When it comes to marketing content to local customers, you
have to take a unique approach - the tactics that work for big businesses
aren’t going to resonate with the target audience in your town. So what do you
need to do differently? Here, I’ll discuss a new approach for marketing content
to local customers.
1. Feature local
experts in your content.
Most local marketers focus nearly all their content on their
business alone, but there are a lot of benefits to also bringing in other local
experts related to your niche. Incorporate quotes and interviews with local
experts, or find other ways to feature them in your content through
collaboration. As long as they’re not your direct competitors, you can work
with them to create a mutually beneficial relationship to expand your audience
base. Besides, keeping all your content focused on your business alone sets you
up for some limitations.
For one, you miss out on the fact that 92 percent of
consumers trust third-party recommendations more than brand content. At the
same time, sharing content through influencers can increase conversions by
three to ten times.
If you’ve taken the time to feature others in your content,
it won’t be very difficult to encourage them to share it with their audiences
as well.
2. Look for
opportunities to boost your local prowess.
One of the most basic marketing tactics to find local
customers is by hosting or participating in local events, which I definitely
recommend as well. Some options include:
Becoming an event sponsor
Attending trade shows
Donating goods or services to a good cause
These are not only good networking opportunities to build
brand awareness, they’re also great fodder for content creation. Take and share
pictures from an event and create blog posts about the experience. Another
important way to boost your local prowess through content is by taking
advantage of trending news opportunities. Use Google Trends to research what
people are talking about in your local area. If there’s a relevant topic
related to your niche, you can write about it on your blog. Google favors
prominent news in SERPs, so you’re likely to get a boost there for relevance.
If you can be considered an expert on a topic, then you can also build local
prowess by offering quotes to journalists for news stories. Just sign up for
Help A Reporter Out (HARO). Journalists post queries on this platform that you
can respond to; getting you and your brand in the news.
3. Focus heavily on
encouraging reviews.
This is an important strategy for businesses of any size,
but positive reviews are even more crucial for local business success. If
you’re working on building your local SEO, the first step is getting set up on
Google My Business. This makes it possible for you to show up in Google’s
specialized local search results. Your reviews appear prominently within those
results.
This user-generated content is going to have a major impact
on whether people decide to visit your business’s website from searches.
Considering that 74 percent of people primarily use portals like Google to find
local businesses, this is an area you can’t ignore. Additonally, Google reviews
arent' the only areas that you on which you should target your focus. Just as
endorsements from influencers boost your credibility, reviews from happy
customers on review sites - your website
and search engines - will help draw in more customers.
4. Take advantage of
paid social media
When many small businesses plan their marketing budgets,
they write off paid social media as a content distribution option that’s out of
their means. However, there are a few points that demonstrate how the strategy
is actually completely essential for your business. For one - organic engagement
on social media is falling. It has been on Facebook for a while, and not
coincidentally, this began around the time the platform started offering paid
content distribution options.
It’s no mystery why Facebook, Twitter, and others want to
encourage brands to use their paid options; they favor those over organic
posts. Effective social media marketing is no longer free. Another important
point is that paid social media is really quite affordable, even for small
businesses. All the platforms have small minimum advertising investments and
give you complete control over how much you’re willing to spend for
impressions, engagement, clicks, etc. These platforms have a plethora of
super-specific demographic information. They put the most relevant promoted posts
in front of the right audience. Just take a look at what Facebook Audience
Insights can tell you about your target audience based on location, age,
interests, Facebook behavior, purchasing behavior, and more. A lot of what
makes content great doesn’t have to do with business type. But if you want to
be optimally effective at content marketing to local customers, there are some
strategies you should follow that apply to your unique situation. Take
advantage of the advice in this post to jumpstart your efforts to engage with
local customers effectively.
Source: entrepreneur.com
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