and movies which have a strong connection with the local audience. This will help to evoke memories and bring forth emotions to provide a more meaningful context. Of course, this will have to be tailored from region to region because the references become meaningless without familiarity. Once again, having a good historical and cultural understanding of the audience becomes vital.
4. Respecting Cultural Values
   Different cultures have separate standards of acceptance and modesty. They remember historical events differently and give importance to different holidays. Therefore, it is important that you prioritise the representation in your imagery and stories, acknowledge the important dates and days and clearly show knowledge of current happenings and events that are important for your community and target audience.
5. Geo Targeted Influencers
   Local businesses best thrive on local and micro influencers. So, when you have to choose someone to represent your business, pick someone with local influence based on your active social listening. Combining a local influencer with a local event is a great synergistic strategy. Apart from paid promotions and collaborations, actively follow and promote interaction with such influencers.
6. Localised Advertising
   Localised advertising is akin to audience segmentation and post targeting in social media. Make use of similar if not the same filters to advertise on social media as well.
   This will ensure that the promoted products and services are being served to the right people who will be directed to your offline store or establishment. In case you lack an offline presence, you could direct them to the relevant website.
7. Measuring & optimising
   Like any other campaign, ensure that you have data and means to measure the success of your localised efforts also. Continuous optimisation will be necessary at least in the beginning to ensure that you are doing the correct things in the correct market.

Irrespective of the audience, the goals for any business or brand on social media are the same – awareness, followers, engagement, traffic, leads and, ultimately, conversions and sales. To achieve all of these in local markets, it is important to capture the minds and hearts of the local people. Key to that is creating & executing a local social media strategy.

Today, there are several tools to aid that. Location marketing platforms are powerful tools to ensure that your network gets better visibility and engagement online which in turn boosts store/business traffic and sales. Zceppa is one such location marketing platform and businesses using Zceppa have seen upto 300% growth in search views, 57% increase in month-on-month leads and 5X increase in conversions at a location level, delivering 200X ROI.

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