Local Digital Marketing vs Content Marketing: Which Is Best?

Today’s businesses must be agile in their marketing strategies to keep up with the quickly evolving digital landscape. For this reason, a Chicago content marketing agency also performs a comprehensive or holistic local digital marketing campaign.

However, sometimes small- and medium-sized business owners should choose between these two strategies. Which yields a more cost-effective result?

This blog post covers key points for comparison:

• Definition of local digital marketing and content marketing
• Pros and cons of local digital advertising
• Advantages and disadvantages of content marketing

Ready to take a deep dive into the topic below? Let’s go!

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What Is Local Digital Marketing?

Local digital marketing promotes a business’s products or services to local people through online channels. It:

• Aims to reach potential customers in specific locations, such as neighborhoods, cities, and even countries.
• Allows businesses to target key demographics.

The term also includes multiple online marketing strategies. These include social media, paid ads, email marketing, mobile optimization, and search engine optimization (SEO). If you have not noticed yet, most of these are also forms of content marketing.

In other words, all types of content marketing are local digital marketing tactics. However, not all of the latter are elements of content marketing.

     Pros and Cons of Local Digital Marketing

One of the biggest benefits of local online marketing is personalization. It helps generate higher returns or revenues for the following reasons:

• Your leads are more likely to be qualified ones. This means these prospects have higher chances of buying your products and services.
• Customization also leads to a better customer experience. This happens because you are targeting them based on their needs and preferences.
• Since you already have a target in mind, your messages become more targeted. It is easier to craft copies that resonate with them.
• Personalization is also more cost-efficient. You spend less time and money reaching out to the wrong market.
• Local online marketing helps you build relationships with your customers. It gives them a sense of connection that might translate to retention or even loyalty.

Local digital marketing is also actionable and measurable. Some comprehensive analytics tools can track several metrics to validate your success. Other more advanced platforms, such as those with artificial intelligence (AI), can already perform forecasting. This way, you can adjust your strategies according to growing trends and consumer behavior.

Local digital marketing, however, is not the pinnacle of e-commerce. Local online marketing comes with challenges that make working with a Chicago content marketing agency beneficial. These include:

• Competition. Numerous local businesses vie for the same audience. Moreover, the barriers to entry for online advertising are low, leading to a proliferation of small businesses flooding the local market. Lastly, you must compete with hundreds of small shops as well as a few established brands.
• Cost. Although local digital marketing can be cost-efficient when successful, it is often expensive, especially in the short term. With more businesses turning to online marketing, the demand for advertising space and clicks has risen.
• Time. Local digital marketing demands time, especially for small business owners juggling multiple tasks. Creating and monitoring different campaigns requires research, planning, and coordination, which can become overwhelming.
• Technology. New technologies constantly emerge in local marketing, making it difficult for businesses to stay updated with the latest trends. Further, you cannot make the right investments if you do not have a deep understanding of how different marketing technologies work.

What Is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is a strategic advertising approach that involves creating and distributing relevant, valuable, and consistent copies to attract and engage a clearly defined audience.

By doing so, it:

• Establishes a connection with the audience.
• Builds brand awareness.
• Drives profitable customer action.

It also supports the customer's buying journey through a three-step process:

• An effective content marketing plan identifies the target audience, including understanding their needs, behaviors, and preferences.
• You create original and relevant content that appeals to the target audience. This can be a blog post, video, infographic, podcast, or social media post.
• You analyze and measure content performance to optimize your strategies later.

     Pros and Cons of Content Marketing

Content marketing offers many advantages, such as:

• Increased brand awareness. Content marketing allows you to showcase your expertise and knowledge in your industry. In turn, you build yourself as a trusted authority, leading to increased brand recognition.
• Enhanced audience engagement. Well-crafted and valuable content can potentially engage your target audience on a deeper level. You can use it to address audience pain points and to improve offers. It can foster interactive communication, encourage social sharing, and build a community around your brand.
• Improved search engine visibility. Search engines value high-quality content and reward them with a good ranking. You can also optimize your copies to ensure that your business appears when your target market searches for your brand or product.

On the other hand, poorly written content can be detrimental to a brand. Examples of this are when the content is confusing, repetitive, and has grammar and spelling errors. It doesn’t convey the right message, lacks clarity, and fails to engage the reader. As such, poorly written content can hurt your reputation and credibility in the eyes of your target audience.

Further, other content marketing cons include:

• Demands long-term commitment: Seeing and sustaining results often takes months of consistency and persistence.
• Is prone to content overload: The digital space is saturated with content, making it harder to stand out and grab users’ attention. Creative, original content that resonates with your target audience requires a deep understanding of audience needs and preferences.
• Can be difficult to measure: Although you can use metrics such as website traffic, social shares, and engagement rates, determining the direct influence of content on sales or conversions is complex.

Summing Up

Between local digital marketing and content marketing, which is better? It depends.

Content marketing effectively reaches a target audience, drives more leads and sales, and builds lasting customer relationships. However, local digital marketing is often necessary to capture the attention of those in your immediate vicinity who are likely to purchase from you.

Combining both strategies could be the best option for achieving the desired results. Digital Authority Partners (DAP) is a content marketing agency with expertise in local optimization. Contact us today to learn how we can help you make the most of your digital marketing strategy.