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The beginning of this tale starts like the rest of the gentrifying neighborhoods in NYC. In the late 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, a large influx of new residents and businesses descended on Fort Greene. While the spectre of gentrification was raised, the outcome in Fort Green has been different.
As GQ puts it succinctly, “it's getting white-ified but isn't there yet”. The New York Times supports this point of view, in a broader context as a “prevailing sense of racial amity that intrigues sociologists and attracts middle-class residents from other parts of the city".
The Barclay center is testing this theory. They promised over 2,000 units of affordable housing and 10,000 jobs. Development, however, has been behind schedule, so only time will tell if the promise is kept.
There is an active community in Fort Green that is noticeable. Successful businesses would be wise to build a relationship with this community, supporting its efforts to keep the character of the neighborhood while raising the standard of living for all.
In a gentrifying neighborhood, your challenge isn’t so much in targeting as it is in standing out. A fast, beautifully designed web site can help you get your message out.
It is important for any local business to engage in local digital marketing. Digital marketing has grown from a method of attracting more business to a means to attract and not to lose business to competition.
Some businesses think that they only need digital advertising if their business is large or is more regional or national in scope. It is a mistake that puts them at a competitive disadvantage. They are at a disadvantage because roughly 8 of 10 customers search before they buy.
A brand that is not part of that search is not likely to be considered, even if they are the best solution or product. Potential customers simply are not aware they exist.
More importantly, customers want to find solutions that are near to where they are. No one wants to travel out of their way to get what they need. The search term “_____ near me” has quadrupled over the past 5 years in google searches.
Another interesting trend that builds on the one above is that your target audience are not only looking for solutions near them but also available now.
The search term “_____ near me now” has tripled in the past 5 years. So, if you are a local bakery that sells cakes and offers discounts late in the day, being visible during a search at 3 pm for “cakes near me now” would be valuable. Plus, you can also sweeten the offer by making sure your discount is clearly visible online to potential local customers.
This builds on my prior points. If someone is searching for “cakes near me now” is probably looking to purchase one. In fact, Google reported in one of their studies that 90% of mobile searchers made a purchase.
Therefore, a local business, I would argue, is in the best position to meet that searcher's needs because they have a local market solution to their problem and are available now. The only thing left is to ensure that that search is aware that the business exists.
According to Best Designs, original graphics are the most successful.
“Original graphics make up 40% of all successful visual content that accomplishes marketing goals, but 43% of marketers struggle with the consistent production of captivating visuals.”
Since we are communicating one message, the artwork that supports it must work very hard to support the message. This is where local market know-how can really help. Original photos and images of your business in Fort Greene interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Fort Greene or at your business location.
Every email, no matter how trivial, should have a call to action. This is where all the hard work above pays off. If we omit one, we just wasted resources that could have been spent more cost effectively.
We cover email list building in great detail in our post on small business email marketing. Again, we will just hit the highlights here as it pertains to Fort Greene. Every neighborhood has summer fairs. While these were severely impacted by COVID, in our post COVID world they should roar back with a vengeance. It would be smart to see if you could piggy-back off one or more of them.
Incentives, deals, free trials, and samples are all great options when developing your calls to action. See if you can partner with your neighbors to create a shared promotion. This way one shopper in Fort Greene has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
In a gentrifying neighborhood, your challenge isn’t so much in targeting as it is in standing out. Local digital marketing can help you get your message out.
There are several ways to use targeted local digital marketing to win in [location]. We cannot cover them all here, but we can review some of the most common.
A superior mobile experience is based on the fundamental elements of good graphic design principles. By following good graphic design principles can make your site easy to read, navigate, and understand.
The first element is the grid layout. The most common grid patterns used in web design are Manuscript, Column and Hierarchical.
Before the days of responsive sites, hierarchical web design was in vogue. However, owing to the need to create seamless experiences between different devices, the trend has shifted to the column design.
The column design is a layout divided into a fixed number of columns. The columns set the scale for the page. The row sizes set the grid dimensions. Using a grid pattern helps maintain legibility and proportionality much simpler.
The next major element is color. There has been a lot of study on colors and their effects on moods. Much of the data has been inconclusive and highly sensitive to surroundings and context.
Luckily, we do not have to cover all these details in order to build a great design. Adobe has a very useful tool that can help you find the right mix of colors that work well together.
Font type is more an aesthetic choice. However, font size should be greater than 12 points to ensure legibility.
Lastly, we have images. Original graphics tend to be much more successful than stock images. Sites with original graphics tend to perform better than those without.
Nearly 80% of all users said the most important function of a website is to make it “Easy to Find What I Want”. This was almost 8x as important as the next items.
Since mobile searchers are 90% likely to purchase something relevant to their search. You need to be found in mobile and local search.
The best way to do that is to set up or claim your GMB page. Nearly 8 out of every 10 searches in the US are done on Google. Therefore, it makes logical sense to use their default platform. As this example shows, a mobile search of “restaurants near me” yielded this search engine results page (SERP).
You quickly notice the block with the map. This is called the Google Local 3 pack.
Google automatically returns the top 3 ranked businesses, which are restaurants in this example. If you click on one of these businesses, you will automatically be shown its GMB page.
GMB is a free resource that is easily accessible to any business owner. The process is relatively easy, and if you would like more information, you can read the GMB FAQ page for a more step by step guide.
Finally, we come to local listings. One time in the not so distant past, these listings used to be free. However, now, there are listing aggregators that charge a fee. You can still get pretty far using the free listings, however it is a very time consuming and labor intensive process.
The reason we care about local listings is that consistency in NAP (name, address, phone) is a key legitimacy signal for Google. If you want one of those coveted local 3 pack spots, you will want to send as many of these signals as possible.
Other places to look are your local digital news sources, reviews, chambers of commerce listings, local awards, e.g. Top 10 Restaurants in _____. All of these listings add credibility and further enhance your legitimacy ranking.
I hope that we convinced you why local digital marketing is important no matter the size of your business. In order to be successful in using digital marketing to help your business, we hope that you keep these three things in mind:
If you need help with local digital marketing for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
If you're thinking about finding help in Fort Greene for your small business, here are the things to keep in mind.
See more about Small Business Marketing in Fort Greene. If you are more interest in the borough, you can see our Small Business Marketing in Brooklyn. If you want the full city, you can see our Small Business Marketing in NYC.
