Ways Local Delivery Services Can Drive More Online Sales

May 10, 2021

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Local delivery was popular before COVID-19, but it’s particularly booming in light of the pandemic. This option allows customers to receive online orders quickly without having to risk their health to shop in person.

More and more companies are offering this service to customers that have come to expect fast delivery times. If you’re considering implementing such a service for your company, here’s what you need to know:

How Does a Local Delivery Services Differ From Other Delivery Services?

Local delivery service is the midway point between traditional online shipping from centrally-located warehouses and in-person shopping. This delivery option allows businesses to deliver packages quickly and avoid many of the reasons for delays that often come up throughout the shipping process.

Amazon has popularized the local delivery model by using local Amazon drivers and smaller, strategically-placed warehouses for their products. While this model can work for giants like Amazon, it can also work for smaller online businesses as well.

Ways Local Delivery Services Can Grow Your Business

As a business owner, you’re always looking for new ways to meet customer needs and expectations. In 2021, one way to do this might be using a local delivery service. Here are some of the ways that local delivery services can grow your business:

Faster shipping times: Customers have come to expect fast shipping times — two to three days is the new standard. You can achieve this by offering local delivery.
Lower shipping costs: Local delivery services can actually save you on shipping compared to the expensive prices charged by national and international shipping companies.
Entice customers: When customers are able to get their items quickly, they’re more likely to purchase products — especially if they need something in a time crunch. Furthermore, this allows people to stay safe at home while still receiving the products they want and need.
Be ahead of the curve: Local delivery has been growing and doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. Jumping on the local delivery train now puts you ahead of the curve rather than falling behind and having to scramble to adjust to local delivery in the future.

Things to Consider Before Using a Local Delivery Service

Even though it may be tempting to go out and hire the first local delivery service you find to start reaping the benefits, you need to take a more calculated approach. After all, this is a huge business decision that will impact your entire shipping process and affect the overall customer experience. Here are some things that you should consider before you begin searching for local delivery service:

Where will you deliver to? In order to make this determination, you’ll need to know where your customers are located. From there, you can come up with the best area or areas for local delivery.
Who will deliver your packages? From there, you will need to determine if you will be delivering packages personally, through employees, or outsource to a local delivery service.
What will you charge for local delivery? In an ideal world, you could offer free local delivery, but the odds are that you will need to charge a fee for it to make sense financially. If you aren’t sure what to charge, you could always reach out to some of your customers to see what they would feel comfortable paying.
When will you deliver? Finally, you need to determine when you will deliver. For instance, will you deliver seven days a week? How speedy are your delivery timeframes? Will you offer after-hour delivery for those who are at work during the day? These are all things to consider.

How to Go About Outsourcing to a Local Delivery Service

With all these considerations in mind, it’s time to actually find a local delivery service in your area that you can outsource to. However, finding a service that meets all your needs can be a challenge. So how can you find and partner with the right one? Here are some tips to help you with the process:

Ask fellow local business owners to see if they currently partner with a local delivery service that they like. If that doesn’t turn up any results, you could always conduct a quick online search to identify a few potential candidates within your area.
From the start, you should be assessing the communication offered by your potential delivery partner. You need a partner who is easy to communicate with and answers any and all questions promptly and completely.
From there, you can assess the different delivery services offered by each potential partner. For example, what size packages can they deliver? Do they offer delivery for fragile or perishable items if necessary? What is their delivery area? How do they charge for packages — by weight, size, or distance?
Ask about what security measures they have in place to ensure that your packages get from their origin to their final destination safely and in one piece. For instance, do they offer package tracking? Can customers choose a signature required for delivery?
Finally, check out their trucks and staff to make sure that they are adequate and professional enough to represent your company.

How to Promote Local Delivery Services to Customers

Even though adding a local delivery service to your online website is a great way to boost sales and improve customer experience, your customers might not even know that you’re now offering it! As a result, you may have to promote this new service to your customers actively.

Here are some of the different ways you may want to promote your new local delivery service option to your customers:

Online

Perhaps the best way to promote the local delivery service option is online! You can advertise it on your website with a banner on the homepage with more information on the checkout page. You could also advertise it on your social media pages and drive people to make a purchase they weren’t planning to make as a result of this amazing service.

Email or SMS

If your email or SMS marketing list is your pride and joy, this could be a great way to get the word out to your existing customers. This is a great free option that requires a small amount of effort actually to draft and send out the email or text.

Geofence Marketing

If you want to tell new customers about your new local delivery service, geofence marketing is a great way to do so. While you may have to pay for this option, you’re able to specifically target people based on their geographic location in addition to other factors that you determine.

The best way to get the most bang for your buck in terms of marketing is to hire a marketing expert like Greg Gillman. Greg Gillman specializes in omnichannel growth strategies for direct-to-consumer brands and can handle geofence marketing and beyond for your business.

Local Marketing

Since you’re doing local delivery, it makes sense that you’d use local marketing as well! You could post flyers in popular local destinations, take out ads in local papers or magazines, post in local social media groups, or simply get the word out the old-fashioned way — by talking to people.