If you’ve grown up in India, no matter which city you live in, what your purchasing capacity is, whichever demography you fall in, it doesn’t matter, there are certain jingles & ads that you know byheart. Either the characterization, the hook or simply the music in a random ad occupies a place in your memory palace even after decades.

That indeed is the power of ads when coupled with mass media! They last for hardly any longer than 10 seconds, but they occupy a permanent space in our minds. 

However, if you run a small/ mid level business, the dream of seeing the ad of your brand reach the masses may seem like a farfetched one. Of course, your business has the potential to grow and thrive but naturally you don’t have the budget to spend crores on making and displaying your ads across the country. But does that mean you shouldn’t be doing any marketing at all?

When the impact of your business is local, the service area is small and the marketing budget is smaller, the route that you can opt for is Hyper Local Digital Marketing!

Hi, this is Sohail from Beacon Media and today, let’s talk about Hyper Local Digital Marketing for your Business!

When we talk about Digital Marketing, people immediately emphasize on impressions, likes, shares and views, however if you are investing in Digital Marketing for your local business, what you should be interested in rather, is inquiries, walk-ins or online sales over followers, views and shares on your content.

Quality over Quantity

Let’s say you have a showroom for lights in Kanpur and want more people to visit your establishment. In this case, the purpose of Digital Marketing for you has to be to generate awareness about your existence, your location and what your products are.

Let’s say you get a lovely Walkthrough video of your beautiful showroom made and maybe that video gets 20,000 views, it may give you a glimmer of hope that so many people have seen your shop’s beautiful interior but, in this case, what is more important than the number of views on your video is the location of the 20,000 people who have seen your videos. The 20,000 views on your views are redundant if 50% of the views were from people in Hyderabad and the other 50% from Chennai.

On the contrary, let’s say you customize your posts’ audience and get less than 1,000 views but these views are from in and around Kanpur. This massively increases the opportunity of a walk-in.

How to get local views?

Language, Accent, Presentation style, Content Format and Content Medium play pivotal roles in this aspect.

It may seem silly when i say it, but if you sell cakes in Surat, Gujarat, the language of all your communications on digital media need to primarily be in Gujrati.

You need to follow that local calendar prepared by your municipality and prepare your offers and communications accordingly. You need to understand the local flavour and mood before investing in Digital Media

For instance a rainy day with flooded streets isn’t the best day to post content related to cakes and pastries, however if you do it’s better to communicate that you’re open and delivering despite the rain or closed due to the rain.

The content game

The simplest way to get a local audience is to observe your surroundings, the digital media users around you. Try and understand the nature and type of content that they consume and present your business in the same format.

For instance, if you observe that your potential customer spends 2 – 3 hours in a day scrolling on funny reels, prank videos, try incorporating it in your content.

No matter how outrageous the combination of a showroom for interior lights/fittings and prank reels may sound, if you want actual results organically from digital media, this is probably the best way to do it. 

The aggregator game

Every city has a few local creators, influencers, pages and Favebook groups or handles that are well known to the residents of the city. 

Try and reach out to these people/ pages, trust me, it is easier than dealing with a Client servicing executive from a swanky Digital Marketing agency.
Approach these page/group admins with an open mind and the offer of a barter or a little budget and try and collaborate.

Eg Rajeev Rox Bharti and 2nd hand car market in Kolkata

Engaging with your audience

Your audience will always remember if you take out the time to reply to a comment or answer a query over a message.

Even if it may not convert to a sale, try and give priority to engaging with the people who follow your content online

Eg, Blue World Park Kanpur

In conclusion

Interestingly, while marketing your business offline is concerned, traditional existing businesses have tried and tested routes and practices, but the moment the ball comes to the court of Digital Marketing, the game changes completely! From half-baked knowledge of Clients to a market filled with undercutting short-sighted service providers, the list is long as to why Hyper Local Digital Marketing is often neglected. We’ll discuss on this aspect more in the next blog!