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“How far away is it?”
Whether you’re talking about a birthday party, a swanky new restaurant, or a doctor’s appointment, this is one of the first questions people always ask. Traveling takes time, gas, money — it’s an investment, and people do a quick cost/benefit analysis of everything they do based on how much of a slog it’ll be to get there.
So obviously, if you’re running a franchise business, the first thing you’re going to want to do is connect with all the potential customers in that tight, nearby radius. The costs of checking you out are next-to-nothing, so the barrier for convincing those customers is the lowest.
That’s where hyperlocal marketing comes in. Hyperlocal marketing focuses on connecting your customers with the closest outposts of your brand in their area, increasing relative foot traffic to your business. Additionally, it lets you speak to those customers directly with customized content and messaging, tailoring your ads so that they really hit home.
The Benefits of Hyperlocal Marketing
The benefits to this are manifold, including:
- Increase Brand Awareness — can help you build up your customer base, by reaching new customers in your immediate area, or helping to find customers in need of your product or services. Customers who live within half a mile of your location are going to be an easier sell than customers who come from across town, so why not start with them?
- Targeted Content — lets you tailor-make your ads for a given area — you can tie your ad copy to things like the local weather (like an HVAC company crafting ads during a heat wave, or an auto body shop doing a push after hail sweeps through town), the performance of the local sports teams (got a promotional item to give away, perhaps?), local holidays (they celebrate Casimir Pulaski day in Chicago and nowhere else) and just about anything else you can think of. This makes your customers feel like you’re speaking to them directly, a part of their communities.
- Cost-Effectiveness — targets a smaller grouping of people — and that means it’s more affordable than casting a wider net. But while you’re paying to target fewer people, you’re also targeting more-likely customers, which makes for healthier CPAs for your marketing budgets.
- Increased Customer Base — allows you to target customers your competitors might be overlooking with their broad-based campaigns, allowing you to nab conversions other people aren’t trying for.
Types of Hyperlocal Marketing
Hyperlocal marketing isn’t a monolith: there are multiple avenues to those local customers, and a lot of different ways to get your content in front of their eyes. The strongest strategy, of course, is a multi-pronged ad-campaign approach, which can include:
- Facebook Ads: lets you create “local awareness” ads within a specific radius of the user’s location, which can help drive traffic to whatever location is nearest to them. You can get more granular with it as well, targeting things like demographic and interest targeting, so that your ads are really only going to relevant potential customers.
- Paid Search: known by a lot of different names, paid search ads put your ads above the fold of search engine results pages (SERPs) on the devices of your choosing. More and more, customers are including the search terms “near me,” or “in [town]” in their results in their search for relevant, convenient locations to do business. Paid search ensures that you show up on those local search results.
- Email Marketing: once you’ve gotten local customers, you can hold onto them and generate newsletter content tailored to each location’s customer list, sending out updates, deals, and calls-to-action to those customers. It’s important not to overdo it — nobody likes spam — but the occasional gentle reminder that your location appreciates their business, and has new offerings available, can be a bump to your business at very little cost.
- CTV: Smart TVs are providing the new frontier in targeted advertising. CTV — or “Connected TV” advertising — refers to video ads delivered to users via Web-connected devices like smart TVs and phones. With this type of programmatic advertising, you can access the biggest advertisers in the world, maximize fill rates, and leverage proprietary first-party data with plug-&-play implementation.
- Display Ads: A catchall category that includes so-called banner ads and a variety of other formats, online display advertising promotes your brand message (“displaying” it) with a combination of text, logos, videos, etc. Display ads use market research and demographic data to target your ideal customers while they’re browsing social media, watching videos, checking email, or using mobile devices.
How Balihoo Uses Hyperlocal Marketing
If you’re thinking this is starting to sound like a lot to keep track of and manage, you’d be right — launching a multi-tier hyperlocal marketing campaign is a lot, whether you’ve got five locations to manage or five hundred. And after launch, you’ve got to track your successes, determine your ROI, and adjust your copy and strategies on the fly to double down on what works and jettison what doesn’t. All this on top of your million and one other priorities for the day. Hyperlocal marketing campaigns can be big business, however, and it’s worth doing well.
That’s why the best way to supercharge your hyperlocal marketing is to match up with a partner that understands the ins and outs of franchise operations, and can help you scale up your reach without scaling up your workload.
That’s where Balihoo comes in. Balihoo’s expert digital media team – powered by our proprietary automation platform – consistently delivers exceptional results for franchisees, generating measurable business outcomes and positive returns on your franchisee’s media budgets – whatever the size. One key (not secret) to our success is our Balihoo Transparency Guarantee. Unlike agencies who may take up to 50% of your media budget in hidden fees, every dollar of your franchisees’ media budgets with Balihoo gets spent on media. Sounds like common sense? We agree.
If you’re ready to learn more, reach out to Balihoo today.
