Hyper local marketing: how multi-location retailers grow with local content

Hyper local marketing is a strategy where a business with physical locations markets to the specific local community around each store — using authentic, locally relevant content to build trust and turn nearby people into returning customers.

If your business includes physical stores, every one of them is already part of a local community. When a store communicates authentically and connects with locals, it builds the trust that, over time, turns nearby people into loyal customers.

A few numbers worth knowing:

People increasingly expect Google to use their location even when they don’t add location terms to a search — a behaviour Google (Think with Google) reported growing by around 150%.
Across Post Office Social client data, organic performance increases by an average of up to 2500% when content is visibly local.

This guide explains what hyper local marketing is, why it works, and how to get started.

1
What is hyper local marketing?
2
Why does hyper local marketing work?
3
Get started with hyper local marketing
4
How can Post Office Social help my business?

What is hyper local marketing?

Hyper local marketing focuses your marketing on a small, specific area — the neighbourhood or town around a physical store — rather than a broad national audience.

Let’s pretend for a second that you own a store where you repair and sell used cars. In such a scenario it makes great sense to target locals and to create content that features employees and customers from the store. Why? Because such content builds trust and is relevant to the locals.

When locals suddenly need your service or product, your business is likely both top of mind and the closest option. Furthermore, we can hope that customers will keep coming back if they had a good experience the first time they did business with you.

Why does hyper local marketing work?

Hyper local marketing works because local searches carry unusually high purchase intent: when someone searches for a product or service “near me,” they are usually ready to buy now, not just browsing.

Google (Think with Google) has reported that mobile searches combining “near me” with a variant of “can I buy” or “to buy” grew by more than 500%. If that doesn’t show clear intent, we don’t know what does — it supports the widely held view that longtail, hyper local searches are made with the intent to purchase.

For example, if you want to buy the new bestselling book, you will most likely type “bookstores near me that have this book”. By doing so, you want this book and know where to buy it now.

A comprehensive study showed that 78 % of local mobile searches result in offline purchases. Such a stat is quite impressive and should only further your interest in hyper local marketing. If you’re convinced and want to start off with hyper local marketing here are three low-hanging fruit, to begin with:

Getting started with hyper local marketing

#1 – Google Business Profile

If you have a physical location, optimise your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) right away. It’s the backbone of hyper local marketing, because Google remains so dominant in search.

So make sure you fill in as much info as you can on this platform. Especially:

A description of your business. You can add relevant keywords, and do so within the first 100 words. Avoid keyword stuffing, however.
Add as many high-quality photos as you can.
Add your business address and make sure it’s consistent with the address on your website.
List your phone number or phone numbers and set your operating hours and working days.
Pick up the primary category that describes your business’s services, products, and goals. This will help by increasing the visibility for search terms related to your category.
Have great reviews. These days everyone checks reviews and average ratings. A large number of quality reviews will result in higher rankings and sales.

#2 – Create separate landing pages for each business location

If you’re a multi-location business with many physical stores, specific landing pages for each location matter for hyper local purposes. Why? Because they boost your appearance in search and lift local rankings.

Make sure to develop personalized content for each location and make sure to include location-based keywords within your content. And that leads us to the last tip…

#3 – Make local content

Let’s face it – social media has radically changed how brands communicate. If a potential customer writes to you on Facebook, you better have an answer asap or the customer is gone. A dialogue-based type of communication is the only way of communicating going forward.

That change in the technological landscape has brought companies and consumers closer. Which, in turn, has brought about a need for authenticity in the way companies communicate. If you think about it for a second, it’s quite obvious: Would you ever engage with social media content that is not for you and has no relevance to your daily life or local area? Probably not. On the contrary, the odds of you paying attention to content that is relevant for you (for instance a good offer from the local clothing store) is way higher.

But as all business owners know high quality, relevant content does not simply fall in your lap. It takes hard work and knowledge about content to create content that users will engage with. And during a busy work week who has time to focus solely on content? The answer is probably no one. So what’s the answer? Post Office Social!

Post Office Social is a tool built for multi-location retailers: it makes it easy to mobilise your local stores and employees on social media, giving each location better reach and stronger relationships with nearby customers.

The platform turns a brand-to-store content flow into something local teams can actually run: creators at HQ distribute ready-made content to each store, and the local employee can customise, approve and publish it in a few clicks. Templates with pre-made copy, graphics or video keep every post on-brand, so your visual identity stays consistent across locations.

Hyper local marketing is one part of a wider toolkit. Post Office Social also lets stores sell directly on social — through comment sales (customers simply comment to order, and orders are handled automatically) and live sales on Facebook — so local content turns into local revenue, not just reach.

Post Office Social client data shows that when content is visibly local, organic performance increases by an average of up to 2500%. But don’t just take our word for it.

Matas – a Danish chain with 250+ physical store that sells beauty products – is using Post Office Social. And here’s what SoMe-manager Maja Fabech has to say:

We have immense marketing powers in our local stores’ social media channels. Post Office Social helps us benefit from our local presence with a tool that supports our local employees. Our stores are satisfied because it is simple and easy to use and effective too – and we are delighted because of the results, we see. – Maja Fabech, Social Media Manager, Matas

See the short video and learn how Post Office can help your business create and manage local content:

If you have any questions regarding Post Office Social please write to us (hello@postofficesocial.com) or try our service 14 days for free.