How To Avoid Common Local Content Marketing Failures

Are you a business owner looking to up your digital marketing game without making costly mistakes? The best step is to hire an expert Chicago content marketing agency that can launch a campaign based on these principles:

• Understand your audience to tailor your content.
• Study your competition to spot opportunity gaps.
• Tell a brand story to make your business relatable and authentic.

Avoid costly mistakes by learning how you and the team can execute these strategies, by reading the article below. Let’s go!

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1. Understand Your Audience To Tailor Your Content

Your content will not (and should not) appeal to everyone. Otherwise, you are wasting valuable resources on a huge number of Internet users who will not purchase from you.

You also risk getting a lower rank for optimizing your site for the wrong keywords and audience.

However, how do you know whether or not your content resonates with the right people? The key is understanding who they are. Ask the following questions:

• Who is your target market?
• What are their demographics? Are they older or younger? Do you classify them as Millennials, Boomers, or Generation Z?
• What are their buying habits? Do they like to shop online or prefer visiting a physical store? Do they purchase products online and then pick them up in person?
• What is their typical income? How much are they willing to pay for your products and services? Do they see your business as a discretionary or indispensable expense?
• Do they perform research before making a decision? Do they rely on recommendations from friends and family or do they prefer to read reviews online?
• Where do they get their information? Which channels most effectively reach them: email, social media, website, or search engine results?

When you have in-depth knowledge about your audience, you can personalize the message and the channel.

Where do you get your data? You can use analytics tools to keep track of website visits and leads or conduct surveys to learn more about customer preferences.

You can also look at industry trends, analyze your competitors’ marketing strategies, and listen to customers on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

2. Study Your Competition to Spot Opportunity Gaps

One of the biggest challenges of local content marketing is standing out in a sea of what could be an oversaturated niche. You can learn to overcome that by studying the competition.

Doing this provides many benefits, especially if you are a startup trying to build brand awareness and exposure.

• Understand what works. Your outcomes will be different from those of your competitors. However, you will better understand tactics that can work for your industry or business model.
• Identify content gaps. What types of content do they publish? How often do they release a blog post? What do they talk about? Perhaps they failed to cover the latest trends or answer the most recent questions. Your content might even introduce a single but essential bit of information.
• Discover new trends and innovations. Observing the content strategies of successful competitors gives you insights into emerging techniques, formats, or platforms that you can incorporate into your marketing efforts.
• Benchmark your performance. Monitoring your competition’s metrics, such as website traffic, social media engagement, or content reach, can help measure your success or struggles. If your competitors consistently outperform you, examining the metrics might indicate areas to improve.

Learning more about your competition will likely reveal new information that you can use to benefit yourself.  For instance, you might realize they are not your direct competitors but instead tightly linked partners. Think of a coffee shop and a bakery.

You can capitalize on this connection by forming strategic alliances with that company to reach more customers or to collaborate on a new project.

3. Tell a Brand Story to Make Your Business Relatable and Authentic

A compelling brand story holds enormous power in today’s crowded market. An effective one is the foundation of a brand’s identity and provides a deeper connection between the brand and its audience.

Brand identification also helps your business in these ways:

• It communicates your business values, mission, and purpose in a way that emotionally resonates with customers. In the process, it brings them closer to your brand.
• By crafting a unique and memorable brand story, businesses can differentiate themselves from their competitors and create a lasting impression that attracts customers to return.
• With a powerful brand story, companies can reach a broader audience, tapping into the universal human desire for connection and meaning.
• A good story helps improve the user experience. When people relate to what they have read, they are more likely to retain the information.

In short, the power of a compelling brand story lies in its ability to inspire and engage, fostering a relationship between the brand and its customers that goes beyond purchase transactions.

A Chicago content marketing agency helps you craft impactful stories. Consider these content types for plastic surgeons. Other popular options are:

• Origin story tells how the brand started. It can be about the founders, values, and mission.
• Customer success stories showcase real-life examples of products and services in action. This can also be user-generated content (UGC).
• Employee spotlights highlights the stories and experiences of the staff. It humanizes the brand and creates a sense of authenticity.
• Cause-related storytelling aligns the brand with a social cause or community initiative to demonstrate its commitment to making a positive impact. For instance, you can discuss your partnerships with non-profits.
• Product development takes customers on a narrative journey from brainstorming to creation and launch.
• Brand-persona storytelling involves creating a fictional or personified character that embodies the brand’s values, voice, and personality.

Summing Up

Developing an effective and successful local content marketing strategy can be challenging. However, it pays off through higher web traffic, better search engine optimization (SEO) ranking, and improved customer engagement.

The three solid strategies discussed above can get you started. Digital Authority Partners (DAP), a Chicago content marketing agency, further personalizes your approach. It builds your brand’s identity through custom content, insights, and analysis. It then promotes message through the right channels for maximum audience reach.

Contact us today to learn more!