Marketing your Business in Southwest Virginia: Awareness and SEO
Updated for Q2 2024: Rapid growth of local Facebook groups. Organic social paired with ads continues to provide reach here locally. A lot of SEO upsets lately—keep building elsewhere!
Updated for Q1 2024: We continue to see community groups on Facebook grow rapidly. Continued potential in our area for brand storytelling, awareness, and ways to drive growth.
Aspire is a marketing and media agency based in southwest Virginia.
We work with private businesses, non-profits, and municipal organizations that are all working to grow their reach here regionally. While we have offices statewide and help customers all over the place, most of our work is focused here–because we believe in investing in our communities, hiring locally, and helping this place.
In a predominantly rural region with a complex network of small towns and a few medium-sized cities nearby, our customers are faced with unique challenges when it comes to marketing their products and services. Advice that’s designed for big cities and national attention isn’t very effective here.
For many industries serving a small service area, spending your budget optimizing for search is not going to have a positive enough impact on awareness, leads, or revenue. There just aren't enough people actively searching within our service area; there are even fewer that would actually become customers.
A couple regional SEO stats to mull over:
🚨 Among searches related to the New River Valley, the vast majority of inquires are looking for information related to the regional jail. Second is obituaries, then the community college.
🌄 "Southwest Virginia" is similar, except more people search for community colleges than jail by about a 4:1 margin.
🥗 Those looking for information related to "Blacksburg"? Only weather and hotels. And "Virginia Tech"? Almost all searches are related to sports.
Beyond searches related to jails, education, and medical services, volume is often incredibly low for other keywords. Using tools to track keyword rankings and search volume, among other metrics, we use data to inform a strategy that truly helps to gain awareness in our region.
“Search Volume” is a measure of the number of times a keyword is searched within a given time frame.
Many niche and specific keywords and phrases are only searched for a few hundred times per year–worldwide. Even if you rank well and have a wonderfully optimized website and offer, that low volume means you still won’t meet your growth goals with search alone.
None of this means you shouldn’t worry about search rankings—but you should spend your marketing budget on things that succeed!
If there aren’t enough people searching for your product in your service area to help meet your revenue and sales goals, it’s smart to think about other marketing strategies. Now’s the time to build awareness and create demand for your business!
What do you do when you're a business with a limited service area, needing to find customers that might not be looking for you? Drive awareness and help generate interest instead of relying on search! These are some effective ways we do this:
Organic social media.
This is a tough and time-consuming option with endless potential here locally. Every community near us has highly engaged digital communities. You can reach tens-of-thousands of people right away— but the right message is essential.
Pet-friendly? Post it! People love learning about new places to go with their pups.
Your customers don’t know they want your products until you tell them!
Here are some local groups to consider and their stats:
Everything Blacksburg (25.5k, up from 21.5k members in August 2023) Update: 27.8k in June 2024
Everything Christiansburg (30.3k, up from 27.0k members in August 2023) Update: 31.9k in June 2024
Positively Christiansburg (13.1k, a modest increase from 12.9k members in August 2023) Update: 13.2k in June 2024. Growing slowly
We Are Radford (26.2k, up from 21.9k members in August 2023) Update: 28.7k in June 2024
Floyd Group (13.1k, a modest increase from 12.2k members in August 2023) Update: 13.7k in June 2024
Each of these groups–and countless others–allow advertising within a certain set of rules. If you nail your message, play within the rules, and understand these communities, they can be a wonderful driver of business.
Brand storytelling!
This can take any number of forms: multimedia advertisements, video showcases, and brand documentaries are some of the most popular. Any quality content you commission or create yourself can be used and reused in dozens of ways to generate awareness.
When you distribute that content well, you reach an audience both near and far. Impactful pieces can help garner interest, investment, and help new people learn about our region in exciting ways.
Blacksburg Boxing and Fitness is a great example of brand storytelling here locally. They have used and re-used video for years to show that their gym is inclusive, upbeat, and available to anyone. Couple that with a social media presence that puts their customers front-and-center, and they win!
"Traditional" advertising.
They work! If billboards, radio ads, and signage on vehicles wasn't effective, these types of ads wouldn't be everywhere. Radio, especially, can be an incredibly far-reaching option in southwest Virginia. Couple these tactics with a larger strategy and you can really win for your business!
Remember: while search should always be part of your marketing strategy, it’s important to diversify your approach, especially in this area!
We might face some challenges in our region when it comes to advertising, there’s truly no reason to accept defeat. There are so many thriving organizations here regionally that have built successful strategies that work despite the constraints. Couple that with the constant growth in much of our region—thanks in a large part to the natural beauty and welcoming nature of our area—and we think there’s a lot to celebrate!
If you’re building a business or leading an organization here in southwest Virginia, we want to talk to you. Our team wants to help make connections, drive growth, and help make this region a better place everyday.
Ready to chat? Give us a call: 540-808-3264
