Crafting a Local Content Marketing Strategy

 

Small, local businesses face heavy competition from larger companies. Many people prefer big box stores like Home Depot or Lowe’s over the neighborhood hardware shop, for example. That can mean losing a lot of potential revenue.

One way that local businesses can attract customers who might otherwise head to larger competitors is through local content marketing.

Offering content of relevance to your local customers that’s optimized for local SEO can be a powerful tool to differentiate your offerings, build your brand, and cultivate loyalty.

In this post, I’ll give you a road map to develop content for local audiences.

Key Takeaways

• Local content marketing attracts and engages customers and prospects in a business’s neighborhood, city, or region.
• 84% of businesses say they see a positive impact on revenue when they localize their marketing content.
• Understanding local audience demographics and researching keywords helps businesses create content relevant to those consumers, building trust and credibility as well as visibility.
• Examples of local content are blog posts and social media posts about local events or news.
• Inviting customers to comment on and share content helps cultivate a sense of community.
• Businesses can also partner with influencers or do guest posts on other business blogs to expand visibility and foster connections.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is Local Content Marketing?
• What Are the Benefits of Local Content Marketing?
• 1. Define Your Local Audience
• 2. Conduct Local Keyword Research
• 3. Optimize Google Business Profile and Local Listings
• 4. Develop Content Around Local Events and Topics
• 5. Encourage and Share Customer Reviews
• 6. Leverage Social Media for Local Engagement
• 7. Collaborate with Local Influencers
• 8. Create a Local Content Calendar
• 9. Guest Post on Local Websites
• 10. Monitor and Adjust Based on Analytics
• 11. Foster Community Engagement
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Is Local Content Marketing?

Local content marketing involves creating content (such as blog posts, videos, and social media posts) of interest to potential customers who live, work, or shop within a specific geographic area. 

Content is usually directly related to the type of products or services the company offers, but it can also be about other topics customers might be interested in. 

For example, a landscaping company might offer gardening tips as well as information about common plants in the area. This can help attract people searching for help with their garden planning, some of whom might decide to hire a professional to consult or do the labor for them.

What Are the Benefits of Local Content Marketing?

Investing in local content marketing can bring significant rewards. 

By providing content that educates and informs local consumers, you can boost awareness of your business and build credibility and trust. 

Local content marketing also cultivates a feeling of community. Many people like to patronize local businesses because they enjoy a more personal experience as well as supporting the financial health of their neighborhoods, towns, and cities.

Local content can also help improve your local search rankings, enhancing your online visibility and increasing the chances that your business will come up when local consumers are looking for information about the items or services you offer.

1. Define Your Local Audience

Identifying your local audience for localized content marketing involves a mix of data and local research. 

Look at past and current customers to see what demographics you have historically attracted. Analyze your followers and commenters on your social media posts. Conduct surveys and polls to see what topics interest your customers.

You also may want to research a specific local demographic to target them. For example, a high-end shoe store may want to target women at a certain income level. It would make sense to research where those women live in your local area, how old they are, and other characteristics.

You can also analyze website traffic to find key demographics like age, gender, and interests among existing visitors that you can use to identify similar audience segments to target in your local area.

2. Conduct Local Keyword Research

Using focused keywords in your content marketing for your local business can help improve your visibility when local audiences are searching for your type of business in their area.

For instance, a bicycle shop in St. Louis, Missouri, might want to target keywords like “new bicycles St. Louis.”

You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner to research specific keywords based on what locals search for.

You can then use those keywords both to optimize content and to create content. For “bike shop St. Louis,” you might plan a blog post called “Most Popular Bicycles in St. Louis.”

3. Optimize Google Business Profile and Local Listings

When people are searching for products or services you offer, make sure your information in business listings is accurate. This means checking your Google Business Profile, online directories like Yelp and Manta, and local directories, such as those at your chamber of commerce.

Ensure that your address, hours, phone number, email, and website are listed and up-to-date. On Google Business Profile, you can also add photos of your business, your logo, a description, and details, such as whether it is led by women or veterans. 

How does this relate to local content marketing? Taking these steps can help potential customers feel more confident that you are a credible, well-run, and reliable business. 

4. Develop Content Around Local Events and Topics

New visitors or residents in your city are always looking for the best places to go.

Even local residents look for things to do or information about what’s happening in the community.

Localized content marketing that highlights local events, attractions, stores, and news can both highlight your involvement in the community and bring visitors to your site.

You can create blog posts, videos, social media posts, and listicles. Topics could include top things to do around town, new restaurants in your area, highlighting new businesses in the community, and so on.

The possibilities are endless, so have fun with them.

5. Encourage and Share Customer Reviews

Getting good reviews is great; showcasing them on your website and social media is even better, as it builds trust and credibility in content marketing for your local business.

This isn’t bragging—it’s a way to build trust and credibility. Consumers are more likely to trust the experiences of other consumers than advertising. 

And when you think about it, what better testimonial to the impact of your business than happy customers? So collect those reviews and share them proudly.

Even negative reviews pose an opportunity for engagement. Responding to them by addressing their concerns shows that you pay attention to feedback and want to make sure that your local customers have a good experience.

6. Leverage Social Media for Local Engagement

For any piece of content you publish, do your best to promote it to local groups on social media such as Facebook and Instagram. This type of content marketing for local business can help you engage with the community and connect with other businesses.

However, it’s important to do this in the spirit of helping the community. If you come off as too promotional, you’ll quickly be shut down. Instead, make sure your messaging is relevant and authentic.

The best kind of article to post in these groups is something that answers a common question or provides a solution to a problem your community faces. So a hardware shop might have an article on “Tools Every Homeowner Needs.”

7. Collaborate with Local Influencers

If you develop content that spreads quickly, you can expand your reach and customer base faster than any SEO-based strategy. But it’s difficult to make a post go viral.

How do you create content that gets a large audience fast? Partner with local influencers or micro-influencers.

When key local influencers share your content on social media, it reaches a broader percentage of your target audience.

This can help you introduce your business to a built-in audience via your local content marketing efforts.

8. Create a Local Content Calendar

Planning a calendar can help you keep content marketing for your local business organized. It can even help you brainstorm some ideas.

For example, you can plan content that relates to local events and holidays. Is there an annual event in your community, such as a music festival or a wine stroll? Create some content for it.

You can also use general seasonal themes to plan content. For example, an auto parts store might create social media posts about the importance of snow tires or replacing window wipers to prepare for winter weather.

Getting organized with your content ahead of time ensures you won’t miss an opportunity to create content that can draw customers.

9. Guest Post on Local Websites

Many local companies are constantly looking to publish new content on their blogs. If you offer to write for a site like this, that’s one less post they have to produce in-house or pay a freelance writer for—so it’s a win-win.

To engage in this type of content marketing for local business, reach out to companies in related (but not identical) industries, and offer to guest post. Suggest a topic that meets the needs of both your customers and theirs.

For example, if you run a local landscaping service, you could reach out to a local housekeeping service and suggest a post on “10 easy ways to keep your driveway as clean as your house.” 

Make sure you include a link to your site and include the name of your company in your byline.

10. Monitor and Adjust Based on Analytics

As a part of your strategy for content marketing for local business, it’s critical to measure its impact. 

Use analytics to track your content performance on local SEO metrics like keyword rankings and website clicks for local searches and find top-engaging topics in your geographic area. 

You can monitor your social media performance by how many shares and comments your posts get from local users.

Use insights to adjust your strategy based on what is resonating with your local audience, or use A/B testing to see how different titles or images impact content performance.

11. Foster Community Engagement

Many articles and blog posts include a call to action asking users to click to share or to comment, or they end with a question that invites them to do. Encouraging users to engage with your content create a sense of community and connection, potentially making it more likely users will choose to purchase your products or services over a competitor’s or that you retain your existing customers.

You can also mine comments and feedback for insights that you can use for future localized content marketing—or even for ideas about how you can improve your offerings to meet customer needs.

FAQs

What is local content marketing?

Local content marketing is the practice of creating content relevant to audiences in a business’s geographic area. It helps attract customers in that audience by building brand recognition, authority, and trust.

What does local content mean?

Local content refers to content that is of interest to audiences in a specific geographical area. That could mean a neighborhood, a town, a city, or a region.

How do I create a local content marketing strategy?

Creating a local content marketing strategy involves understanding who your local audience is and then crafting content on topics that are of interest to them. 

Conclusion

Taking a more localized approach to your content marketing can help you attract more customers in your area. For many small businesses, engaging with local audiences is critical.
Understanding what topics are relevant to them, researching keywords, looking for guest posting opportunities, and encouraging users to engage with your content can all contribute to successful local content marketing efforts.