When we think about growing a business, our minds usually go outward. How do we reach more people? Find new customers? Get our name in front of a bigger audience? Those are good questions. But sometimes there's another one worth asking.
Your next customer, vendor, referral source, collaborator, or biggest advocate might just be local! Supporting your local network doesn't always mean spending money. Sometimes it means making an introduction, recommending another business, volunteering your time, or simply showing up. When more of us choose to look local and show up local, those small decisions can add up to something pretty powerful.
Local Business Is Business-to-Business, Too
When we talk about supporting local businesses, the conversation tends to focus on consumers. We encourage people to eat at local restaurants, shop at local retailers, and hire local service providers; but businesses are customers too. Think about everything your business purchases throughout the year. Printing, signage, insurance, accounting, photography, catering, cleaning, employee gifts, landscaping, repairs, technology, meeting spaces, promotional items, office supplies... the list gets long pretty quickly.
Now imagine what happens when just a few more of those purchases happen locally. A business hires a local photographer for new employee headshots. A few weeks later, that photographer orders lunch from a local restaurant for a meeting. The restaurant needs new signage and calls a local printer. Someone at the print shop needs bookkeeping help and remembers an accountant they met at a community event, and so on. One purchase creates another opportunity. One conversation creates a referral. One relationship leads to another and that's how quickly a local business community can become a true network.
Look Local First
Let's be realistic: buying locally won't make sense every single time. Sometimes what you need simply isn't available here. Sometimes timing matters. And sometimes there's a specialized service you can only find elsewhere. This isn't about making anyone feel guilty for where they spend their money. Instead, we're proposing a much smaller habit: look local first.
Before automatically renewing with the company you've always used, ordering online, or searching for a provider somewhere else, take a few minutes to see if someone in the Lake Region offers what you need, you might be surprised by what you find. And even if you don't make a purchase today, you've learned something about another local business that you can remember tomorrow.
Get to Know What Your Neighbors Do
One of the biggest barriers to doing more business locally may simply be that we don't know everything that's available in our community. We tend to know the businesses we personally use, the storefronts we drive past every day, and the people we've worked with before. But how well do you know the businesses a few doors down? What about the company that opened last year? Or the person you see at community events whose business you've never really asked about? That's where relationships become part of marketing.
When people understand what you do, they're more likely to remember you when an opportunity comes up. Referrals happen when someone hears, "I'm looking for somebody who can..." and immediately has a name to recommend. Those conversations can become some of the strongest leads a business receives because they begin with trust, just like what we talked about in our last blog!
So, get curious about other businesses. Ask people what they do. Learn who they serve. Find out what they're especially good at. And make sure they know those same things about you. You don't have to walk into every conversation trying to make a sale. You're building a network of people who understand your business well enough to recognize an opportunity when one appears.
Show Up for Your Neighbors
Supporting the local economy doesn't always require making a purchase. Sometimes, it simply means showing up. As we head into fall, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved in things already happening around the Lake Region.
Sign up to be a vendor at a community event. If someone is looking for an organization to support, recommend a local booster club. Reach out to a nonprofit and ask if they need volunteers. Gather a few employees and create a game or activity for Fall Festival. These aren't necessarily traditional marketing strategies, but that's exactly the point. When your business participates in the community, people get to know the people behind your logo.
A conversation at a vendor booth, an employee volunteering alongside someone new, or a family having fun at the game your team put together creates a different kind of connection than an advertisement ever could.
Because loving your neighbor isn't only about where you spend your dollars. It's also about where you choose to spend your time. We may not have everything a larger city has, but one advantage we do have is the ability to know one another.
Look Local. Show Up Local.
Here's our challenge for the month: Think about one thing your business will probably purchase in the next 30 days. Before you place the order, take five minutes and look locally using our Chamber Business Directory!
Want to take it one step further? Find one way to show up locally, too. Sign up for something. Volunteer. Attend an event. Make an introduction. Recommend another business. Support a booster club. Ask a nonprofit what it needs. Or simply introduce yourself to the business owner down the street you've been meaning to meet.
You don't have to change every purchasing decision or fill every evening on your calendar to make a difference. Realistically, culture rarely changes that way. It changes one decision at a time.