Where can you market your business’ grand opening?

Creating a good marketing strategy for your new business’ grand opening can be a challenging task for your marketing team. Once you plan the event and then come up with a budget, you need to identify where you are going to marketing the new business.

The following are some of the best areas where you can market the grand opening of your business.

City Forums Or Bulletins

Almost every city has a forum or bulletin for advertising community events.

So, you can consider taking out your ads to your local parks and recreation activity guide. Also, you can ask the city official to promote your event in their local newsletters or official channels of communication.

Moreover, it’s usually a good idea to develop a good rapport with your local city officials. If you manage to get some city officials to show up, then that can be a good marketing strategy for you.

Your Network

Your own network is another obvious place where you can market your business’ grand opening. You can invite your family and friends, and also encourage your employees to follow the same steps. If possible, consider offering a friends and family discount as a motivation.

Consider reaching out to your networks via email or different social media platforms. Now, when you create a Facebook event, proceed to invite all your friends and associates. This is a good way of spreading the word about the grand opening of your local business.

Local Press

This is one of the most effective strategies for marketing the grand opening of your local business. Make sure that the local press is invited to the event. If possible, reach out to the local news anchor or radio DJ to cover the event—the more coverage you get, the better.

Moreover, if the DJ or news anchor comes to the event, theirs is a possibility they will end up promoting it on their own social medial platforms and networks. Leverage on their local celebrity to attract your target audience.

For the news media that won’t manage to attend, you can circulate a press release before and after the event—as this makes it easier for them to cover the event.

Moreover, creating a good relationship with the press can benefit your marketing strategies in the long term. If your local news media manages to cover your business, more and more customers are bound to be aware of your business, which means they can even visit you after the grand opening.

Traditional Advertising

Traditional advertising is also important to an effective marketing campaign for a local business. Therefore, consider hanging up flyers in all the areas where you can, and make sure that you use the good, old school “Grand Opening” signage.

Moreover, local billboards and radio ads are an amazing way to get your business in front of your target audience. Because the local citizens are not aware of the existence of your new business, it’s important to ensure that they become aware of its existence.

Direct mailing is another traditional method that you can use to market the grand opening of your local business. Sending direct postcards to particular zip codes is a good and effective way to reach your local and target audience.

Social Media

There is a possibility that not every person will be able to drive by your billboard ad, hear your radio advert, or even see your flyer. But, you can still fix this by using different online platforms to reach out to your local audience.

Social media platforms are a good place to start. You can choose to create a Facebook event, and then invite everyone that you know. Also, once you manage to create your social media accounts, you can start running social media ads, as well as targeting your local area.

If people can’t see the sign of your brands, make sure that they become aware of your business online. Moreover, the more the people who see your promotion, the more they will show up to the grand opening.

Also, you can consider creating a branded hashtag for people to use during the grand opening of your business. This assists in creating a buzz, as well as more brand awareness among your target audience.

Local Companies

There is another creative and effective marketing tactic—and this is to advertise the grand opening with other local businesses.

For instance, most coffee shops normally have a bulletin board that’s dedicated to community events. Now, this can be your perfect spot to advertise your grand opening. Moreover most local businesses, like hotels, usually have brochures at the front desk or reception. You can reach out to these businesses and enquire whether they can allow you to place the flyer there, and then tell their guests about the event.

Schools and local colleges are other places that can have advertising opportunities. Sports fields and yearbooks normally display a lot of local ads. All in all, you should make sure that you use your grand opening as a means to create good relationships with existing local businesses.

What’s the best time to marketing the grand opening of your local business?

Before your grand opening, make sure that your business has a soft opening or soft launch, just to deal with any problems that might arise during that period.

It’s good to understand that some issues are bound to happen, and a soft launch allows us to solve these issues without the need for a huge audience. That means your business might be open for a couple of days before the grand opening event.

The soft launch shouldn’t be open to the public. Rather, you should consider inviting a group of friends for a test run. You should only open the doors to the public for the first time during the grand opening event. But, before hosting the grand opening event, you should start advertising the event two or three weeks before.

That means you need to design the creative marketing elements, and then put them in not less than two months prior to the grand opening. Before you start your marketing, you should have your graphics created, ads are written, and the local press prepared.

You should understand that hosting a grand opening event is not vital for brand awareness. Also, it’s an amazing way to start growing your audience and customer base. In the event, you can collect as many emails as possible, so that when the event is done, you can send your target audience your marketing updates, social media links, as well as discounts.