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I’ve lived in New York City for over 20 years now. I have watched gentrification change neighborhood after neighborhood. It began in Manhattan and then moved to Brooklyn.
Today, few could imagine squatters living in the East Village. But, if that didn’t exist in the 1980s, we would never have had the musical Rent. The same thing happened to Williamsburg in the early 2000s. Gentrification can be a major boon to the area, but every city needs an enclave where creativity can flourish.
For New York, I would argue Bushwick is still one of those places, with its collage of multi-color industrial reclaimed sites. It still has a vibe that is unique within New York City. Many of the artists and others displaced from Williamsburg made the move to Bushwick. They brought their creativity, quirkiness, and free-spirit to the neighborhood, which exploded with several unique businesses catering to these new residents.
Bushwick has a mix of artists, actors, and other creatives mixed within one of the largest Latino populations in the city. This influx of gentrification creates both opportunities and challenges. Crime rates go down. Businesses are more successful. Rents and property values go up.
Time will tell, but I hope Bushwick can keep its character while improving the economic prosperity of both its new and existing residents.
Great web design is important no matter where you are located. However, in densely populated areas like Bushwick, where mobile usage is high. These best practices are highly important especially because
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 Bushwick interacting with your neighborhood can add value.
It also helps with when your calls to action focus on local events in and around Bushwick 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 Bushwick. 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 Bushwick has two or more places to visit while out in the neighborhood.
In a gentrifying neighborhood, the first decision you need to make is deciding on your target. There will be those unique businesses that can appeal to both new and existing residents, but that will not be the norm. Depending on your business, it may force you to choose. Once you make that choice, Local digital marketing can help you reach that target more effectively.
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.
See more about Small Business Marketing in Bushwick. 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.