Inbound Marketing with Hyperlocal Content, is it for you?

While talking to business owners and marketers lately, I have noticed the term “hyperlocal” coming up with greater frequency. Hyperlocal content is content which has a myopic focus on a specific locale, typically smaller than a metropolitan area; in San Antonio, a hyperlocal piece might focus on Alamo Heights, a small affluent municipality located completely within San Antonio city limits.

The term seems to have first appeared in 1991 in reference to television news.^[1] So while it’s not necessarily a new term, the concept as applied to Internet content seems to be developing some steam.

The two important questions for any business online are:

1. Should my business be using hyperlocal content to drive traffic?
2. How can hyperlocal content be used to maximum effectiveness?

Should I use hyperlocal content?

The answer is... maybe. It depends mostly on your target customer profile. Ask yourself, “Can my target customers be defined by a small geographic region?” If yes, then hyperlocal content could be effective in attracting buyers.

Don’t get this confused with the question, “Are you a small local business?” For example, ACME corp sells high end leisure widgets to consumers all around the country, so they are not small or locally based. But their widgets are targeted to only very high net worth individuals. Hyperlocal content might work in this case by focusing on the neighborhoods and areas around the country where these individuals tend to live or work. An article about Silicon Valley executive’s leisure habits might be effective at targeting the right potential customer.

Effective hyperlocal content

Once you have decided that hyperlocal content may be an option for your company, then the next question is how to implement it. Of course, you must identify the geographic region you will target. It can be a neighborhood, school district, small town, street or other division smaller than a full metropolitan area. Next, the hyperlocal area you have identified needs to have an associated emotional attachment to it by those in the area, otherwise there is no reason for them to read it.

Now start generating content related to the area. For ideas you might want to check the local news, or see if the area you’ve chosen has a small newspaper or newsletter. With hyperlocal content, it is even more important that your content is not marketing speak; instead, your primary goal should be brand awareness. The article should attract the visitors to your site with great information. Once there, some will look around and learn about your offerings.

Hyperlocal content isn’t a silver bullet. It takes a comprehensive strategy encompassing many avenues of content generation and search engine optimization to attract the right visitors with Inbound Marketing. But hyperlocal content is another effective tool to add to your repertoire.