• May 1, 2016
• By LinkNow Media
• In LinkNow Media
• 1 Comment
• 0
• Tagged: Hyper-Local Marketing Local Marketing

Hyper-local marketing is probably one of the biggest missed opportunities in local marketing. Nowadays, going local just isn’t enough. Both major brands and small brands flock to the same local marketing strategies and platforms, creating less space for anyone to truly succeed when it comes to ROI and increased searches. The only alternative for brands is to find smarter, savvier, and even smaller avenues to gain advantage over their competition. Here’s where market-specific, hyper-local media properties come into play.

If hyper-local marketing is the solution to all problems, why haven’t many brands adopted it?

The reality is that hyper-local marketing requires creativity, time, and effort. And in today’s world, where time equals money, many brands prefer to go with automated buying platforms that can do most of the work for them. With excuses like not having the time to monitor websites and networks, many brands end up taking a Google-only approach when it comes to local marketing.

Interestingly enough, advertisers are beginning to notice that they are not getting the results they want or the results they once achieved. Again, this is due to the fact that everyone flocks to giants like Google and as a result the number of searches will simply not increase as dramatically as it once did. Given the fact that there’s no longer enough room to play, smart advertisers are branching out and exploring hyper-local marketing as a viable option.

So how exactly does hyper-local marketing work?

The reality is that you will most likely not get the same ROI and volume of return that you could get from the “Big 3” search engines when you apply hyper-local marketing. That said, when you do use hyper-local marketing strategies, you can gain better campaign ROI. The way to achieve that is to build together multiple local market media buys that are both hyper-locally targeted and executed. But again, doing so requires way more work than if you just buy searches through automated buying platforms.

Now, if you’re ready for a challenge the first thing you can do is talk to your media agency and review their market-specific offerings. Most likely, the agency will provide geo-targeted recommendations via large sites like Facebook, Yelp, etc. However, this is not hyper-local marketing. In order to get hyper-local you must dig deep and beyond multi-market focused platforms. The best way to start searching for hyper-local gems is to search “town name news” on any given search engine, for example “Redding MA news.” This type of search will lead you to single-market focused websites that are usually overlooked by big advertisers and buying platforms. These websites will be filled with local content and the best part: they will probably not host any national brands. In other words, these hyper-local websites are the safe haven for local advertisers!

So go ahead and give hyper-local marketing a try. It will take hard work, but it can certainly provide a beneficial lead flow and local market awareness.