Web Design in the Williamstown Business Community
Since moving to Williamstown late January, I have been surprised by the number of calls coming in from other local businesses looking for website design and development. There is a strong sense of community in Williamstown. Local businesses really want to support the local business community which is fantastic. We have worked from a number of other suburbs throughout Melbourne over the years (South Yarra, Richmond, Werribee, Tarneit and Footscray) and really love what is happening in Williamstown. It is evident small businesses here prefer to support other local businesses in the area.
Why Being Local Matters
The reality is, with many businesses these days, location does not matter from a practical stand-point. For many businesses, most communication is done online or over the phone. It wouldn’t really matter if you were in Williamstown, Perth (where we have a few clients) or on the other side of the globe. This is very true for our Web Development service. This is purely a pragmatic view.
Case Study – Web Design Williamstown
While we tend to attract most of our enquires from the local business community here in Williamstown, we usually only ever meet face-to-face once or twice. We don’t enforce or encourage this, it just happens once a business relationship is formed and trust established. Most business owners are time-poor so it just makes more sense to communicate over the phone and email rather than arrange meetings.
I believe being local is important to many businesses for the following reasons:
- You feel a sense of community
- It’s nice to know you can visit the business if you needed to (not that you probably ever would)
- You feel your can trust local people since you can relate to them better
- You will become known in your community and potentially attract business from other locals
Local Marketing
As marketers we understand most people make a buying decision emotionally and then justify it rationally. When you look at the reasons why people purchase locally its often because of the feeling it creates, it’s the emotion. Of course there are businesses that can only serve there local community for example the local fish and chip shop can’t sell a serve of minimum chips to Bangladesh. For many businesses focusing on the local market is purely a marketing strategy. I encourage all our clients to delve into the true reasons why people buy their product and service. Try to identify the emotional reason why they buy and use that to your advantage. Marketing locally may be the strategy you need to take your business to the next level. It often is!
