A local business should be thinking of how to connect with customers instead of broadcasting at them. If your business is as good as you think it is, prove it and help people discover what you can do for them.
Come up with something valuable and unique and share it for free. Draw attention to your products and services like no one else does as part of the the basic business marketing funnel, which can loosely categorised as:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversion
Whether you are trying to attract customers through organic or paid marketing channels, your website’s content should be all about delivering up front value as part of the process of people buying from you instead of you selling to them.
Below is a video I published on my local web design YouTube channel. This is aimed at small businesses owners in the town where I live and work.
Let Them Try Before They Buy
Everyone likes to think that when they decide to make a purchase it is their own idea to do so, NOT the sales person’s rhetoric or persuasion.
Giving customers the opportunity to buy from you instead of selling it to them is giving people chance to join the dots on their own.
Position your business in a meaningful psychological space and people will sell themselves on you.
Let potential customers stir and taste your brand so it becomes their idea to buy.
Imagine your perfect customer as a curious browser at a cheese deli, testing a delightful selection of free, bite-sized samples as part of the awareness and consideration part of the marketing funnel. Leave them hungry for more.
Use Different Types of Content
Content includes but isn’t limited to articles, statistics, FAQs, photos, graphics, video and audio.
When you think about it, a real life conversation is also “content”. Something of value is mutually exchanged and is of interest to both parties. Flesh out your business online to incorporate this.
Target Your Audience Properly
More important is first being able to identify who your customers are and then starting a content driven conversation rich in personality.
- Who is your audience?
- Where do they live?
- How do they think?
- What can they afford to spend?
- What do they love/hate?
Visibility, Familiarity, Reputation
Good content builds trust and compels your target customer to think of you instead of a competitor when they get into their buying mode. It is a courtship process and a soft sell.
The best content is informative, interesting, educational, problem solving, compelling and useful.
Those traits are a minimum requirement by today’s standards. Such a mindset will only become more important in the future for internet marketers and anyone who wants to build a website that not only captures leads from various channels like social and search, but which can serve as the basis for an email subscriber list as part of a sales pipeline.
Develop a Content Strategy
A content strategy must take cold leads, warm them up, and turn them into paying customers who recommend your product/service to others.
Yes, it takes time to come up with genuinely great content, but if you’re not doing this, you’re failing to prove to the wider world that you actually have a seat at the table in whatever market you’re serving. When times are tough, the average consumer becomes a detective as they shift their own mindset from the initial discovery of you and your business to the part of the process where thy’re weighing you up against competitors.
Cast Study: Auto Shop YouTube Tutorials Win Female Customers
Consider this following real life example of effective, low cost video marketing using YouTube and a website…
Victory Auto Services is an auto shop garage who have their own website and a tutorial themed YouTube channel.
The videos are shot on an inexpensive camera with lapel mics. I often use an iPhone or iPad together with a small second hand directional mic plugged into the top for better sound quality. Getting good sound is important. But the information is more important then the style so do not agonise over shiny production values.
Anyway, here is one of many videos by Victory Auto Services. It’s a splendid example of building trust with an audience.
Below is a video I published on my local web design YouTube channel. This is aimed at small businesses owners in the town where I live and work.
These vehicle related tutorial videos are loosely scripted and demonstrate simple solutions to common car problems. The mechanics walk their viewers through step by step guides such as how to change windscreen wiper fluid, brake fluid etc.
They do not give away valuable trade secrets. They reveal answers to questions which would would usually result in a lower cash value tasks in their auto shop.
Their strategy is one in which they are deliberately filtering out cheaper vehicle jobs and maximising their mechanics’ time efficiency to productivity ratio.
- Best of all, the business is building visibility, familiarity and reputation.
Their YouTube channel has been so well received that the business (situated in Minneapolis, Minnesota) was featured on world renowned social marketing blog Social Media Examiner.
Like Victory, once you hit a successful idea, consider a strategy that includes regular ongoing content to build on a popular theme.
As discussed, YouTube is free to use. If you don’t want to appear on camera there are other things you can do, like screen recordings or slideshows, with audio dropped over the top of some visuals.
Ideas for Local Business Marketing Content
These are some quick ideas from the top of my head. What you need to do is think about what your customers want to know! What conversations have you had in the past and present? What is likely to be asked of you in the future? Prove your knowledge in whatever subjects come up frequently
YouTube video tour of your showroom/shop/workspace
A video does not need to be fancy or expensive. Obviously, do some prep beforehand and have a loose script. Do not obsess over sound or light. Just get something produced so you have a pretext to get a YouTube channel up and running. You can tweak/improve things later.YouTube photo slideshow
Another way to use YouTube is to set some fading images to background music or a voice over. Remember, video material like this is easy to share on social media and saves you repeating yourself on the phone.Website articles and blog
You could write short guides or how-to articles to show off your knowledge. If customers do not want to read, give them a video to watch instead.On demand audio podcast
A podcast is an on demand downloadable mp3 where the focus is on recorded dialouge. This could be a solo effort where you are addressing the listener, or it could be a conversation between two people. You CAN use YouTube for this and set a background image with your logo, website URL, contact details etc but if it’s just sound, go with audio only and create some podcasts.
Advice for Content Marketing Sceptics
There are plenty of businesses who are sceptical about this so-called “content” approach.
Businesses who think they can hide behind their bland website (and lack the human touch) will eventually stagnate and be overtaken by competitors.
The point of doing all this work is to impress people and help your business stand out. There is a lot of “noise” out there in the online world. You must cut through the digital garbage by giving people something they haven’t seen before.
Spend Time & Effort
If it takes hours, days or weeks to produce a piece of marketing content, then so be it. Less is more, and fewer pieces of content with greater effort behind it makes more of an impact in the long run.
- If you rush content research and creation you are hurting yourself.
- You only have to do a single, particular piece of content well once.
- Strive for excellence – it will show in the final product and could give the returns you wan for years.
You don’t need to spend a lot of money either. There are many free and cheap tools available today.
If you are willing to tolerate that slight discomfort of a project that drags on and on, it will eventually lead to a breakthrough and a more original result. This is infinitely more valuable as a piece of good marketing content. This is what gives you the edge over other businesses in your locale.
Just Get Started
Having so many new marketing channels spring up preloaded with frivolous, gimmicky, subversive promises causes classic analysis paralysis and inertia. Every time a new social networking site comes along, people get distracted by this new, hot thing and take their eye off the ball that matters most: their own website.
The inability to simply get started can lead many small biz owners neglecting their marketing totally until it’s too late.
Consider the following tips and allow yourself to digest some of the ideas you might have already. You may need to hire someone to help with technical aspects, but honestly, the idea is what matters the most. It all comes down to the pain and frustration your potential customers are experiencing right now, and it’s your job to position yourself as someone who understands and can help.
Some Quick Tips and Ideas for Getting Started
- Think about using your personality to convey your brand.
- You do not have to put on airs and graces.
- Let the content be an extension of who you really are.
- Creating useful information for customers means you do not have to keep repeating yourself by phone or in person. It’s a time saver.
- People open their wallets with their emotions, not logic.
- Involve staff and employees in the content creation/brainstorming process.
- Producing a video (for example) doesn’t necessarily require you to be on camera – it could be your voice with some PowerPoint slides.
- Content marketing can be a slow burner so do not look at the process as a finite campaign – it should be ongoing.
- If you’re not generating business or making money, review your decisions and be prepared to reassess your direction.
- “Substance over style.”
- “When in doubt, be human.”
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