In today’s market, competition is fierce. When big security companies have endless budgets, how do you compete? How do you take a piece of their pie? 

When we need public data, we’ll often hit the streets in our little suburb of Los Angeles. We sit down at our local Starbucks with $5 gift cards and get people’s opinions about home security to help steer our campaigns. One of the questions we ask over and over again to the public is, “If you were to purchase a home security system, would you rather work with a national company or a local company?” As you probably guessed, nine out of 10 will say they’d rather work with a local company because they feel they’d get better support and faster repairs and responses. If this is how the general population feels, how do you put your fishing pole in the water to pull out some fish, especially when you have large commercial fishing boats with extra wide nets?

The answer is building strong local brands, and you can do it very easily and affordably. Often our new customers will ask us what we would do if it was our security company, and the answer is that we’d dive deep into embedding ourselves within our local community. If you think everyone already knows who your company is, they don’t — no matter how big your company is.

So how do you get started? We suggest getting yourself and your staff members involved — join the local chamber of commerce, volunteer at the local YMCA, ask local schools if you can teach kids safety tips or clean up an area within your town — this idea has worked time and time again for our clients.

And as you’re out and about within your community, make sure to document it, because this is how you’re going to show your local service area that you’re not just another company taking from the community, but a company that gives back. This, my friends, is the secret to taking some of that pie away from the national companies.

Some of these ideas take a little effort and time, but something you can do every day is record yourself walking into a Starbucks and buying the person behind you a coffee on behalf of your company. Throw it on Facebook and spend $5 to have it boosted to your local service area and that will generate close to 1,000 views. Repeat once a week.

The same goes for all of the ideas mentioned above. If you decide to clean up your community, create an event on Facebook three weeks beforehand and invite your local community to join your team. If they don’t, no biggie — you’re still doing a great deed. And again, take that video footage and boost it on your company’s Facebook page and you’ll see your following skyrocket. Leads will come in as a result of your efforts, and more importantly, your brand will forever be embedded in your local service area’s mind.

These ideas take some guts, but once you get the ball rolling, it will become easier. And as your uniformed staff members go out for lunch, we promise you people will approach them to say they just saw your brand on Facebook — and that’s what it’s all about, my friends. 

If you decide to do some of these ideas, send us the video — we’d love to see them!