Local Content Marketing Examples for Multilocation Businesses

Impactful content requires some planning. You need insight into your market and content aligned with your audience’s interests and needs. In this article, I’ll guide you through the steps of customizing a local content marketing strategy. You’ll learn to roll out your own local content plan to increase online visibility, in-store visits, and website traffic.

The Value of Local Content Marketing for Multilocation Businesses

Local content marketing benefits any business targeting customers in a specific location, including multilocation physical therapy clinics, regional and national home services providers, franchises, and businesses with more than one branch. Below are some of the benefits of creating targeted local content.

1. Increased Relevance to Your Target Audiences

By tailoring content to a neighborhood, city, or region, you showcase your brand’s roots in a community and relevance to your audience’s day-to-day lives. A fitness studio could publish tips to help members train for an upcoming marathon. A bookstore might fundraise to support local schools. Tim Hortons, for example, shows how a chain can appeal to a local market by creating donuts promoting the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Red Wings.

2. Improved Local SEO Performance

With appropriate keywords, your content can rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for geo-specific queries. Content related to your location and niche also improves your Google Maps ranking. Google looks for signals confirming where you’re based. Once it’s confident your business serves a particular market, you can appear in map searches when someone is looking for a product or service in a city or “near me.”

3. Enhanced Community Engagement

Use your content to connect on a personal level to your audience and show your business is firmly established in the community. You could introduce the team behind your brand, showcase customer stories, and invite audiences to join you in supporting charities. This type of content puts a face on your brand and helps customers relate to your business, laying the foundation for improved engagement and loyalty.

4. Competitive Advantage in Local Markets

Stand out from businesses that create generic content by leveraging your expertise or connections to a community. For example, while many lawyers publish general legal advice to highlight their abilities, a multi-state firm should create content for their practice areas for each state they operate in, noting the particulars of that state’s statutes. (Learn more about legal content writing here.)

Key Components of a Local Content Marketing Strategy

Ready to assemble your local content marketing strategy? You’ll need the following ingredients to align your approach with your audience, niche, and community.

1. Understanding Your Local Audience

Gather information about your audience’s demographics, preferences, and concerns. Learn about topics they’re interested in and how they’re finding your brand so you can create content that appeals to them. Here are some tips.

• Conduct surveys and focus groups.
• Monitor website and social media analytics.
• Check the Insights feature on your Google Business Profile.
• Read reviews and find out what users are saying about your niche on social media and community forums.
• Ask your front-line team what customers ask about.

2. Local Keyword Research and Optimization

Build a list of keywords using an SEO tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Keyword Planner. Start with terms that describe your main business, products, and services, and add location modifiers that reference your city, neighborhood, or nearby landmarks (“downtown Portland” or “near Central Park.”) You can also find keywords by analyzing your competitors’ strategies.

Finalize your keyword list based on each keyword’s relevance to your business, potential search volume, and ranking difficulty. These search terms will form the basis of your local content strategy. You should incorporate them naturally into your content.

You can find additional local keyword research tips here.

3. Creating Locally Relevant Content

Guided by your keywords and audience research, come up with content ideas that are of interest to your community. You can link your content to places, events, organizations, and issues that affect residents.

Keep in mind your audience also has interests that aren’t tied to where they live, so balance local content with pieces that have broad appeal. For example, homeowners looking for insurance may want information about local flood zones in addition to more general hurricane preparedness tips.

4. Leveraging Local Partnerships and Influencers

Accelerate your reach by collaborating with others in your community. Neighborhood chambers of commerce and business associations may have online directories, publications, and social platforms that can amplify your brand. Organizations and influencers with target audiences similar to yours may be open to cross-promotion. For example, your restaurant chain might partner with a nearby winery or offer a kitchen tour to a local food blogger.

5. Optimizing for Local Search

Finally, make sure you’re positioned to rank well in organic search. I suggest performing a local SEO audit to assess and improve overall search performance, but for now, I’ll focus on two key elements.

• Optimize your Google Business Profile. This panel appears in Google when someone searches for your business or clicks on it in Google Maps. Your Google Business Profile helps customers learn about and interact with your business right in the SERPs. Each of your locations should have their own profile.
• Review your local citations. Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across your website, Google Business Profile, online directories, and other platforms. Since search engines use your NAP to verify your business location, inconsistent information could affect your rankings. 

Sample Template for Creating Your Local Content Strategy

As you work through the elements of your strategy, create a document to focus your ideas and keep your team on the same page. I’m including a template below to help you develop this roadmap.

1. Strategy Overview

Begin your document with a snapshot of your local content strategy.

• Outline the purpose of your content marketing strategy.
• Detail specific goals and objectives (i.e., improve keyword ranking, display in Google 3-Pack, or increase traffic to location pages).
• Describe your target audience, including demographics, lifestyle, and needs.
• List key performance indicators (KPIs) for assessing content performance. We share some content metrics here.

2. Local Market Analysis

Summarize local market trends, challenges, and opportunities to guide your strategy. You can then identify ways to align your brand with audience needs. Is there a new competitor to distinguish your brand from? Can you capitalize on an interest in shopping locally? Here are a few ways to gather information for this section of your document.

• Explore competitor offerings and marketing strategies to see how they reach audiences.
• Follow subreddits for your city to uncover issues and concerns.
• Look for market research and studies from local industry and business associations.
• Survey customers and conduct focus groups to learn about preferences and concerns.

3. Content Themes and Topics

Use an editorial calendar like the one below to create a framework for your local content marketing. Start by slotting in relevant holidays and seasonal events you want to target to ensure you don’t miss key content opportunities. As you nail down content ideas, flesh out the calendar to generate a big-picture overview of your content strategy.

4. Content Creation and Distribution Plan

Using your keywords as a guide, plan the best type of content to meet your goals and satisfy your audience’s search intent. Consider a mix of content to achieve different purposes and audience preferences, such as:

• Blog posts.
• Web pages.
• Videos.
• Case studies and testimonials.
• Tip sheets and guides.
• Infographics.

Use the following template to map local content to the appropriate channels to get your content in front of as many customers as possible.

5. Local SEO Integration

Create guidelines for how your team should optimize individual content pieces for SEO before publishing. For example, your strategy may include:

• Following best practices for keyword usage.
• Formatting copy for readability using headers, bullets, and short paragraphs.
• Using schema markup.
• Incorporating image alt text.
• Providing video transcripts for searchability.

Remember that individual content pieces rank best when supported by a wider local SEO strategy. Check out our Local SEO Checklist to help boost your brand’s overall digital presence and lift your local content higher in the SERPs over time. 

6. Measurement and Optimization

Develop an analytics framework for measuring content performance so you’re continuously adjusting tactics and improving outcomes.

• Monitor impressions, clicks, traffic, bounce rate, engagement, conversion, and other KPIs related to your goals.
• Take benchmark measurements before implementing your strategy so you can gauge progress.
• Use the insights to improve content relevance, visibility, and alignment with your audience’s interests.
• Compare data year-over-year to detect trends and assess overall performance.
• Create a dashboard report that summarizes key information to easily access the data and apprise stakeholders of your progress and achievements.

Implementing Your Local Content Marketing Strategy

You now have a template for an effective local content strategy! Here are a few final suggestions before you roll up your sleeves and get started.

1. Start Small and Scale

Take a measured approach to your content marketing. You could tackle all of your ideas at once, but it’s best to start slowly, measure your progress, and learn as you go along. This helps you use your resources more efficiently and generate a better return on investment.

2. Be Consistent and Plan Ahead

It’s hard to nurture engagement and build loyalty when you only reach out to audiences sporadically. Make use of your editorial calendar to produce a steady stream of quality content and keep your brand front of mind. Balance timely, event-specific pieces with evergreen pieces that have lasting appeal. When customers see that your Google Business Profile, website, and social media are up to date, they’ll know your company is active, engaged, and open for business.

3. Encourage Local User-Generated Content

Lean on audiences to create content about your brand, which can enhance your online presence and build a sense of community. You can offer discounts and giveaways to encourage participation. Some users are happy to contribute content if you highlight them on your website and social platforms in return.

Customer reviews are an easy way to involve your audience — simply create a link to your Google Business Profile and invite them to share their experiences. You can also encourage audiences to create photos and videos related to your brand when they visit your location or use your products. For example, an ice cream shop franchise could ask for photos of customers enjoying their favorite flavor for a chance to win a gift card. Audiences can tag your brand or use custom hashtags on Instagram, so you can see their posts.

Elevate Your Local Online Presence with Victorious

Looking for the competitive edge that sets you apart in your community? Local content marketing that’s in step with your audience’s interests and your business goals can get more eyes on your business. Victorious can help you analyze your geographic markets, build a highly targeted local content strategy, and increase online visibility and traffic to your stores and website. Book a free consultation to learn more.