For the past few weeks we have been looking into brand awareness and why your brand is your business.

It's now time to consider you local footprint in your immediate area that you are attempting to look after?

You must know this before you do anything else.

You must aggregate your local area before you attempt to grow. You need to ensure that you have taken care of your local geography first.

You must have a plan for this.

So if your business is in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, that’s your starting point. Then you can move on to serving the whole of Melbourne.

Then you can expand to serving Victoria, then Australia, and then New Zealand, Asia and eventually the world!

As you grow, your reputation for providing a complete solution ripples out from there. That’s a road map. You must champion your local area, whether your business is online or offline.

Don’t go for the globe before you are ready.

That’s not being productive. Get your backyard right first. It’s no good turning up and saying here I am if nobody knows who you are. Start local, then when you have success your reputation grows from there.

This is also important to consider for your marketing.

Are you trying to reach local clients? If so, do you need to be advertising on TV or in the major newspapers? That’s not being productive. That’s simply throwing money at something without a plan.

You build by starting local and serving these customers well. As you expand you must maintain your high standards. With steady growth in this way your reputation for being a great business will grow with you.

Power to you!

Stefan