What does it feel like to run a local business in a city like Brussels or a country like Belgium?
This blog shares our first-hand experience and invites you to do the same.
Whether you have your own activity here or somewhere else, we believe that running a local business is the expression of a unique culture, which is worth to tell.
What do I need to get started with a local business in Brussels?
You need patience, no doubt, and an almost perverse passion for multilingualism.
Like many other metropolises on the continent, in the capital of Europe you can find your own cultural and linguistic niche.
That said, if you want your business to thrive, you need to cope with this diversity and offer products or services that can satisfy the most diverse palates.
What is a local business and what is not?
A local business is not an e-commerce: it makes proximity an added value, both in defining supply and in responding to demand.
A local business may claim a territorial or historical belonging, a long-standing presence. Or even just the ambition to have an impact on the surrounding reality.
Who needs it and who doesn’t?
Are you a local shop or organisation that wants to scale up the business?
It is time to learn an important truth: you must focus in order to scale.
Local presence is becoming increasingly important because consumers want to be sure that they have checked every local option before turning to an unknown, unreachable and, all in all, unreliable company.
Not to mention the increasing importance people are placing on their ecological footprint.
If you believe that the local dimension is a cage and not an opportunity, then this blog will try to make you see the issue from another point of view.
How does local business thrive?
It’s a matter of value, not scale.
In a digital world, what makes a human contact worth the few extra euros that it may entail?
And what is the next step?
Our article about local search engine optimisation or our full blog about small business marketing.
Why?
If you are here, it is by chance or because you care about making a local business in Brussels work.
Smart Videos is a mobile video marketing agency, based in Brussels.
We don’t have secret recipes or magic tricks to offer but we believe that a strong network of small and medium local enterprises can make a country better.
Now we’re happy to share a few ideas with you and help each other improve our double mission of service and independence.
