Hyperlocal Marketing: All You Need to Know
Email marketing can bring your business a 4000% return when done right, according to this graphic by SmartInsights. What this means for you is that you get 42 times your investment. Other online marketing strategies, such as SEO, Google ADs, video marketing, and influencer marketing, also give excellent returns.
Online businesses use these strategies to generate massive revenue with minimal input. Brick-and-mortar stores without an online presence have been left out in the cold. And they have had to rely on offline marketing tactics such as TV ads, flyers, billboards, etc., which are ineffective. That is until the advent of hyperlocal marketing.
Hyperlocal marketing bridges the gap between online marketing and offline businesses. It is cost-effective and yields quick results compared to other digital marketing means. Also, you don’t require a huge team to implement it.
This post will define hyperlocal marketing, the benefits, a few strategies, and three examples of successful campaigns.
What Is Hyperlocal Marketing?
Hyperlocal marketing is a tactic employed by marketers targeting customers within a specific geographic location. The aim is to increase foot traffic to local brick-and-mortar businesses through local online searches. Offline local businesses or online stores with a physical store benefit the most.
Remember when you were looking for a restaurant or coffee shop in an unfamiliar neighborhood?
Instead of driving around looking for one, you probably did a Google search. And at the top of the search results are local businesses offering the product or services you searched for. Optimization for hyperlocal searches drives such local stores to the top of search results.
Searchers no longer add the “near me” or “nearby” location qualifiers but expect local businesses to feature heavily in the search results. Data from Google support this sentiment as the searches without the location qualifier have increased by 150%. It shows that searches for the same products or services using location qualifiers are declining while searches without are increasing.
The Google algorithm has also changed, focusing more on user intent than anything else. This change is why local businesses appear at the top of SERP results, and related businesses appear under the more things to do and discovery sections.
Why Is Hyperlocal Marketing Important?
Every business that wants to increase foot traffic should pay attention to hyperlocal marketing as it is very cost-effective. Targeting ensures you are not going after consumers who are unlikely to visit your store. You only use a portion of your budget over a small, well-defined population likely to buy.
Most people conducting location-based queries such as “near me” or “where to buy” are ready to purchase. Therefore, only a few resources are required to convert the searchers to paying customers, making the return on investment significant. Optimizing your business for local queries is affordable, making it easy, even for companies with several locations.
When done right, hyperlocal marketing makes acquiring leads with a high chance of converting affordable.
Since running the campaign is easy, you don’t need a huge team to oversee it. It is effortless to keep track of relevant performance metrics compared to other marketing strategies. You are dealing with a local market segment within a target area. As such, the campaign is not overwhelming.
Author: Seobility — License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Hyperlocal Marketing Tactics
You have several tactics you can use to do hyperlocal marketing.
They vary in effectiveness and cost, and you have to weigh which suits your target audience. The available budget plays a major role in choosing a strategy. Also, critical data on your potential consumers and where they hang out online are significant factors. For example, social media platforms matter greatly; potential customers may be on Instagram or Facebook.
Taking a multichannel approach produces much better results. Such an approach is helpful when you are testing, as the results of each platform will guide you. The following are tactics you should consider.
Author: Seobility — License: CC BY-SA 4.0
1. Google My Business Listings
It is free to create and optimize a Google My Business profile. This listing increases your chances of appearing in search results and across other Google entities like Google Maps. If you haven’t created your business profile, you should do so. Once done, optimize it for location and relevant keywords, especially in the business description, for better results. Data indicates that 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly from search results.
To stand out and boost your hyperlocal efforts, ensure all the information is accurate and up-to-date. It should also be similar across your website and social media pages. You shouldn’t miss these crucial details: name, address, phone number, business category, description, website, and company attribute.
Using an international phone number might put off some local customers. Instead, use a local phone number even if you run a global business for your local location pages. List different phone numbers for companies with multiple business locations. Remember, you can only add other locations once the main one is verified.
Under Google My Business listings, there are over 2300 business categories. Be as specific as possible in picking the right one, as it will increase your search visibility.
Also, having multiple high-quality images on your profile increases the chances of customers calling your business. Reports from search engine land indicate you will receive more clicks, calls, and direction requests depending on your number of images. If your business has over 100 images, expect to receive 520% more calls than those with one.
2. Local Content Marketing
It is another effective strategy to use for hyperlocal marketing efforts. You can create various types of content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, and images. But you must ensure your content satisfies the searcher’s intent for you to be successful. Creating relevant local content improves your chances of targeting and converting customers doing local searches.
Discovering the kind of content your potential customers are looking for on the internet is easy. You can conduct a short online survey or quiz. Find out where your ideal customers hang out and administer the survey on those platforms. It could be on the company website, social media, or the company newsletter. The response will guide you on your local content marketing strategy.
Keyword research is another way of determining the kind of content to create. Various tools are available to help you carry out the research. Once you come up with the right keywords, create suitable content around those keywords but remember, ensure you fulfill the searcher’s intent.
To increase the visibility of your business in local search results, incorporate a live Google Map in addition to your local content. It will direct customers to your physical location.
3. PPC Ads and Location-Targeting
PPC stands for pay-per-click, and it is a paid advertising marketing tactic where you only pay for your ad whenever someone clicks on it. To set it up, you simply create the ad campaign, pick keywords you’d like to appear for, and bid on the keywords to appear in search results. PPC ads get you on top of search results as they appear before organic results.
One of the reasons a PPC ad campaign is popular is its controllable cost. You only get to pay for clicks. The results come quickly compared to other SEO efforts like blog posts which take time before reaching the top of search results.
Another advantage of PPC ads is the ease with which you can measure the results of your efforts through various platforms. Once you have information such as likes, clicks, site visits, and costs, you can decide whether you should continue spending your money.
You can target your preferred location since you dictate when and where your ads will appear. Segmenting your primary audience based on where they live increases the visibility of your ad to the local population.
4. Near Me Searches
Mobile devices today are enabled with location or GPS features. Since most apps require you to turn this function on, almost everyone leaves it on. Previously, some people turned the location off their smartphones for privacy reasons. Google detects your location, which is why you receive local search results. The same goes for ads targeted to specific areas.
You can optimize for such results in several ways to ensure your business appears on top whenever a consumer performs a near-me search.
- As we discussed earlier, the first one is through the listing and optimizing your business profile on Google My Business.
- Businesses can use schema markup to ensure they stand out. It allows search engines to present information relevant to “near me” searches in rich snippets. Include the business hours, address, and contact information. It would be best if you carried the same on your website.
- Create a location page for every location of your business and ensure it is optimized. Also, use user-friendly URLs and optimize the title and meta tags for the relevant keywords. You must optimize all alt tags and title tags for images on the location pages for the location keywords.
- The business description should also be optimized and include your store hours, directions, and address.
- When linking internally to various location-specific pages, include “near me” with the anchor text.
Author: Seobility — License: CC BY-SA 4.0
Hyperlocal Marketing Examples
The following successful hyperlocal marketing campaign examples will inspire you to develop a winning strategy for your business.
Spotify
The Spotify campaign dubbed “There’s a playlist for that” is intensely localized and personalized and aims to enhance engagement. When they launched the brand in India, the campaign was a huge success. The idea was to let users discover over 3 billion playlists, each curated by in-house editors, algorithms, and users. The songs complement various everyday social experiences, local culture, and moods.
In India, things are very different, as the same song may have a completely different meaning in other localities. The campaign effectively communicates that there’s a playlist for the users regardless of the moment. Whether things are good or bad, the message is the same.
The campaign is hyperlocal and targets a specific city or area but is also situation-specific and local quirk-specific.
McDonald’s
The fast-food brand has franchise outlets in different countries, offering different menus. Although the food served differs, the logo tagline and plan remain the same across all countries. McDonald’s has gone the extra mile to ensure the food caters to each hyperlocal scenario. The result is customers who love the food and identify with the brand. In addition, they save on costs by using local vendors for their supplies.
The hyperlocal marketing strategy has led to over 38000 outlets in over 100 countries. They continue serving fast and low-cost food in all of these locations.
It is the largest platform for professionals and businesses. Using hyperlocal marketing on LinkedIn has led to better opportunities for collaboration between companies and professionals. The platform also connects businesses to investors, local audiences to businesses, and the members share and interact socially.
Conclusion
Each business with a physical location should use hyperlocal marketing to boost foot traffic. Your online presence receives a boost also. You can achieve incredible results quickly at a fraction of your marketing budget.
A hyperlocal campaign needs only one person or a small team, depending on the business size. The benefits include a high ROI and ease of management, even for local small businesses.
Using the tactics above, you can launch your targeted marketing campaign and start attracting new customers from the local population.
