If there’s one thing we’ve learned working with local businesses from around the globe, it is that being a local business owner is a busy affair.

We’d have a call with a client at 5AM about SEO before she hits the gym. We’d hear from a client over his lunch about his next ad budget. Another client would send us a quarterly review before signing off for the Saturday night out. From Landscape Experts to Embedded Systems Developers, they’re always pressed for time yet they have to wear all those hats day after day. Why, then, should they care about creating content?

The simple version of the answer is that their online success depends on content. The longer version is a list of reasons why exactly their online success depends on it.

Customers want answers, not products

A famous quote from a Harvard Business School professor goes: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole”.

Your customers have problems that need solving, and they care about those solutions. Because these problems are personal, the answers they seek are also personal to them, not to your business. The only way to sell them your solution is to present it in a way that is personal to them, and that can happen only through content.

Even when someone is searching for Italian cuisine for dinner, she’s going to skip right over your result that says “ABC Food Corner” and click on the one that says “XYZ Italian Cuisine Restaurant | Delicious Pasta Varieties”.

Trust Before Conversion

If you function long enough in the digital marketing industry, among the most important pieces of knowledge you’ll learn is that people almost never convert on their first visit. A huge part of your conversions would come from customers who are already familiar with your brand and with whom you’ve established trust. They need to know how good you are in your business, how passionate you are in your craft, what the locals think of you, etc.

Make videos about how you do your craft, publish articles on how your customers can solve some of the common problems, publish testimonials from happy customers, tell them stories of how you solved a critical problem for a client... There is so much that content can do to build trust.

SEO Depends on Content

Keeping your website content rich is an important requirement for SEO success. Search engines like it when a website is filled with relevant and useful content that satisfies the intent behind the search queries. Content relevance and recency are two of the most important ranking factors for any search engine.

By regularly publishing content on topics related to your niche, you’re feeding search engines with fresh and meaningful content every time they come back to crawl your website. Search engines will love you for it.

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Content is a Lead Magnet

People are more likely to engage with businesses they’re familiar with. Content is the best way to make your business familiar with your customers, and to be remembered. If you give a lot of value through your content regularly, when you ask for their email address for an upcoming sale, your customers are more likely to give it to you, than when you’re showing up one fine day from the forgotten past and asking for their email.

These are some of the many reasons why you, as a local business owner, should invest your time and energy in creating content. We’re sure you’ll find more that back these up.