What is Local Inbound Marketing?

Let’s be honest, marketing is challenging. You are always looking for a slight advantage over your competitors. A relatively new type of marketing, inbound marketing, was introduced by HubSpot in 2005. Utilizing this type of marketing can be a great way to gain an edge over your competitors.

I love inbound marketing; in fact, that is why Render Results is an inbound marketing agency. Some people look to specialize even further into local inbound marketing. Local inbound marketing is an often-overlooked strategy that can boost your revenue, especially for small businesses.

In this article, I plan to explain what local inbound marketing is and how you can use it to beat your competition.

What is Inbound Marketing?

I think this is a good starting point. Inbound marketing is the process of attracting, engaging, and delighting potential buyers. This flywheel cycle continues until the potential buyer becomes a client. Luckily, inbound marketing is already broken into three sections for us to dissect.

Attract

This process is often done through search engine optimization and social media. While I practice organic inbound marketing (without ads), many people use ads to attract potential buyers. 

Engage

You engage users with a quality website design and helpful content. Have you ever landed on a website and left it immediately due to a bad web design? We all have, which is why a good web design is crucial.

Delight

Your content needs to be so helpful and rewarding that it leaves the potential buyer satisfied. Once this has happened, the cycle repeats itself until the buyer becomes so delighted that they reach out and enter the sales process.

What is Local Inbound Marketing?

As the name implies, local inbound marketing is inbound marketing applied locally. Rather than targeting global buyer personas, you target potential buyers in your area. You then finish the process by engaging and delighting users with local-focused content. There are a few proven steps you can take to get started and implement inbound marketing locally.

1.Identify Your Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal buyer or client. It takes into account job position, age, gender, needs, wants, and even location. Yes, the critical step in identifying a buyer persona for local inbound marketing is identifying their location.

2.Strategize How To Attract Locally

Rather than attract the entire country or world, you need to figure out how to attract your buyer persona in your local area. This may include efforts such as local SEO, becoming a member of your local chamber of commerce, attending local business events, and collaborating with other local businesspeople. 

3.Engage Your Local Audience

Rather than write posts or create social media content for global news, try creating content that specifically targets people in your area. Instead of writing a post on best new sales practices, write on best new sales practices for {INSERT YOUR CITY} businesses. 

By creating content more specifically curated for your local audience, you will find much more success.

4.Delight Your Newly-Found Audience

Even after you have engaged potential buyers, you need to delight them to keep them coming back. The best and easiest way to accomplish this is by publishing excellent content. 

How do you write content that delights? There are a few easy ways:

• Provide incredible information.
• Give in-depth opinions.
• Use images, videos, and audio.
• Make it a worthwhile read.

Another good way is to model your content after a successful brand in your niche. For me, that brand was HubSpot. They seemed to have the best content for every marketing question, term, or news. 

If you use the steps listed above, you will find yourself with a strategically developed local inbound marketing plan. 

Why Utilize Local Inbound Marketing?

Why should you utilize local inbound marketing over traditional inbound marketing? There are many reasons, but the main reason is to build relationships and brand awareness locally. Getting more local brand awareness is much easier than trying to gain nationwide awareness. 

Another good reason is that local inbound marketing is often cheaper to see more results. This is because you are targeting a smaller group with lower competition. If you are a small business looking to grow on a budget, you need to consider local inbound marketing. You won’t regret it.

Tips For Each Part of Local Inbound Marketing

We discussed earlier how to create a sound local inbound marketing strategy. Below are some tips for each key part of local inbound marketing.

Social Media

LinkedIn

Connect with people in your local area and attend local targeted events (for instance, New Changes For {Your City} Businesses).

Instagram

Use location tagging on your posts. This not only helps within the Instagram algorithm but also helps to target users in your area. Another tip is to add a location within your Instagram business profile. This shows followers you are local and enables you to target the right people.

YouTube

Much like on Instagram, specifying the location on your YouTube videos can help you target the right people and get your video more reach.

Web Design

My best tip to optimize your web design for local purposes is to use images taken from your area. You can check out our landing page for Nashville web design and notice how the first image you see is directly from Nashville. 

SEO

Local SEO needs an article all for itself; however, my best tip for local SEO is to get listed in Google My Business (GMB). For those who do not know, GMB is Google’s local shop directory. When you search for “restaurants near me” or “grocery store near me,” a GMB SERP comes up.

This not only gets you into a different SERP, but it also proves to Google you are a more authoritative website.

Local Inbound Marketing – Conclusion

In conclusion, local inbound marketing is a relatively new idea with an incredible opportunity. By targeting smaller and less competitive groups, you can see fantastic results without dropping a bunch of cash. Using the tips and steps in this article will put you well on your way to dominating your local market.