Are you a small to medium-sized business (SMB) facing fierce local competition? Then Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing is for you.
This strategy will allow you to attract new customers more effectively, ensuring a consistent flow of business each month. In this blog, we will cover everything you need to know about hyperlocal social media marketing and how to implement it so your business can gain an advantage over its competitors.
You may be wondering, “What’s the difference between hyperlocal social media marketing and regular social media marketing?” In short, it’s all about content. Hyperlocal social media marketing involves tailoring a significant portion of your business’s social media content—both organic and paid—with locally relatable elements specifically for your audience.
Have you ever seen a social media post about a local event a business is hosting? Or a video celebrating a local sports team’s victory? These are examples of hyperlocal social media marketing.
Here’s a good test to see if your business is effectively leveraging hyperlocal social media marketing: If someone unfamiliar with your business looked at your social media over the last six months, could they guess which local community you serve? Would they understand what that community is like? Most importantly, would they feel connected to your business? If so, you are effectively implementing hyperlocal social media marketing. If not, keep reading to learn how to implement this strategy.
Hyperlocal social media marketing is effective due to affinity bias, a cognitive bias where people are naturally drawn to things similar to themselves. This bias is evident in many aspects of life, including:
Hyperlocal social media marketing leverages this natural pull by tapping into the shared familiarity of local culture. According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers are 66% more likely to purchase from a brand that they feel shares their values and cultural background.
Hyperlocal social media marketing gives SMBs a distinct advantage over large enterprises. Smaller businesses can be more locally present and engaging, making it easier for them to attract customers based on affinity bias. This effect is further amplified when the owner or principal business manager takes on the role of a brand ambassador. As a consistent spokesperson and face across all channels and content forms, this approach enhances the business’s authenticity and relatability.
The primary benefit of hyperlocal social media marketing is increased brand resonance, which ultimately leads to more customers for your business. Brand resonance refers to the level of connection and relationship customers have with a brand. High brand resonance signifies a strong psychological bond, resulting in greater loyalty, attachment, and active engagement with the brand.
Businesses that implement hyperlocal social media marketing enjoy the following benefits:
Heightened Brand Familiarity: When customers can easily recognize and recall your brand, it stands out in a crowded market, leading to higher customer retention and repeat purchases.
Increased Referrals from Strong Brand Trust: Trustworthy brands are seen as reliable and credible, making customers more likely to engage in repeat business and recommend the brand to others.
Expanded Reach with More Partnership Opportunities: A well-regarded brand attracts potential collaborations with other businesses, influencers, and industry leaders, expanding reach and introducing new customer segments.
Higher Organic Traffic Through Social Media Search: Optimizing your social media presence can attract more visitors actively searching for relevant topics, leading to higher engagement rates, more leads, and increased conversions.
Lower Conversion Costs: Familiar brands require less persuasive effort to drive conversions, reducing overall costs.
Hyperlocal social media marketing is for any business that primarily serves a specific location. As a general rule of thumb, if your target audience is within a 15-mile radius of your business, then hyperlocal marketing is likely a good fit.
Additional Considerations: It’s important to note that hyperlocal marketing can harm your business if implemented improperly. For example, if your target customer base expands across an entire state, hyperlocal content might mislead potential buyers into thinking you only serve the local areas mentioned in your social media, potentially causing customers to disqualify themselves.
Social media significantly influences purchasing decisions, and its impact is expected to grow as younger generations increasingly rely on social media for information. A study found that 27% of people use social media as an inspiration for purchasing decisions. We are in the midst of a shift from search engines to social media searches. Neglecting social media and hyperlocal content will leave businesses struggling against larger competitors, and many will not survive.
Like all marketing strategies, it starts with your target audience and having a thorough understanding of how they think, behave, and what their interests are. This is particularly crucial for hyperlocal social media marketing, where you tailor content based on specific attributes of your target audience, ensuring it resonates with them on a personal level.
To fully understand your target audience, define their geographic location, interests, and behavioral preferences:
Focus on themes prevalent among the majority of your target audience. Be cautious when doing this, as it is natural to place an overemphasis on your most recent customers and accentuate a pattern that isn’t there. This can skew your perception of who your target audience truly is. Whenever possible, use CRM data and surveys to gain insights and avoid biases.
Key messaging refers to the core messages you consistently communicate to your target audience. These messages should convey how you can uniquely meet your customer’s needs and how their life will be changed as a result.
To help get you started on developing your key messaging, focus on answering these three questions:
What is your business uniquely good at? This question aims to uncover your value proposition—a concise statement that articulates what your business excels at and why it’s relevant to your customer.
What promise does your business offer its customers? Purchase decisions are almost entirely emotional. Trust is one of the strongest emotions influencing these decisions. This question helps articulate your brand’s promise, which is the foundation of trust. Money-back guarantees and other promises to mitigate customer risk are ideal. But promises can come in other forms. For example, a bakery can promise to use fresh organic produce in all its pies, or an IT service provider can promise 6-hour onsite support for any critical emergency.
How does your business change the life of its customers? As mentioned, emotions drive purchase decisions. Focus on discussing your product in terms of its deepest benefits. For example, a dental clinic should emphasize the confidence gained from having whiter teeth. While white teeth are an outcome of the offering, the true benefit is the confidence they provide. Similarly, for a painting company, the benefit isn’t just a professionally painted house. Rather, it’s giving the customer back an extra week of summer by taking the painting project off their hands.
There are four stages that make up the transition from a person who doesn’t know the name of your company to a satisfied customer. This journey is called the marketing funnel. When developing your content strategy, consider these stages and their purposes to ensure your content effectively engages individuals at each step along the way.
The first stage in the funnel is awareness. At this stage, the person isn’t familiar with your company and, depending on the industry, may not even realize they have a problem that needs solving. Your goal here is to make your company known by articulating the pain they experience and how you can uniquely address it. Example: If you are a dental clinic, your content should focus on their desire for a confident smile and your ability to provide a solution that straightens and whitens teeth quickly without the need for braces, which might cause further insecurity.
The second stage is consideration. At this point, the person is aware of your company and their problem. They are now actively seeking information on the best way to solve their issue. Consider what questions they might be asking to determine the best path forward. Example: For a dental clinic, potential questions might include: Will insurance cover this? How much does it cost? How long does it take? What are the different methods to straighten my teeth?
The third stage is conversion. Here, the person is ready to decide on a solution and choose a provider. People tend to purchase from companies they trust, and this trust can be built through positive customer testimonials and evidence of your solution’s success. It can also stem from a feeling of connection and similarity with your business.
This is where hyper-local social media comes into play. When you share content specific to your client’s geographical location and personalize it to their context, they will trust you more. They will feel connected to your business because you resonate with their local identity. People tend to like those who are like them, and this extends to businesses. Commonalities such as local sports teams, events, food, and beliefs heavily influenced by location can foster this connection.
The final stage is loyalty. After the customer has chosen to purchase from your business, loyalty is built through consistent trust and reliability. Loyalty comes from providing goods and services that meet expectations consistently, ensuring a uniform experience regardless of other factors.
The marketing funnel should serve as a blueprint for your content plan. Create lists of different blogs, articles, white papers, product documents, and videos, and categorize them into the different stages of the marketing funnel. Some content may fit into multiple stages, which is fine, but having a structured framework is essential.
Now that you have a list of content ideas for each stage of the marketing funnel, you’re ready to start creating. Consistency builds trust. Your content should be consistent not only visually and in its tone of voice but also in its messaging, values, and overall brand experience. Most businesses have a Corporate Identity System or Branding Bible that serves as a guide for maintaining consistency. If you don’t have such a system in place, consider hiring an agency like ours to help build one for your brand.
By incorporating these strategies, your social media content will resonate more deeply with local audiences, driving higher engagement and stronger community connections.
After developing your content, start using paid social media to maximize your return on investment (ROI). Follow these steps to get started:
All of your decisions should be backed by data. Every month, evaluate all of your marketing channels to understand what is performing best.
Hyperlocal social media marketing requires data-driven decision-making and continual improvement. By understanding your audience, defining key messages, building a robust content strategy, and integrating hyperlocal elements, you can create a powerful marketing engine that consistently generates opportunities for your business. Keep refining your approach based on performance data to enhance your strategy over time.