Google has some very revealing statistics about how your prospective customers search for you and make their buying decisions. As a local business owner you have some distinct advantages over the larger regional and national companies that you compete with.
Local customers who go online are looking for information. If you actively use ‘local content marketing’ it can help them find your business instead of a competitors.
Here are some of the statistics from Google’s study:
- 4 out of 5 consumers use search engines to find local information
- 54% of searches are for business hours
- 53% for directions
- 50% for your address
What this means for you: It means, you should be featuring your address and directions in your ads on both smartphones and desktop computer applications.
- 50% of smartphone searchers will visit a store within one day of searching, 34% of searchers using a desktop or tablet visit within one day.
- 18% of local smartphone searches resulted in a purchase within one day
What this means for you: It means that you should be using radius bidding to reach consumers near stores and build an attribution model for local searches.
- 4 in 5 consumers want ads customized to their city, zip code, or immediate surroundings.
- 70% say it’s important to have directions and a call button in ads.
What this means for you: It means that you should use location bid adjustments and hyper-local banner campaigns to target specific neighborhoods.
Bottom Line: Implementing local content marketing will help your business get found more frequently by high intent customers.
How Is Local Content Marketing Different?
Local content marketing isn’t significantly different from content marketing used to reach a broader audience. The primary difference is focusing on the specific topics that are especially relevant to an audience in a specific geographic area.
This means that you must know WHO your local audience is and what is most important to them as a guide for the content you create.
Of course, the content needs to be relevant to the products and services you provide. For example, a garage door company in Albuquerque might create a blog post on “How Your Garage Door Can Help Lower Winter Heating Bills in Albuquerque.”
Types of Local Content Marketing
The primary criteria in creating local content marketing is to present it in formats that your ideal audience will respond to. Offering content in diverse formats will also enhance interest.
Remember, content marketing is a long-term proposition. You must be committed to creating/curating regular updates to keep your prospects engaged. Here are some types of content you might consider:
- Reviews
Customer reviews are extremely important for creating trust with your prospects. They are also an important part of the search engine algorithms for placing your website in search results.
While you cannot generate reviews on your own, you should have a proactive program in place to ask for reviews consistently. I have written elsewhere about the importance of reviews, so won’t spend too much time reiterating the same information. (Check out “How to get reviews for your business that improve your ratings and rankings” here.)
- Video
More than 80% of people searching for information online indicate they would rather watch a video than read text. Video is engaging and gives your prospect an opportunity to “meet” you and your team before they ever visit your business.
Creating quality video has become quite easy. Using a smart phone and the editing software that comes with your computer will give you all you need to excel in this marketing channel.
- Blog Posts
This is the most used strategy for publishing content. Having a blog on your website will help boost your search engine rankings, convert leads, help a prospect decide to call your business, and strengthen the relationship with your local customers.
Consistently publishing fresh content encourages customers to keep checking back to your website.
- Infographics
These are a wonderful tool that is not used often enough. I like to think of them as a hybrid between just text and video. Having a visual representation of your content is attractive and will easily engage your readers.
- Images and Photos.
If your product is visual, make sure you incorporate a lot of images into your content. Even service based companies can have photos of their team or action shots of jobs in progress or finished.
I’ve highlighted several types of local content marketing that you can incorporate into your business growth strategies. If you have questions about these, or would like to consider having the Alchemy team help you implement them, please schedule a discovery conversation here: https://calendly.com/gordonvanwechel/45min
