“Restaurant near me”
“Furniture store near me”
“Bike shop near me”
Search phrases including “near me” have gone up exponentially over the past few years, seeing 900 percent growth from 2013 to 2017. But even now, most searchers expect Google to know their location to provide the best results, especially those on their phones with location tracking enabled. What does this all mean for your brand? It means you need a hyper-local marketing strategy.
Hyper-local marketing lets you target consumers in precise locations — sometimes even within a block’s radius. From there, you can drive local traffic to your brand’s retailers and win the business of “near me” searchers.
Niche marketing targets consumers who can particularly benefit from a very specific product, like marketing a vegan restaurant to those who are vegan. Hyper-local marketing instead recognizes consumers who are within a specific radius of your retailers and captures their attention the moment — or even before — they make a search that’s relevant to your brand or products.
Social media capabilities have seriously evolved over the years. It’s quickly becoming the most common way to discover new products, businesses, and services, so it needs to play a big part in the hyper-local marketing strategy you want to implement.
Without further ado, let’s get into five important tactics you need to include in your strategy for effective hyper-local marketing.
First and foremost, everyone needs a Google My Business listing. When individuals come across your brand or retailers in a “near me” search, Google My Business makes it easy to access contact information, location, hours, and important posts you want to share with your audience, such as company and event announcements, special offers, product promotions, and changes to your primary business info.
To get the best results from Google My Business, here’s a checklist of how to optimize:
Customer reviews are essential for winning the hyper-marketing game. You could have near-perfect Google My Business and social media presences, but a lack of engagement with your reviews — or worse, not having any at all — could hinder your success. According to consumers, businesses that respond to reviews are 1.7 times more trustworthy than businesses who don’t.
Audiences coming across your or your retailers’ businesses via hyper-local marketing aren’t going to be familiar with your business, so they’ll likely rely on reviews to make their decisions.
To ensure they have something to work with, you should always encourage customers to leave a review, even if it won’t be positive. Then, you need to engage with these reviews. Thank those who left positive ones, and respond to negative ones with transparency, empathy, and a solution to remedy the issue.
As we encourage you to employ social media as part of your strategy, it’s important to remember that Google My Business is not the only platform with reviewing capabilities; Facebook and its recommendations have entered the chat.
It’s no secret that social media is a must-have for any marketing strategy, and it can be even more effective at a hyper-local level. Seventy-six percent of consumers have purchased something they saw on social media, but only 21% bought it in a physical store. Wouldn’t it be nice if they knew exactly where their local store is? With social platforms like Facebook becoming increasingly like search engines, ensuring you have a strong local presence via your retailers’ channels is essential for business success.
If you’ve tried hyper-local marketing through your website, you’ve likely created meticulously researched, location-specific content like blogs for specific audiences. The good news is that these can be easily repurposed for social media distribution. Blogs can either be shared as is to platforms like Google My Business and Facebook, or, for visual platforms like Instagram and Twitter, they can be turned into engaging images, videos, and infographics. The tricky part of it all is keeping these assets organized and making sure your retailers have what they need for consistent, on-brand distribution.
Using your retailers’ social media channels, you can deploy exclusive offers and promotions for local audiences. Think outside the box and look into events and holidays unique to your local targets to build campaigns around. You should also keep track of unexpected events that occur in your target locations, such as a Super Bowl victory. This strategy is a win-win for both parties because you get local visibility and increased brand awareness while your retailers get an influx of new business.
Hyper-local marketing can feel like you’re narrowing your potential reach, but the goal is to target the right type of customer at the right time. ThumbStopper’s Brand Manager™ tool enables your brand to house all your localized digital assets in one place and even manage the distribution of it, including the timing, audience, location, and more. We also make sure all of that unique, localized content gets automatically posted to your retailers’ feeds without them even lifting a finger.
Ready to get started? Schedule a 15-minute brand assessment to learn how ThumbStopper can amplify your brand.