The Five-Step, Quick Start Local Content Marketing Plan: Attracting the Right Target Audience

I’m on a journey to share about creating local-focused content that educates, attracts and converts. In the first installment, “The Five-Step, Quick Start Local Content Marketing Plan,” I provided an overview of the process for creating a content marketing plan. The second post covered establishing content marketing goals.

This post dives deep into Steps 2 and 3 of the five-step plan – Target Audience and Channel. Let’s explore the right audience to give you the action you want, and where this conversion will take place. If you misidentify your core audience, then even the highest quality content will not be effective – because it won’t be seen by the right people. 

Attracting the Ideal Target Audience Online

1. Who do you want to attract?

This is where you answer the question about what kind of audience you want to attract. This audience is the consumer that will give you the action you’re looking for – consumers with the desire and means to purchase the products and services you are marketing. If you’re selling a Cadillac, you want to reach consumers who have enough money to buy one. If you’re creating local content for a child psychologist, you need to reach parents of children who can benefit from this content.

While these examples seem pretty straightforward, it isn’t quite that clear-cut. Take that child psychologist, for example. If she specializes in counseling teens, then it’s probably not enough to reach only parents, since the teens themselves may have some influence on the decision to select a psychologist. It’s likely that a teen will not respond to the same content that motivates parents, especially in a world where more and more teens are carrying mobile devices. Teens have “micro-moments” just like everyone else these days!

Knowing that 91% of us check a mobile phone for ideas when in the middle of another task, should the psychologist choose to offer one type of content to teen prospects, and another type of content to his parents? (Hopefully you answered yes immediately.)

2. What’s the right channel?

Not only must the substance of content change according to audience, but the method of delivering it may also change. Teens are likely to respond to a short story, for instance, and they are also more likely than their parents to be watching them on Instagram.

Bargain hunters tend to favor Facebook and niche social sites that offer coupons and promotions, while college-educated women are often found on Pinterest. See where we’re going here?

90% of Instagram users are under 35, and they’re brand-conscious too, as 53% of them follow brands. Pinterest holds the interest of 45% of online women versus just 17% of online men. Find these and more informative stats in this infographic. 

3. Can the message reach wherever the audience might be?

As mentioned above, story type content is great for teens, and thankfully that doesn’t mean it is ineffective with other audiences. Our Cadillac dealer, for example, could probably benefit from running videos online and in his showroom, illustrating the cars in action and highlighting the features of the different models.

A content marketer working in an urban area might develop a podcast series that commuters can download and listen to while traveling to the office. Good old print is a mainstay format for content and can take many forms, including articles, eBooks and white papers.

Put the Audience First to Boost Local

To summarize, you can boost local results considerably when you carefully consider the characteristics of the specific audience you want to reach, factor in the type of content most likely to appeal to them, and research where the audience is most likely to discover that content.

We’ve covered quite a bit today. If you missed the first two posts in this series, you can catch up now – part 1 and part 2. Once you have read those posts, you can click here to easily access part 4.

Implementing a local content marketing plan along with a local presence management strategy is a cost-effective way to gets results quickly for your customers!

Learn more today about how Advice Local can help you reach more customers online.