How to use content to generate and convert leads for your local business

1.Create content covering local informational search queries

To generate leads for your local business with content, you need to cover a bunch of non-commercial — or informational— queries that your local leads have.

Let me explain.

When someone searches for, say, “a catering company in Seattle,” they’re very close to hiring one. Website landing pages work great at attracting such ready-to-buy leads that make commercial queries. These localized landing pages are crucial for generating and converting such organic leads for local businesses.

In contrast, when someone searches for “catering prices in Seattle,” they’re more in the learning and evaluating stage. Here, content (blog posts and other content resources) effectively draws these leads into your sales funnel from wherever they are in their buying journey.

While these informational queries are by serious organic leads, they aren’t very high in volume. It shouldn’t be surprising if they get <10 searches a month. But these terms mean business.

Because they don’t drive high traffic volumes, most local businesses don’t cover them, and they remain an untapped source of leads.

Plus, keyword research tools don’t help much with finding such blog post ideas for creating localized content.

To discover these, go over your customer conversations and the questions they ask.

For example, look at this query: “tipping caterer new york.”

It’s not a commercial query, yet a catering service posted a great article on it and is the featured search result snippet for it:

This blog post doesn’t even use a localized headline (i.e., it doesn’t add New York to its title). But New York is present multiple times in the post copy.

You get the idea.

2.Produce content that boosts consideration and conversions

If you look at the buying journey of your local leads that begin with search, you’ll notice a pattern.

First up, they see ads. If you run search ad campaigns, this is how a lead might discover you.

Below the ads, you have directories like Yelp that list you and competing service providers in your area. After the local directory results — or sometimes in place of them — you’ll find the more niche roundups of the top service providers.

Finally, under all these ads and third-party results, you find a service provider’s website ranking organically. This could be you or your competitor.

Now, it doesn’t matter how these leads land on your website — whether through a directory or an ad or your organic listing in the search results — at this point, they’re looking for some particular content.

While they’re in the more advanced stages of buying, they probably haven’t decided on a provider just yet. This is where your content can make them consider you or even convert.

Some of the critical content pieces for such leads are:

• A report on pricing based on the service providers in your industry in your region
• A guide to hiring a service provider in your niche in your region
• A checklist on why you’re the best service provider in your industry in your region

In addition to these, content pieces like local case studies act as excellent social proof and boost both consideration and conversions here. Short-form content pieces like local client testimonials also work toward the same goals . You can even repurpose your local clients’ case studies and testimonials as posts for your blog. Just remember to use localized headlines.

Basically, any piece of content that can make your leads CONSIDER or CHOOSE you goes here. You can also ask for your leads’ emails for access to this information.

3.Post content that brings repeat business

Another essential content type that your local business needs is for generating repeat business. Here, you post content that your recent or long-time customers find helpful.

The idea is to keep them engaged, so you remain their go-to option each time they need the services you offer.

To plan this content, look at your sales cycle and discover ways to deliver value through content post the purchase. This content will typically be:

• Evergreen topics relevant to your customers
• Company news about new services, offers, and updates on your team
• Trending “newsy” topics in your city as they relate to your industry

And so on.

Here’s an example from a local plumbing service provider that publishes plumbing tips regularly on localized topics relevant to its customers. Its website is the first organic search result for the term “plumbing tips san diego.” (Notice how this blog uses several posts with localized titles.)

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Some of the content that you plan for this stage might overlap with the content you plan for lead generation purposes, but it’s not a problem.

 

Wrapping it up…

To push people from your blog straight into your sales funnel, use multiple call-to-actions (CTAs) in your blog posts. Ask your leads to fill your query form or contact or call you.

HubSpot adds three CTAs to each of its posts: 1) A text-based CTA in the intro, 2) A loud banner at the bottom, and 3) an animated slide-in.

If you have the bandwidth, post local content weekly. That way, search engines keep returning to your website to index the latest that you post — which is good for SEO.

But it’s okay even if you can’t commit to posting regularly. Try to cover at least a few key content pieces spanning your local business sales funnel, and you should be good. Also, don’t worry about the low search volume. Just focus on getting those few evergreen content pieces live and monitor how they perform.

And don’t forget to audit your competitors’ content. See what they’re posting that even you could.

About 2Point Digital Agency: Since 2006, 2Point has been helping business owners build, manage, and expand their businesses using digital channels. Get in touch to see how we can help yours.