How to do content marketing for local business, the right way.

What is content marketing and how do you use it for growing your local business. Many definitions are floating around for content marketing. Our definition is as follows; Content Marketing is the process of creating written or digitally captured content which brings engagement and value to your audience and customers.

Which type of content should I use? Well, that will depend on your key objectives for your website. Along with where your audience or customers are along the buyer’s journey with your business.

Website Outcomes and objectives

Let’s do a little refresh what are your key objectives for your website, we recently went over these in our recent HeyPressGo podcast. There are four key outcomes or objectives you want your visitors to do. They are as follow;

1. Provide something of value – download something of value (ebook, checklist whitepaper). Give them access to giveaway you have, give them access to your best content, share a case study, give them a discount offer or promotional item.
2. Build a connection – Have your audience subscribe to something you offer. Have them subscribe to the mini-course, or connect with you on Facebook live or zoom webinar session, or simply get your audience to join a Facebook group page. It’s your place where you can start to build a real connection.
3. Get the Enquiry – This is where we want your audience or prospect customer to reach out and engage with your website. Which results in a direct enquiry. The goal is you want them to complete an enquiry form, call you directly from a number they found on your website, email directly or book an appointment online.
4. Get the purchase – Outcome is to have your customer purchase your service or product with you. Now, this can be through your website or offline. If the transaction is offline you ideally want to be able to measure the outcome.

Creating for your target audience

Where does content marketing fit into these four key outcomes and how can I use it for my local business? You really should have a good understanding of your audience and who you are are going to be targeting your content marketing towards. It’s no good creating content that completely misses your ideal customers. If you don’t know your ideal customers or you haven’t taken our getting to know your audience profile which we offer with our custom website packages. I would suggest you take a look at the free resources available on Hubspot for defining your audience.

Content Marketing and the Buyers journey

What thing do you need to understand before you start creating content? It is an understanding of the type of content you want to create and where it fits into your audience and their journey with you. There are three distinct stages which you should be aware they are as follow,

• First, the Awareness Stage – These are those customers who are meeting you for the first time or just starting to get to know you, they are most likely going to be meeting your website objectives around discovering the value offering you giving or just wanting to start a connection with you to learn more about what you do.
• Second, the Consideration stage – these are those customers who know you but are probably ready to be moved from the connection objectives over to an enquiry objective.
• Third, the Decision stage – these are those customers who ready to purchase from you.

The important thing to know is when you’re creating the content what stage is the content marketing piece going to fit into.

I’ll give you an example based on this article, This piece of content is created for Mike (Mike is my avatar), Mike owns his own business with 10 to 100 employees etc. Mike is looking for some ideas or guidance which he can pass onto his team around content marketing and using content marketing to help generated enquiries to his business. So I have marked this piece of content under the Providing value objective, Mike is new to our business so I’m helping Mike out to hopefully educated and develop some awareness of the type of work we do for customers like mike.

Marketing your content

Well, I’m going to leave this up to you, but what I don’t want to see is that you’re not using your lovely website to help leverage your content and market your messages to your audience. Please do not create your content and post it directly with social media, social media should be your channel to push and target people to your website. Your goal is to create the content and use your website as the honey pot and leave a trail of sticky honey from the social media channels, podcasts, youtube videos, webinars etc back to your website. Remember the goal is to get your audience to move up the trust ladder so they engage and eventually purchase your services and products from you.

Craft your content for locals

Okay, James, you said this about content to marketing to locals. So how do I get locals to engage? Here are some ideas about what I would do.

• When creating your content be sure to mention your location and area use the location in titles and descriptions.
• Share stories of locals(with permission of course) who have used your services and products. Show these on your site.
• Make sure you have testimonials on your site that are from locals,
• Share your website content on your local google business listing page, ask us how if you don’t know how to do this.
• Build a strategic partnership with another local business and use your blogs to link to each other. Example; The Three Wishes Boutique in Mona Vale could be suggesting outfits for Melbourne Cup Event on their website blog, within the blog you could suggest you also need some shoes for Melbourne Cup, you should check out Casanova Shoes in Mona Vale. They would ask Casanova Shoes to do the same for them. They would also share each other’s articles or stories on your social media channels. If you did this some regularity you will begin to build up backlinks to your website which Google just loves to see!

Create a content marketing strategy guide for a local business.

How do we put this all together into some type of a strategy that we can follow for our local business? Well, we/you need a plan or strategy! Lets’start by defining who your Audience is – do a buyer persona if you haven’t done so already. Then ask yourself what value do you want to provide to your audience and customers. Now let’s think about what are the goals and time frames around the content which will help you move closer to the meeting those website objectives. Also, how are you going to achieve these goals how does your content fit into making those goals and targets achievable?

Content Strategy steps

Then once you have all that under control what channels are you going to use help promote the content, and how are you going to measure the success and track the results to ensure you are meeting the goals.

1. Who is your audience?
2. What value are you going to provide?
3. What are the goals and timeframes for the content?
4. How are you going to achieve the goals you are setting
5. What channels are how are you delivering the content to your audience
6. How do you measure the success of the content plan?

If you have got this far, you are probably ready to dive in a get started. However, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed on how to collaborate and manage the strategy etc. Well lucky for you I have found the perfect online tool, and it’s free to use. It’s a tool we use to create and share our stories, podcasts and social media content its called story chief, you can learn more about on our resources page. If you found this article handy please be sure to share it with others or bookmark for reference. If you need help in setting up a content marketing strategy for your local business or need to help with your website, please do reach out us. We love to help and learn about ways we can support and grow your business. Feedback is also welcome in the comments.
What is content marketing and how do you use it for growing your local business. Many definitions are floating around for content marketing. Our definition is as follows; Content Marketing is the process of creating written or digitally captured content which brings engagement and value to your audience and customers.

Which type of content should I use? Well, that will depend on your key objectives for your website. Along with where your audience or customers are along the buyer’s journey with your business.

Website Outcomes and objectives

Let’s do a little refresh what are your key objectives for your website, we recently went over these in our recent HeyPressGo podcast. There are four key outcomes or objectives you want your visitors to do. They are as follow;

1. Provide something of value – download something of value (ebook, checklist whitepaper). Give them access to giveaway you have, give them access to your best content, share a case study, give them a discount offer or promotional item.
2. Build a connection – Have your audience subscribe to something you offer. Have them subscribe to the mini-course, or connect with you on Facebook live or zoom webinar session, or simply get your audience to join a Facebook group page. It’s your place where you can start to build a real connection.
3. Get the Enquiry – This is where we want your audience or prospect customer to reach out and engage with your website. Which results in a direct enquiry. The goal is you want them to complete an enquiry form, call you directly from a number they found on your website, email directly or book an appointment online.
4. Get the purchase – Outcome is to have your customer purchase your service or product with you. Now, this can be through your website or offline. If the transaction is offline you ideally want to be able to measure the outcome.

Creating for your target audience

Where does content marketing fit into these four key outcomes and how can I use it for my local business? You really should have a good understanding of your audience and who you are are going to be targeting your content marketing towards. It’s no good creating content that completely misses your ideal customers. If you don’t know your ideal customers or you haven’t taken our getting to know your audience profile which we offer with our custom website packages. I would suggest you take a look at the free resources available on Hubspot for defining your audience.

Content Marketing and the Buyers journey

What thing do you need to understand before you start creating content? It is an understanding of the type of content you want to create and where it fits into your audience and their journey with you. There are three distinct stages which you should be aware they are as follow,

• First, the Awareness Stage – These are those customers who are meeting you for the first time or just starting to get to know you, they are most likely going to be meeting your website objectives around discovering the value offering you giving or just wanting to start a connection with you to learn more about what you do.
• Second, the Consideration stage – these are those customers who know you but are probably ready to be moved from the connection objectives over to an enquiry objective.
• Third, the Decision stage – these are those customers who ready to purchase from you.

The important thing to know is when you’re creating the content what stage is the content marketing piece going to fit into. I’ll give you an example based on this article, This piece of content is created for Mike (Mike is my avatar), Mike owns his own business with 10 to 100 employees etc. Mike is looking for some ideas or guidance which he can pass onto his team around content marketing and using content marketing to help generated enquiries to his business. So I have marked this piece of content under the Providing value objective, Mike is new to our business so I’m helping Mike out to hopefully educated and develop some awareness of the type of work we do for customers like mike.

Marketing your content

Well, I’m going to leave this up to you, but what I don’t want to see is that you’re not using your lovely website to help leverage your content and market your messages to your audience. Please do not create your content and post it directly with social media, social media should be your channel to push and target people to your website. Your goal is to create the content and use your website as the honey pot and leave a trail of sticky honey from the social media channels, podcasts, youtube videos, webinars etc back to your website. Remember the goal is to get your audience to move up the trust ladder so they engage and eventually purchase your services and products from you.

Craft your content for locals

Okay, James, you said this about content to marketing to locals. So how do I get locals to engage? Here are some ideas about what I would do.

• When creating your content be sure to mention your location and area use the location in titles and descriptions.
• Share stories of locals(with permission of course) who have used your services and products. Show these on your site.
• Make sure you have testimonials on your site that are from locals,
• Share your website content on your local google business listing page, ask us how if you don’t know how to do this.
• Build a strategic partnership with another local business and use your blogs to link to each other. Example; The Three Wishes Boutique in Mona Vale could be suggesting outfits for Melbourne Cup Event on their website blog, within the blog you could suggest you also need some shoes for Melbourne Cup, you should check out Casanova Shoes in Mona Vale. They would ask Casanova Shoes to do the same for them. They would also share each other’s articles or stories on your social media channels. If you did this some regularity you will begin to build up backlinks to your website which Google just loves to see!

Create a content marketing strategy guide for a local business.

How do we put this all together into some type of a strategy that we can follow for our local business? Well, we/you need a plan or strategy! Lets’start by defining who your Audience is – do a buyer persona if you haven’t done so already. Then ask yourself what value do you want to provide to your audience and customers. Now let’s think about what are the goals and time frames around the content which will help you move closer to the meeting those website objectives. Also, how are you going to achieve these goals how does your content fit into making those goals and targets achievable?

Content Strategy steps

Then once you have all that under control what channels are you going to use help promote the content, and how are you going to measure the success and track the results to ensure you are meeting the goals.

1. Who is your audience?
2. What value are you going to provide?
3. What are the goals and timeframes for the content?
4. How are you going to achieve the goals you are setting
5. What channels are how are you delivering the content to your audience
6. How do you measure the success of the content plan?

If you have got this far, you are probably ready to dive in a get started. However, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed on how to collaborate and manage the strategy etc. Well lucky for you I have found the perfect online tool, and it’s free to use. It’s a tool we use to create and share our stories, podcasts and social media content its called story chief, you can learn more about on our resources page.

If you found this article handy please be sure to share it with others or bookmark for reference. If you need help in setting up a content marketing strategy for your local business or need to help with your website, please do reach out us. We love to help and learn about ways we can support and grow your business.

Feedback is also welcome in the comments.