We explore four ways to win at local content marketing, setting aside your content from the rest.
A unique approach is the best approach when it comes to local content marketing. The tactics that big businesses use nationwide might not necessarily work when targeting potential customers in your local town or city. So we discuss a few approaches that should help you target content to local customers.
1. Feature local experts
Most marketers tend to keep content creation in-house, yet there are a lot of benefits to bringing in local experts to supply you with relevant, unique and thought-leading content. Incorporate interviews, quotes and find other ways to create content and feature it in your marketing material. As long as the thought leaders are not aligned with your competition, you can create a mutually beneficial relationship for both parties in terms of expanding your audiences.
2. Keep an eye out for local opportunities
One of the marketing basics – showcase your brand where your customer base is, typically at local events. This could include:
- becoming a sponsor at an event
- donating your services or products to local charities
- attending trade shows.
These events will not only supply you with the opportunity to build brand awareness and network, they can become the basis of great content. Try taking pictures of the event and incorporate them into a series of blog posts.
3. Always encourage reviews
Positive reviews are important even for the largest of corporations, but for small, local businesses they are particularly crucial. Your first port of call is to set up Google My Business – this will help with your local SEO. Your reviews will also appear in the localised results.
This user generated content will have a massive impact on whether people visit your website. The more happy reviews from customers you have – the more potential customers you will attract.
4. Social media advertising is worth it
Many small businesses write off paid social media as they think it’s not worth it or out of their means. Yet there are a number of reasons why it should be an important part of your localised content strategy. The main reason is that the organic reach of social media posts is falling dramatically. This is especially true on Facebook – it coincided with the introduction of paid advertising.
Effective social media marketing isn’t free anymore. But, another reason why you should give it a chance is that it’s not that expensive. You have complete control on how much you want to spend for clicks, engagements or impressions. The platforms have very specific demographic information for you to target – so you can really drill down to find your niche target audience. This will help you put your posts in front of the right people.
Read and comment on the original Entrepreneur article.