Welcome to Watford! That’s how you do local.

Last week I wandered into Watford High St. It’s looking very smart right now. Various once empty shops are reopening. And others have bright, vibrant & informative hoardings full of exciting brands bringing new experiences to the town. Well done to Atria, Watford Council and WatfordBID for all their hard work making the town somewhere to be proud of.

As I walked in the bright but chilly sunshine my eye was drawn to Watford’s old 1920s Post Office, previously a much-loved ASK Italian restaurant. Although closed since March 2020 today it looked different. Outside the name Honest Burgers - Opening Spring 2022 adorned the windows. “That’s something new” I said to myself. A name I wasn’t familiar with either. I carried on with my lunchtime excursion & promptly forgot all about my serendipitous discovery.

Sometime later (after work of-course!) I was in the rabbit hole that’s Facebook. It was around dinner time. An enormous burger in my feed caught the eye. Even more so when it said “Watford – we’re coming for you! We can’t wait to open the doors…” the offer of free burgers and an easy sign up. BOOM! I was in. Now that’s how you do local engagement…

This Sponsored post took me straight to a localised landing page, the promise of drinking local beer & a signup to their Watford mailing list. I’m in!

From zero to hero the brand hooked me in and no doubt I’ll be enjoying a bricks & mortar local experience well before the temperature’s in the teens again. And it wasn’t really that hard, was it? Local, relevant, timely and easy! Simples.

So what do I know about We Are Acuity’s heroes of local marketing this week? Well, this is from their LinkedIn page:

“We’ve now got restaurants across the UK. We make British beef patties in our own butchery and rosemary chips that are cut & cooked daily in our chipping room. Every restaurant serves local beers from neighbouring breweries, & many of our restaurants serve local burgers using ingredients from nearby food heroes.”

As we said in our blog here being local is where it’s at in 2022. With Google expecting more people than ever to online-to-offline purchase, they say 50% of all local searches will end with a visit within 24 hours. And there’s a potential £3 billion in growth by 2024 with managed, branded, or franchised pubs & restaurants set to be the biggest winners. Looks like Honest Burgers are in the right place.

On the same trip I discovered a really exciting new department store had opened in Watford, with some press PR a few weeks ago but with very little targeted digital activity as far as I can tell. More of that next week…

Or if you'd like to read more about Local Marketing have a look at our blog page "Local Thinking': https://www.weareacuity.com/local-thinking-our-blog

Or get in touch with us today to learn about growing your local business. You can book a FREE 30 minute chat here.

#watford #marketing #localmarketing #savethehighstreet