Deland

I moved to Deland, Florida allmost a year ago. Although, I have been living and working in Central Florida for nearly 15 years, I wanted to move to the countryside as Orlando’s tourism and growth made even the outskirts more metropolitan than I prefer. I like the idea of having a few acres of land and hope to have an apiary, a chicken coop, a few mushroom logs, a couple home gardens, and about 20 fruit trees. (I just planted the trees, and hope to get to the other things fairly soon. 😀 I love Deland, especially around Holidays. We have parades, shops hawking homemade items, and a real sense of pride of community.

About Deland, Florida

DeLand was founded in 1876 and is centrally located between Orlando and Daytona Beach. So theme parks or beach visits?- your choice. (Seaworld is my favorite park, although Fun Spot, and Legoland take a close second. Stetson, Florida’s oldest college and home of the Hatters is in Deland. My life partner, Melissa, is in the Chi Sigma Iota Honor Society, Alpha Omicron Chapter and is studying in the Master’s program there in counseling. I am impressed by their program and enjoy seeing the old architecture and redbrick buildings right as we are driving down Woodland Boulevard, Deland’s main street. There are so many other great things in Deland-Springs, State Park and a trillion other things to do and see.

Marketing in Deland

Deland is a quaint little town, but don’t let the small town vibe fool you- it is an enterprising and innovative town. From Pall Corporation, (the scientist in me loves this company!!) a global leader in high-tech filtration, separation and purification, providing solutions to meet critical fluid management needs of a broad spectrum of life sciences and industrial customers to Davita Labs- a state-of-the-art clinical laboratory serving more than 180,000 kidney patients each year to Advent Health to small town The Wiley Owl– a family owned toy store, Anna Bananas- a store with repurposed, recycled, and reclaimed furniture to the Deland Natural Market- (their butternut squash soup is ridiculously good) this town has it all. (Here is a list from of the 15 coolest things to do in Deland, Florida from the Crazy Tourist.)

Marketing in Deland is slightly different than marketing in a big city. While there is less competition, there are also less total customers to be the potential audience.

When your business is in a small town, there are unique marketing advantages and challenges. In Deland, like small towns across the United States, here are some best practices:

Deland Marketing

Understand Deland’s Market Demographics

The first thing to do is to figure out how to market yourself to your customers. Who are your customers? Where do they spend their time? What are they interested in? Once you determine who you are marketing toward, then you can start to work on the marketing.

Look up the demographics of the area before you start to market – find out who is in your audience. Are you marketing to a community with young children, stay at home parents, church-goers, Veterans, eco-conscious vegetarians, farmers, Spanish-speaking agricultural workers, or motorcycle riders in their 50s? Do some research before you start. Deland has a robust and diverse assortment of people, but not everyone is your customer. Knowing EXACTLY who your market is allows you to fine tune your message specifically to the people.

Develop marketing messaging for the local culture
Once you know who you’re marketing to, you can develop your messaging in accordance with the local culture. Messaging is part of marketing strategy and is important to lock down. Depending on the town, the population may have conservative religious and political views or be focused on sustainability and town preservation. Family values and town traditions resonate more in Deland than perhaps innovation and technological change. Structure your messaging to mirror the tone of the small town or area that you’re marketing to. For example, I might talk about deer hunting and it be popular in Deland, however that exact same topic would make me a pariah in Seattle.

Online marketing efforts in less populated areas will differ from online marketing efforts in more populated areas. In a small town or rural area, you will be marketing to a smaller number of people. Depending on your business you may have a lot or very little competition. If you don’t have a lot of competition, your business will be easier to find online. But, just because you’re easier to find online, doesn’t mean that people are looking.

Local SEO for Small Businesses in Deland

Google My Business and Other local SEO (search engine optimization) tools allow people to find maps to your business, phone number and other contact information when looking for your brand or services/products you provide. Another advertising route is social media and paid search. This involves Facebook, or Instagram AdWords advertising may beneficial to marketing in a small town. With Facebook Advertising, you can build your ad’s audience based on demographics or a geographic radius. You can run the ad on desktop or on mobile devices. You can even cater the ad toward locals who Like specific Facebook pages in the community.

Build trust and a good reputation
In a small or rural town, you can be sure that word of mouth referrals will be a good way to get the name of your business out. But in order to get people talking about your business, you first have to gain their trust. If you go in trying to establish relationships with other business owners before establishing a rapport, they will think you’re trying to scam them. One thing that I learned long ago is that people are much more willing to do business with you when they know and trust you. Very often, I don’t even talk about my business when I first meet someone or am doing an event. I might mention it in passing, but nothing drives me crazy than someone I just met “pitching me”. LinkedIn is a professional networking tool and 95 percent of the people that ask to be connected immediately bombard me with sales pitch. Bletch!!.

Small towns and rural communities are tight-knit groups of people. They know their neighbors, probably grew up together, and help each other out. This type of community is great for a business’s reputation, but you need to earn the trust of a rural community first and build your reputation. Start by introducing yourself to people before marketing yourself to them. The most important part of selling your product or services is helping people.Get to know the people in the small town or rural communities – not only will they learn to trust you once they know you’re genuine, but they will also open up to you about themselves. This will enable you to figure out how your business can help them – an integral part of your marketing messaging. My last point is applicable to any sized location, but especially to small towns like Deland. One of the principles of successful marketing is to capitalize on honesty. Visitors go to smaller destinations for different reasons than they go to big destinations; more often than not, visitors who go to small towns and destinations want to see the quirks about that particular place and get a sense of the everyday life of locals.

Be authentic, be transparent and be kind and the business will often take care of itself.

Until Next Time,

Robert Urban – Proud Deland Resident

CEO, PhD, and best-selling author, Marine veteran. Offers expert-level strategy and execution through relationship driven marketing, content and sales while leading and managing people from all different backgrounds. Paperboat is headquartered in Deland, Florida.