Everyone loves a good underdog story. The Mom and Pop store that is just down the street serving as a community staple evokes shades of Mayberry. But how do you get to that point? Service with a smile and a warm hello can’t happen if your market doesn’t know anything about you or, God forbid, where to find you!

Whether you are a new business in the community or are already well established, hyperlocal marketing is your ticket to becoming the hometown hero. The challenge for many businesses is dedicating the necessary resources to executing a successful hyperlocal strategy.

This is where the Your Business Marketer team shines. We have helped countless small businesses build their audience and dial in their marketing. In our world, no business is too small, and no strategy is too complex.

What is Hyperlocal Marketing?

Before we dive into the deep end, we have to establish what we mean by hyperlocal marketing. Chances are you picked up on the fact that it dials in on a very specific group of people. What you might not realize is that you are still thinking too big.

Start with your city, now go smaller. School district, perhaps? You are still thinking about it all wrong. Neighborhood? Now you are thinking hyperlocal, but it can still be ratcheted down a notch.

Hyperlocal marketing at its core is marketing within a highly restrictive environment. If you are selling your specialty items at a downtown boutique, you want to target the affluent housewives in the ritzy gated neighborhood. In its simplest terms: the more restricted the better. This allows you to use very specific messaging and ad targeting tactics to generate interest in whatever you are selling.

Why You Need a Hyperlocal Marketing Strategy

For businesses that have been marketing for a while, there is a good chance that you will assume that those hyperlocal strategies will simply rise to the top through larger scale campaigns. While you might have the one off hit, most of the time you will miss out on those closest to the action without a hyperlocal ad approach in place. This can be especially true if your business is new to the area.

While some consumers are content with jumping on Amazon and lining Jeff Bezos’ pocket, statistics show that 74% of in-store purchases start with the consumer searching for a particular product “nearby,” “near me,” etc. This coupled with the “shop small” trend means that if you are not adopting a hyperlocal strategy, you are missing out on revenue and the potential for repeat business.

4 Hyperlocal Marketing Advertising Must Haves

Now that you are thinking small, getting the building blocks in place is critical but not terribly challenging. As mentioned above, like any good marketing strategy you must devote time and energy to make hyperlocal marketing work. Below are four actionable items that every small business should take to heart.

1. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

The first tip is probably the most important and, in all honesty, the easiest. Start by setting your company up on Google My Business (GMB). This will ensure that your business doesn’t fall into the Google abyss when someone searches for a product “nearby.”

It simply boils down to one question: If your potential customers can’t find you, how can they buy from you? This might seem pretty straightforward, but the days of rifling through Yellow Pages are long gone. Consumers that are looking for local products are hitting up Google and you need to be there.

Once the listing is set up, make sure that you are updating contact information should anything change. Few things will send a potential customer running to a competitor faster than an out of date phone number or incorrect address.

2. Make Your Contact Info Visible

If you haven’t already, you should be spreading your contact info like Johnny Appleseed. For a successful hyperlocal marketing strategy, your contact information should be easily found not only in your GMB listing, but also on your website and social media pages.

Keep in mind that most consumers that visit your website 1) will be doing so from a smartphone and 2) will NOT scroll to the bottom of the page. This means you need to have your website mobile optimized and place that contact information at or near the top of the page.

The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the customer, also known as the customer experience. The better the overall experience, the more likely they are to call in, engage on social media, and make those purchases that you covet.

3. Focus on Localized Content

Ok, we already know what you are thinking, “YBM team, we already post on social media every time there is a community event!” While that is great, and you should certainly keep up that trend, localized content in the context of hyperlocal marketing is better described as evergreen content.

This can come in a variety of forms such as blogs, newsletters, testimonials, customer reviews, and more. These pieces of content live and breathe where your customers spend their time online. Each piece of content acts as a beacon for Google’s algorithm, and will help you rank higher and higher in their search results pages. 

Compiling these resources with consistency and keeping them up to date will take time and energy. While most can live on your website, social media presents a challenge for many small businesses because there are so many platforms and each caters to a different demographic. Because of this, it may be better to outsource this piece of the puzzle.

4. Leverage Social Media

Advertising on social media is an amazing tool for small businesses that can be both highly effective and relatively inexpensive. Many look at the demographics data that can be tapped into and see a world of possibilities. And it makes sense, where else can you target millions of people at once, even on a limited budget?

But those same demographics can be used on a microscale just as easily. Tools like geographic radius can help you hone in on those closest to you while platforms like NextDoor can take it one step further and allow you to pinpoint the exact audience you want to target.

Resist the urge to only rely on Facebook for social media marketing. Yes it is powerful, but it is far from the only platform that can help you reach potential customers. Adopt an 80/20 rule when allocating your marketing budget. 80% to proven platforms, 20% to explore and uncover.

Take Your Marketing Hyperlocal

Creating a hyperlocal marketing strategy may look and feel different than what you have explored in the past, but both are cut from the same cloth. Preparation and a solid foundation are critical to a successful hyperlocal campaign, but you don’t have to go at it alone.

The Your Business Marketer team has built a reputation on helping small and growing businesses through the use of create marketing. We know what it takes to get your business off the ground, and how valuable your reputation is to success. Our team is standing by ready to help. To learn more about YBM or to schedule a consultation, reach out today!