Hyperlocal social media marketing is gaining popularity in 2023. It’s a new strategy that’s emerged out of a growing need to connect with potential customers on a personal level. Personalization is taking marketing by storm with 71% of shoppers demanding it and 78% of shoppers more likely to return because of it. One such example of this heightened demand is the increase in search queries with “near me” or their city name.
Targeting a geographical location can help you create personalized messaging and engage with audiences more effectively. It can also improve the perception and trust of your brand to your customers. That’s why in this article, we’re going to discuss what hyperlocal social media marketing is, the benefits of using it, and the 5 most effective strategies you can implement to grow your business.
What Is Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing?
You likely already know that social media is king in building a loyal customer base. Social media marketing is a great way to generate leads and increase customer engagement and interaction. Organic and paid social media ads are an effective way to promote your business in front of the people who are most likely to convert into paying customers. But what is hyperlocal social media marketing?
Hyperlocal social media marketing is a strategy that targets potential customers in a geographical radius using messaging that’s tailored to the local population. It allows brands to connect with people in a specific neighbourhood or community. Typically, small businesses opt for this approach to increase foot traffic into their local store.
Hyper local marketing requires brands to think globally while acting locally. Personalized messaging is essential to reaching the right audiences. The more personalized your ads are, the more likely you are to resonate with your customers. This is especially important since 49% of consumers purchase after seeing a targeted ad.
Hyperlocalized marketing isn’t just about increasing your revenue. It’s also a great way to raise awareness about your business in a specific region. But wait, there’s more…
What Are the Benefits of Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing?
With the rise of smartphones that can be used for researching, interacting, and purchasing, social media marketing has become a crucial strategy in reaching your target audience. Hootsuite’s 2021 report cites that 45% of internet users use social media to find brand information. And according to Sprout Social, 68% of consumers purchased directly from social media and 98% of consumers planned to make at least one purchase through social shopping in 2022.
The numbers don’t lie. Whether organic or paid, social media ads greatly influence purchasing decisions. But why is hyperlocal social media marketing gaining popularity? In 2015, Google discovered that “near me” searches increased by double in 2014. However, in 2017 they revealed that searches without the “near me” phrase grew by 150%. This suggests that consumers now expect to see local search results automatically.
Another trend in consumer behaviour shows that consumers tend to research online but purchase offline. Yes, even Gen Z statistics show that they prefer to shop in-store. Taking into consideration the rise of social media research for products, we know that hyperlocal social media marketing is a primary strategy for increasing foot traffic to physical stores.
If you’re still on the fence about the effectiveness of hyperlocalized marketing, here are 6 advantages of using this strategy:
Easy to Set Up
Setting up a hyperlocal ad campaign is easy thanks to its niche focus. Honing in on one local target makes it easy to create personalized ads. And once you’ve set up a successful hyperlocalized campaign in one location, the same strategy can be applied in another geographic area. Although different locations require different messaging, the basic principles of hyperlocal marketing remain the same, making it an easy strategy to scale.
Easy to Measure Performance
Measuring performance is easy with hyperlocalized marketing. You can easily track where your leads are coming from. This allows you to see what works in real-time and apply adjustments as needed. This increases your ability to convert customers as you can change your offer to what people are actively searching for.
Reduced Ad Spend
When you use hyperlocal advertising, you’re targeting a specific audience which allows you to save money. You don’t need a huge budget to run a nationwide campaign, for example. This keeps your spending to a minimum while increasing your likelihood of driving conversions. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) is higher because you’re targeting people who are already looking for what you have to offer.
You’re also more likely to save money if you select a niche target. That’s because you don’t have to waste money testing ads on broad target audiences.
Builds Customer Loyalty
Hyperlocal social media marketing is a great way to establish your brand as a local authority. By creating content that resonates with your target, your customers are more likely to trust your brand. Hyperlocal leads are more likely to become repeat buyers since they perceive you as trustworthy. This ultimately builds customer loyalty and establishes credibility through word of mouth.
Establishes Your Niche
You can easily beat your competitors by advertising on a hyper local scale. Hyperlocal marketing can position you as the top provider of a particular product or service in that region. Once you’ve established yourself in that niche, your customers are more likely to trust and stay loyal to your brand.
Gathers Customer Insights
Hyperlocal social media marketing is an easy way to gather customer insights online. You can easily discover where your customers reside and what they’re looking for. Social listening is an important part of identifying the trends, opportunities, and needs of your customers so you can effectively meet them. Gathering customer insights can help you create personalized ads that resonate more with your target audience.
5 Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing Strategies
Hyperlocal marketing done right is an effective way to find nearby leads and convert them into paying customers. It’s a convenient way for both you and your customers to connect with each other at the right time. Here are 5 hyperlocal marketing strategies that can save you time and earn you money:
Leverage Facebook’s Reach Ad Objective
When you advertise on Facebook, you get to choose from various ad objectives to use for your campaign. You can select ad objectives based on the goal of your campaign. The “reach ad” objective allows you to reach more customers in a targeted region. So if you want to reach as many customers as possible in a specific geographic region, leveraging Facebook’s reach ad objective is the way to go.
The reach ad objective is the best choice for targeting a smaller audience while keeping your cost-per-impressions (CPM) low. That’s because, if you’re targeting a smaller audience, your daily budget can be set lower. The smaller the audience, the smaller the budget can be to prevent the same people from seeing your ad too frequently.
The reach ad objective is also available to use for Instagram campaigns. While you can choose to target hot or cold audiences, choosing to target hot audiences is more effective. That’s because you will be targeting consumers who have engaged with your business before, and therefore, are more likely to purchase your product or service.
Use Local Hashtags
A great strategy for hyperlocal social media marketing is to use local hashtags associated with your region of choice. Platforms like Instagram have local hashtags that help your posts be seen by nearby customers. That’s why if you’re advertising in Hamilton, we suggest using some of the above hashtags.
It’s important to choose relevant hashtags over popular ones as popular hashtags tend to be oversaturated with posts. Niche hashtags will boost your brand visibility. However, you still want to avoid being overly niche. Hashtags with less than 10 000 followers aren’t likely to help your brand visibility any more than hashtags with 1 million followers.
Instagram suggests using 3 to 5 hashtags. However, you can use up to 30 unique hashtags per post. According to Sprout Social, the top-performing posts use an average of 2 to 5 hashtags. Regardless of how many hashtags you use, you should always focus on using the most relevant hashtags in your geographical region. Using local hashtags will make your business more visible to local customers. This is the point of hyperlocal marketing, after all.
Post With Location Geotags
In addition to using local hashtags, you can also use location geotags to boost your likelihood of being seen by local customers. Just like in the image above, you can post content with a geotag of your location. This allows you to be seen in a library of other posts with the same geotag.
This is an excellent strategy for increasing awareness of your business. Another great aspect of location geotags is the engagement it creates. When people see your local business online, they can interact with your brand before coming into your business. This is a great way to build customer relationships.
If you’re using a business account on Facebook or Instagram, your location geotags will be automatically generated on Instagram. However, Meta also gives you the option to create your own custom geotag for your business.
Create Localized Content
Now that you know to use local hashtags and geotags, you want to ensure you’re creating localized content. If you’re a small business, you’re already aware of the events that are happening in your local area. This is a great opportunity to create content that’s specific to your region. Not only does this increase brand awareness and engagement, but it can also increase your ranking in both Google and social media search results.
There are many strategies for creating localized content. In the example above, Urban City Hamilton promotes a new business that opened in the region. This is known as cross-promotion where local businesses partner with each other to promote each other on their social media page. Another great way to create localized content is by capitalizing on what makes your business unique to the local community.
Engage With Local Communities
Engaging with the local community is an easy way to build trust with your customers.
By promoting your local business on social media, you can easily reach and interact with your local customers online. You can choose to collaborate with local businesses, influencers, and niche groups within your local community by promoting them on your page.
Actively engaging with your customers by addressing their questions and concerns is an easy way to show that you care about them. Whenever customers tag you in a post, you can also reshare their content (known as UGC) and tag them back to create social proof amongst your audience.
4 Tips for Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing
Now that you know the top 5 hyperlocal social media marketing strategies, we want to provide you with 4 additional tips for success. As we’ve mentioned, hyper local marketing is all about connecting with local customers, communities, and other businesses. You want to demonstrate how much you care about your customers by creating opportunities to interact in a personalized way. Here are 4 strategic tips to drive foot traffic and maximize your marketing efforts:
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
One of the best ways to market your business locally is by setting up a Google Business Profile on Google Maps. Google Business Profile is a free tool that allows businesses to increase their online presence on Google. Your Google Business Profile is a listing on Google Maps from which Google sources your business information for listing in the local search results.
While this is an obvious tip, optimizing your Google Business Profile is the fastest way to maximize your visibility in the search results. It really is SEO 101. To optimize your business profile, you want to ensure that your business details are accurate, such as your name, address, and opening hours. There is nothing more annoying for your customers than arriving at the wrong location or time.
There are three main criteria you want to address when optimizing your Google Business Profile:
Relevance
In order for your business to be considered relevant to the search results, you have to match the user’s search query. Here’s the best way you can do that:
- Create a business description with your SEO keywords
- Choose the right category that best fits your business
- Set up your business operating hours and days
Prominence
Google also ranks businesses for prominence. That is, whether or not your business is trustworthy enough to suggest to users. Here’s how to rank for prominence:
- Ask customers to review your business
- Only use high-quality images for your business
- Manage your online reputation (especially reviews)
Proximity
Proximity is the third most important criterion for optimizing your Google Business listing. It’s simple: is your business close enough to list in the user’s search results? While it’s not really possible to optimize your proximity, there are some best practices you can use:
- Create separate landing pages for each location if you have more than one
- Leverage famous landmarks nearby by including them in your business description
Perform Social Listening
As we mentioned previously, social listening is an important part of your hyperlocal social media marketing strategy. That’s because localized marketing is all about personalization. The more you know about your customers, the more you can create content that resonates. Using a tool like Hootsuite is one of the best ways to perform in-depth social listening with real-time analysis of online conversations. This will allow you to keep up with the trending topics and hashtags, while also meeting and addressing your customers’ feedback.
Remember, social media is all about being reactive. Keeping up with the latest trends and local events is a great way to relate with your customers. Following the local news, radio stations, and TV channels are one way. You can also set up Google Alerts to monitor what’s currently trending in your local area.
Tap Into Local Culture
Following the strategy of engaging with local communities, tapping into local culture is a fun way to leverage local lingo and stereotypes. This is a great way to personalize your ads for your hyperlocal campaign. It’s the best way to be seen as a trustworthy and authoritative business in your local community. This increases customer engagement and loyalty to your brand.
One way you can tap into local culture is by addressing any challenges that your community is facing and empathizing with them. Local events are another way to create buzz around your business. Not only would you be marketing to locals but also to anyone who is visiting for the event.
Use the Right Keywords
If you’re familiar with the marketing strategy of search engine optimization (SEO), you likely know why keywords are important. Keywords play a critical role in your hyperlocal ad campaign. You’ll want to optimize your ad campaign by focusing on keywords that include your location. Including negative keywords in your campaign is also worthwhile. Negative keywords are the keywords you don’t want to rank for. Including them in your campaign can prevent your ad spend from increasing too much.
Related: Top 5 Best Local SEO Tools
Final Words: Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing
Hyperlocal social media marketing is a highly effective way to drive traffic to your business, especially in today’s highly competitive market. Despite the initial perception of marketing to a smaller target audience, going hyperlocal can improve lead quality, reduce cost-per-lead, and increase return on ad spend (ROAS).
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have become powerful tools in hyperlocal marketing, making it easier for businesses to connect with local customers and grow their business. By leveraging the tips and features outlined in this article, businesses can establish valuable relationships with their local customers and reap the benefits of a successful hyperlocal social media marketing strategy.
If you’re looking for help to level up your digital marketing, we’re here to help. Contact us today for a wide range of marketing services to fuel sustainable growth for your business.
Originally published . Last updated .
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