Every year around the holidays, you probably notice a big push on shopping local. While this is usually geared towards people shopping for gifts, keep in mind there are many ways to “shop local” throughout the year. For example, if you are going to shop local, shouldn’t you also host and advertise local?
There are a ton of studies out there showing the benefits to a community when residents spend their money close to home (see this story from Fast Company). Because of the gift buying around the holidays, this is always a great time to remind people that there are great stores offering the items they are looking for without having to drive to Columbus.
But how else can you shop local? Well let me give you a couple ideas using Neighborhood Image and Marion Online as two examples. Yes, this is a bit of shameless self promotion, but I promise to also give you some other shop local ideas.
Neighborhood Image is a locally owned and operated company. We pay local taxes, volunteer in the community, serve on non-profit boards, and give back to our area every day.
Neighborhood Image offers two main services – rock-solid website hosting and custom website design. Rather than pay a national company (like GoDaddy, Network Solutions, or Intuit), headquartered in some far off place, to host or design your website, why not choose an established company close to home? These national companies do not provide anything back to Marion and, in fact, they may be like Google who was recently accused of legally avoiding $2 billion in taxes.
Is Neighborhood Image as cheap as these national companies? Well, sometimes we are and sometimes we are not. But again, with us you receive the service of a local company while helping us support the local community. And do you really want to trust your organizations public image to the cheapest option? You can rest assured that we use the same systems as the big national brands in order to protect and maintain your website.
Marion Online (which is owned by Neighborhood Image) is no different. Rather than spend all of your advertising dollars with national companies, you can get great returns on your advertising and support Marion’s largest, locally owned, news service. You can be assured that you’re not only benefiting from our impactful, local advertising, but also that your money is being re-invested in your community.
Of course, there are many other ways to shop local throughout the year. You can use local attorneys, accountants, computer techs, tailors, and photographers just to mention a few. There are even local options for recording studios and video production.
If you’d like to learn more about hosting your website, or a new design, contact us by clicking here. For advertising on Marion Online, visit www.mariononline.com/contact and send us a message.
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