Shop local, eat local, holiday local — it’s an ethos that lots of your customers probably try to follow. They will also have their trusted tradesman that they turn to for car repairs, decorating or plumbing. This local ecosystem ensures that the local economy remains healthy, encouraging investment, creating jobs and building community spirit.

With more and more consumer friendly, mass market products becoming available to give Smart Home functions to homeowners and it inevitably being complicated to setup and install, becoming the recognized local smart home expert would be a smart move.

Simple methods to boost your local presence can easily be done online with SEO, Adwords, directory listings and trades review sites but the offline activities should not be forgotten. Recently I raised the question over the worth of playing a small part at the national building shows, yes you will raise lots of leads but when you review them post show how many were local? I know they will be the first leads you’ll react to, we all want our businesses to be efficient and not have long travel distances to site and in the long term those local projects will be easier to maintain. Do some of the further afield sales leads get discarded?

At Customised this year, we have set our sights on local events to boost awareness of our services. Simple searches have uncovered exhibition opportunities at sporting events, self build shows, green technology conferences and country fairs. Start searching your local events calendar to see which shows would be a good fit for your business. You may find that the prices to be involved at these events are actually very affordable and this will allow you to take part at multiple events instead of putting all your eggs in one basket at a national showcase.

Your presence at local events will bring recognition and give you the perfect opportunity to highlight your expertise. If budgets don’t stretch to exhibiting then look to attend local networking events where there may be a theme that can relate to your business services.

To end this blog I have one tip you should stick to every week. Call a local architect once a week and ask how they are providing their clients with information on future ready homes. For the cost of a call and hopefully a couple of coffees you will be face to face with a local architect designing homes for local people. You’re the local smart home expert, start telling people about it.