Proximity mapping - why it's important to show where you operate to build trust and win new customers

Who do you trust more, the cobbler in your neighborhood or in another part of town? Do you only search for service providers via Google or do you ask acquaintances? And who are you more likely to contact? The craftsman from your town or the one 50 km away? Or the software manufacturer from your country or from the other end of the world?

Proximity creates trust. And proximity allows for easier access. Besides the main content marketing methods, such as SEO Content and social media content, for communicating trust, such as competence or results, proximity is a smaller but important factor that you should not underestimate. This applies to all industries and all companies.

Of course, you will make sure that your company is found locally via Google My Business. This is also referred to as local search engine optimization. Here, too, there are a few things to consider so that your company is listed so far in front that it can be found directly. It is best to discuss this with your SEO Agency or someone who knows about search engine optimization. But since the vast majority of businesses don't just want to be local, my point in this article is to highlight what you can do to show where you want to target customers everywhere.

In my digital agency, I have often had to deal with international companies telling us in which countries they are active. Be it with their own branch office or via sales representatives and partners. The standard way of dealing with this is to set up the website in several languages and give the addresses under Contact. But this is not optimal. It is not even sufficient to target potential customers. I'll come to the solution I recommend instead a little later.

Something similar can be applied to quite a lot of companies. I went to the dry cleaners the other day to pick up my shirts. The owner told me that there are customers who come to her from the other side of town because they appreciate the service and the good performance. She also offers a delivery service that delivers the finished laundry. To be honest, I wouldn't have spontaneously thought of looking for a dry cleaner so far away. But what if the service is convincing? And above all: If the service becomes available to me locally through the delivery service? Why not, actually. The only important thing is that such a provider makes it crystal clear on its website where it operates.

And a third example: A garden and landscape builder friend of mine approached me and asked me how he manages to get more new customer contacts within a wider radius. He already works within a radius of about 100 km around his main location anyway. The larger and more interesting projects often come through recommendations. Only very rarely is he approached by potential clients who are more than 25 km away from his location. It also didn't help to place Google ads in these regions. When they saw the website, the prospective clients simply assumed that he was not active in their region.

How can this situation be resolved?

It must be immediately clear to the potential customer when he sees the homepage that the company is active in his country, region, city or neighbourhood. I call the method for this: Proximity Mapping.

Basically, there are four building blocks that can be considered for this:

• Individual pages
• Map
• Symbols, such as flags
• Image & Text

1. Individual pages

Internationally active companies usually offer an English-language version of the website. But what if the company is active locally in the USA and Australia and not in England and South Africa (as I recently experienced with a manufacturer of medical devices)? For the potential customer in Australia, it is not immediately obvious from the homepage that the German company is active locally. Therefore I recommend: country versions instead of language versions and a separate page for each country.

The individual homepages are automatically called up via geotagging when a user from this country enters the URL or clicks on a link. This ensures that the customer from Australia comes directly to "his" homepage of the company. On this page, he sees at least the contact details in Australia directly in the header, of course with the telephone number in Australia. Depending on how the company is set up, this can also be taken from somewhere else in the world. There are various services that offer such solutions. We have also already implemented variants where the local branch office was directly visible in the picture in the header, plus a picture of the most important contact person and his or her contact details.

Sounds complicated? But it is not. Modern content management systems allow the referencing of content. This means that the individual country versions are created only once and only the individual content is maintained there. All other content is maintained on a basic English version, for example the American page, and from there it is automatically played out on all other English-language country pages.

The potential new customer in Australia (or South Africa, or Singapore, or ...) thus immediately understands that the company is there for him locally - an inestimable advantage over another anonymous company on the other side of the world.

Ideally, this is combined with results in the country concerned. If our said new customer sees references and customer statements from Australia right on the homepage, the probability that he will contact this company is much higher than if he had only seen a normal English homepage.

We have implemented the same solution for the gardening and landscaping contractor. A separate page for each major city in the target area is also a wonderful tool for search engine optimisation. Many users search for the combination of desired activity and city name. If they then find the corresponding page in Google and read on the target page that the entrepreneur is active there, combined with 2-3 case studies from the region, they are also happy to contact him. Even if the company is so far away that they would normally not have shortlisted it.

2. Map

The good old map is nowadays integrated in most companies as Google Map. There are a few alternative providers and an open source solution. Some companies rely on their own creations, which doesn't have to be bad either. However, Google offers some added value, such as the route planner and the zoom options, which clearly make this variant the most used solution. How can I use this map to show where I am active?

With Google Maps, the possibilities are unfortunately limited. I can mark individual cities and display the contact data there directly. In principle, it is also possible to mark countries. However, this is much more complicated to implement and therefore not available for many people. It is also virtually impossible to mark outskirts or even freely selected areas.

So if you want to indicate city districts or show that you are active within a radius of 100 km, you can only resort to self-designed maps or text & images.

3. symbols

Flags on websites have gone a bit out of fashion. Most of them didn't look nice either. Since many companies offer language versions, the problem with flags starts with not knowing whether to use the American or UK flag for the English version. Nevertheless, they are a suitable symbol for the country versions mentioned. I think a country marking including small, nicely designed flags is a good instrument to make the assignment easy and quick for the user.

4. image & text

Without a doubt, the easiest way to show where you operate is to list the areas in simple text form. Especially for small businesses that offer their services in regions or districts, this is the simplest and most effective form. A small enumeration of the respective areas above or in the footer of the website can work wonders.

The options shown here are easy to implement and have a great effect on new customers who are not directly at the company's headquarters. Don't miss out!