Local businesses struggle probably more than any other group
. Because they do not have the developed and large distribution networks of larger more national corporations the products they offer are often higher priced compared to the similar products offered by larger companies. The reason is that they have higher costs. For instance, McDonalds uses a lot of beef products in its franchise locations. It also owns many of the ranches where these beef products are grown, a good portion of the butcher shops where these products are manufactured and the trucks that deliver these products to the retail locations.
Because it owns all these levels of the distribution processes it does not have to pay the profits of middle men. A local company does not have this advantage. Your local mom and pop burger joint obviously does not have the capital to buy and operate a ranch, it probably does not have the skill or expertise to effectively operate a butcher shop and dealing with its own trucks would be a logistics nightmare. This is why it is extremely important for a small locally based business to have an extremely good local marketing plan.
Some aspects of a good local marketing plan are discussed as follows.
First it is incredibly valuable to support community functions. This is a strategy that is extremely costly for large corporations because they lack of the knowledge of what local events would be good to sponsor. This kind of information would be very expensive for them to obtain and therefore they stay out of this arena for the most part. The local community notices however, when a local business takes a vested interest in preserving the programs that contribute most to its social welfare.
The second thing that is crucial for a business is making sure to have a local business marketing plan. This can be as simple as making sure that when someone Google's "burgers in ..." mom and pops burger joint appears as one of the listings on the Google map with an address and phone number. If you are a company that offers more retail products than just food it may beneficial to come up with an appealing website and work to make sure it appears in the search results when certain terms are searched for. This will especially appeal to the younger generation.