As a local business owner, you likely spend a substantial amount of your time thinking of new ways to gain customers and brand recognition in your local community. Perhaps you already have a website, or maybe even operate a basic business Facebook page as a way of keeping your local business connected with the people and businesses in your area.

But did you know that even for local businesses like yours, the primary way that customers will find out about you and your product or service is through an online search? Now the question becomes, how does your business create an online presence that will make customers in your area find out about and spread the word to the community about your company?

Local Businesses can and do benefit from Inbound Marketing

This is why the online marketing strategy known as local inbound marketing is transforming the way local businesses approach the relationship that they share with the customers of their community during the digital age. Inbound Marketing is a data driven methodology behind the approach to online marketing that is based on the idea that the customer should be the focus of the buying process, not the seller or the product itself.

In other words, instead of creating a product that you think your audience wants and then force-feeding them information about that product, local inbound marketing seeks to find out what the needs of the market are based on data. The point of the data itself is to gather as much information as possible about your audience with the intent of finding ways to better serve their needs as it relates to the industry you’re operating in.

Build your business reputation and earn the trust of your community with local Inbound Marketing

Inbound Marketing is all about earning the trust of your buyer by providing them with helpful and valuable information that they love to receive, instead of bombarding them with a sales pitch that they aren’t ready or looking for.
Whereas the traditional online marketing strategy has been about aggressively inundating customers with information through ad campaigns and similar methods, local inbound marketing on the other hand is all about attracting the members of your community audience in by providing them with relevant, and helpful content.

While the term may not be instantly familiar, when we talk about online content what we are referring to essentially is any piece of online media that you read, watch, or view, be it an article like the one you’re reading now, a Youtube tutorial, or a comment section on a Facebook page. You can think of everything on your website as content, and each piece of content has to potential to be a valuable marketing tool when used with the correct inbound methodology.

But the point is to create the right content and to get it in front of the right people. Whether a social media post, email, blog, or eBook, you should seek to create great content for your customers in a way that engages and educates them on an issue or topic that they care about. Ultimately the goal is to create content that a visitor to your website will want to share with someone else in the local community, because when you delight your customers with consistent and quality content that prompts them to share information about you to their friends, those customers then become valuable promoters of your brand.

Once you realize that attracting the right audience, converting leads, and increasing sales are all related to successful content marketing, you will get a true appreciation for one of the main reasons why local inbound marketing is such an effective online business strategy.

Written by Cassandra Sohn