In the digital age, brands have unlimited options when it comes to establishing their audience. The convenience and ease of digital news and personalized feeds make global reach entirely attainable. However, the power of building a local audience cannot be ignored. Tailoring your content to fit your local audience increases engagement and meaningful relationships with solid roots. So, in the days of global online expansion, what are the tricks to creating content for your local market? This is where content localization comes in. 

Content localization is tailoring your brand’s content to fit a specific market. While this technique is critical to global marketing strategies, the same methods can be used to access a local market. 

This article will discuss content localization and how it can enhance your reach in your local space. Plus, we’ll cover the pros of using AI to help spread the word about your brand in your community. Let’s get started. 

What is content localization? 

Content localization has one overarching goal: to reach a targeted audience in a way that feels local. Every online user has unique experiences, preferences, cultural habits, and demographics. If you can tap into these factors when creating your content–keeping one target audience in mind at a time–your brand has a much better chance of establishing a loyal customer base.

Some of the benefits of content localization for brands include: 

• Maximizing reach: When brands tailor their content to a specific market, optimizing for different platforms is easier. Optimization is the key to maximizing your reach and ensuring the right audience sees your posts. If your brand is on X/Twitter, we cover some platform-specific optimization strategies publishers can use to reach local audiences. 
• Cultural sensitivity: Content localization makes you more culturally sensitive to specific groups and audiences. This helps avoid inadvertently offending potential audiences and helps navigate cultural nuances. 
• Relevance: We often discuss ensuring that your content remains relevant to your audience. Focusing specifically on one audience at a time helps narrow your content pool to popular topics that are bound to be popular. 
• Increased conversions: People are more likely to take action when they feel personally connected, which is why content localization shows higher rates of conversations. Plus, buying locally is widely supported in most communities. If you catch the eye of your local market, it’s a big plus. 

Creating content for your local market 

Chances are that if you have a current marketing strategy, you’re already doing a lot of these steps. You may just need to tweak certain areas to be more specific and direct to access your local market. Here are some tips to get started using content localization techniques. 

Localized strategy 

Before you tailor your content to your local market, you must know which audiences you’re targeting. Who exactly are you trying to reach? What are their values? What are their experiences? Create a strategy outlining the details, including demographics, trends, preferences, and key themes for each audience. This will serve as a great springboard for launching a tailored approach. 

Leverage inbound marketing 

Inbound marketing refers to the content you produce for your social platforms, website, and in person. These include social posts, videos, blogs, stories, local events, and other free types of marketing campaigns designed to network and engage. Inbound marketing strategies are great for organic engagement. If you can further refine these existing approaches to better suit your local audience, the potential for organic reach will skyrocket. 

Adapt your language 

The language you use to reach your audience can make or break engagement. Your marketing voice needs to sound professional and appear as if it was written directly to your targeted audience. 

Think about your targeted audience’s age, occupation, socioeconomic status, education, interests, and desires. Then, think about how you would have a conversation with them. Pay attention to details like tone, phrasing, length, and which platform you will likely find them on. Once you know this information, you’ll better understand how to word your content to spark engagement. 

Professional language translation 

If you live in a diverse community, it may be worth exploring professional language translation services to reach your audience in different dialects. Never rely on free translation programs. You could set your brand up for negative feedback! Make sure your content is translated into a language your audience can understand. It may even be worth seeking local translation feedback advice before launching any campaigns. 

Modify ad placements

You can hyper-target your marketing ads on most social media platforms to reach an exact audience. When setting your SEO strategy, choose the niche and demographics that best fit your local market. Be geo-specific by adjusting your radius and narrowing down keywords when optimizing your content to tailor your reach further. 

Connect with other businesses.  

Collaborating with other local businesses on campaigns and events is a powerful method to expand your local reach. Research businesses in your area that are active in the community and stand out for positive reasons. They don’t have to be in your niche if there is a connection. You can collaborate in person by throwing events together, cross-promote services online, or join forces for a social campaign. 

Enhance existing relationships

Are you doing enough to maintain your current audience? Your loyal audience is sticking around for a reason. Enhancing existing relationships means personalizing communications, engaging online, asking for feedback, offering loyalty rewards, hosting specific events, or extending gestures to show appreciation (exclusives, giveaways, etc.). When your audience feels appreciated, they spread the word and may lead other potential audiences your way! 

Engage on social 

Don’t just post content on your social media accounts–make sure you are active. This means engaging with your followers, other businesses, similar accounts in your niche and accounts you feel passionate about supporting. Your social media team should take time daily to leave authentic responses on your brand’s posts while searching for other accounts to engage with. 

AI in the local market 

You may not have even realized it, but AI has become a popular tool in local newsrooms across the country. Can you blame them? It takes a lot of work to narrow in on your audience, connect, manage, and maintain a steady flow of content to keep them interested. It’s no longer a job that one staff member can do, and AI is significantly impacting the success of companies that put it to work. 

Do you need help creating content for your local marketplace? True Anthem’s AI tool can probably help! Send us a message to connect or request a demo to see it in action.