HyperLocal Edge: Case Study in Online Marketing

Keeping myself busy in between jobs has been easier than I had thought. After a few weeks I started wondering the age old question “What would you do if you could do anything?” I decided that spending my time using the internet to drive business for other businesses sounded like a good idea.

I started HyperLocal Edge as a way to creatively put my skills to work for others. HyperLocal marketing is a growing trend on the internet.

For small businesses in this challenging economy, getting solid results from a marketing investment is an absolute must. A new survey from Nielsen Online and WebVisible, however, reveals that local businesses and online consumers are often failing to connect.

The survey polled nearly 4,000 Internet users and business owners about their online consumer behavior and business marketing strategies. The data shows a “Great Divide” between media usage and small business advertising. The study provides valuable insight for local businesses that want to better understand online consumer behavior in order to maximize the return on their marketing spend.

Some of the key findings:

• Consumers use search engines 72% more often than they did two years ago
• Search engines are the No. 1 choice of consumers and small business owners alike when looking for a local product or service.

Yet, of small businesses:

• Half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on Internet advertising
• Only nine percent are very satisfied with their results – meanwhile 63% turn to the Internet first when looking for local products or services

Reliance on multiple resources, reviews, blogs

The survey found that 75% of respondents rely on multiple information sources to find local business information; only an tiny minority (6%) said they used a single trusted source. However those “trusted sources” weren’t identified — whether traditional media or online.

Three fourths of users say they read reviews (product/service business) online. The number is higher (80%) as the audience ages:

–60% of 18-24 year olds read online reviews. –Ages 34 – 64 saw an average of 80% reading online consumer reviews.

–69% use blogs as a source for consumer product reviews, yet only 23% have ever posted a consumer review on a blog (among this group of posters: 45% of the posted reviews were negative, while 15% were mixed and 40% were positive).

Shop online, buy locally

Just over 70% of survey participants say they prefer to stay within a 20 minute drive of their homes to reach a business. And 80% of respondents say they have researched a product or service online and then made their purchase offline from a local business.

These findings are consistent with other information and empirical data in the market but serve to reinforce the importance and power of both search/SEM and local search in consumer purchase behavior.

Getting listed on localized business listings like Google Local and Yahoo Local can be tricky. We can mange these for you and make sure the information listed is up to date and draws customers to your business.

From the several online yellow pages and other local directories there are dozens of  places we can make sure your business is listed correctly and professionally. Getting listed in these online directories is usually free but not an easy task to accomplish with many steps and waiting for confirmations. We can manage this process and insure your business is listed locally for customers to locate easily.

Maximize your local exposure

Localized marketing on the several online yellow pages and other local directories where we can make sure your business is listed correctly and professionally. Getting listed in these online directories is usually free but not an easy task to accomplish with many steps and waiting for confirmations. We can manage this process and insure your business is listed locally and correctly for customers to locate easily.

• Google Local
• Yahoo Local
• Online Yellow Pages
• Yelp.com
• Many others

Many of these online directories make it easy to reach out to people who have reviewed your business. By contacting the people with the most positive comments to express your appreciation and possibly give them a special deal, you stay top of mind with some of your best influencers for more business. Even communicating with the people who gave negative comments to get a better understanding of the issues could give you another chance to get another customer for life.

Social Media Twitter

I have a Twitter account setup for the site. Actullay I had the account before the site but it ties in well. Social Help is a Twitter profile that spreads news, tips and trends in social media marketing.

The Twitter profile has been gaining in popularity among others interested in the latest news about social media.Besides pulling the feed from the HyperLocal website, I add in links to other sites that talk about everything from Twitter, SEO and other new media tools.

I knew there was a market for Hyperlocal marketing services and I decided to do a bit of generic marketing to test the waters. After designing the website and making sure it looked professional enough to show to the public and then using the Twitter profile to help spread the word, I got started on Facebook. I set up a Facebook fan page for HyperLocal Edge.

This was the first Facebook fan page I had spent any special amount of time on. I need put myself through some additional training on the system but I have the basic understanding and can make a decent fan page.

Many businesses want to be on Facebook but have no idea how to do this. So I figured this could be a service I offered.

Facebook makes advertising very easy and extremely targetable. I initially started off spending $0.20 on ads specifically in my area. Then I got to thinking and figured I could really offer services like this all over the US and now I have ads placed across North America.

I chose to only run the ads on certain days that’s why there are so many dips in the click throughs. Over all there were thousands of impressions and a couple dozen clicks. After dozens of clicks, that turned into about a dozen emails and call backs.

This only helped me understand what the business model should be. After each of these calls I was able to take note of the common questions and redesign some of the content on the site to address those issues.

I even played around with Google ads. Again these can be extremely targetable ads and I setup both text links and flash ads that are displayed online.

Since there doesn’t seem to be a company that caters to the small business and home based business for hyperlocal marketing, I figured I could be one of the first.