Updated 25 October 2026. We've rewritten this guide to focus on the building blocks of local area marketing that every brand can use today.
National campaigns build your brand. But customers choose a store in their own suburb. Local area marketing is how each location wins its own neighbourhood.
What is local area marketing?
Local area marketing, often shortened to LAM, is marketing aimed at the community around one location. It's common in franchising, where head office runs the national brand and each franchisee needs customers from the streets around their store.
It isn't only for franchises. Any business with one or more physical locations can use the same ideas.
Good local area marketing does three things:
- makes each location easy to find when people search nearby
- gives people a local reason to choose you
- shows which locations are winning and which need help
The building blocks
1. An accurate Google Business Profile for every location
When people search "near me", your Google Business Profile is usually the first thing they see. Each location needs its own verified profile, with the right hours, phone number, categories, photos and reviews. Read our guide to Google Business Profile.
Keep the same details on Apple Maps, Bing and Facebook too. Customers use all of them.
2. Local content
Give each location something local to say:
- Google posts about local events, offers and new stock. See our guide to Google posts.
- Offer posts for location-specific deals. See our guide to offer posts.
- Photos of the actual store and team, not just brand imagery.
- A local page on your website for each location, with its address, hours and something about the area.
3. Reviews
Reviews are local by nature. Each location builds its own reputation. Ask every happy customer for a review, reply to every review, and watch for locations whose rating is slipping. Read how to ask for Google reviews.
4. Community
The best local marketing often happens offline: sponsoring a junior sports team, joining the local business chamber, a stall at the school fair. Share it in your posts and on social media, so it works online as well.
5. Local ads
Paid ads can put a location in front of people nearby who haven't found you yet. Google Ads can show your locations on Google Maps and in local search results when your Business Profile is linked. Read our guide to Google Maps ads.
Keep the targeting tight around each location, and mention the suburb in the ad.
Head office and local teams
For franchise and multi-location brands, the hardest part is often the split between head office and each location.
- Head office sets the brand, the templates and the rules, and keeps every listing accurate.
- Each location adds the local flavour: its own events, photos and replies to its own customers.
Agree who does what. Then give head office a way to see every location at once.
Measure what works
Without measurement, local area marketing is guesswork. For each location, track:
- calls, direction requests and website clicks from its Business Profile
- its review count, rating and reply rate
- results from any local ads
Compare locations with each other and with their own history. Find what the best ones are doing, and help the rest catch up.
How DigitalMaas helps
Local Intelligence gives you one console for every location. It includes:
- an 18-point audit that scores each location out of 100
- location analytics on every plan
- one review inbox
- posts to any or all locations from one screen
On Premium, you also get competitor insights and industry benchmarks. With the Fix add-on, the DigitalMaas team does the listing work for you.
If you run local ads, Campaign Intelligence, in early access, checks that your paid media numbers are true before you spend more. It then proposes changes for you to approve.
See pricing, or read how we help multi-location brands.