Brand marketing has evolved from inserts, small print ads and banners to targeting audience with customised content, powered by precise location targeting. Pinpointing potential customers within a limited geographical area via ‘near me’ searches or personalised content on their smart devices, also known as ‘digital hyperlocal marketing’ has become a rage amongst enterprises.
Hyperlocal marketing’s growing implementation can be traced back to two primary reasons:
● Massive internet penetration and increased smartphone usage in India.
● Change in the Indian consumer behavior and rising demand of customised services and products.
The incredible precision of location awareness and geotargeting is the crux of digital hyperlocal marketing. It also offers number of benefits to brands and their promoters.
● It helps the marketers to drive all their marketing efforts to a relevant audience more effectively.
● It enables consumers to search for products and services near them.
● It empowers promote to promote their brands more effectively and creatively.
● This technique ensures an incredible ROI.
● Motivates consumers to visit stores the very same day.
● Helps garner real time online reviews which can boost local rankings of the brand further.
Here are a few key points to consider while promoting your business through hyperlocal marketing technique.
Search: The fuel for hyperlocal marketing
Google has created a dynamic digital ecosystem consisting of area centric online directories, social media and mobile marketing which enables marketers to easily target consumers using geo-targeting. ‘Near me’ searches have swelled in the past few years and digital marketing companies should take advantage of this through hyperlocal targeting. Many search engines are now suggesting relevant business locations near the search device, by default.
Content
Personalised, localised and customised content is the key to attract maximum brand engagement, recall value and brand loyalty. In addition to brand message, it must speak to the consumers’ mind and become a solution to their problems and requirements. Promotions usually do well when they consider area specific interests in their marketing campaigns to make them more personalised. For instance, an authentic regional restaurant can be promoted along the lines of cultural significance and pride in one’s state.
Retargeting
From a business point of view, finding new prospects to improve business is great, but it is equally important to retain existing customers. These might be ones who have shown interest in the brand’s products and/or maybe even visited the outlet at some point. Retargeting such customers via regular SMS or emailers that carry compelling promotional offers enable brands to get them back in the fold. To meet this objective, demographic and psychographic factors like gender, age, interests and hobbies are taken into consideration.
Geofencing
Through geofencing, businesses can target consumers based on their point of interests within a predefined geographic boundary. Several events are triggered when a user’s device enters that particular area. This can assist the advertisers in providing a real time personalised experience to their customers.
Social media influence
Facebook has evolved into an out and out commercial hub, with Instagram and WhatsApp joining its ranks. Instagram is predicted to gain more prevalence for brands to showcase their products and services. Although the nuances of content generation differ across these platforms, they teach brand valuable lessons about using social media for business, how to create impactful content strategies, grow an online community, engage consumers and drive business sales.
Hyperlocal content marketing strategies can help local businesses to churn personalised content catering to the audience-specific desires and needs in real time. This enables brands to generate qualitative leads that further boosts businesses extraordinarily. Case in point is the much discussed Shahrukh Khan commercial for Cadbury’s chocolates released during Diwali that drew customers to their very own ‘kiraana’ stores. It’s time to pay heed to the power of hyperlocal marketing strategies that are creating a buzz in the digital marketing arena.
