There is one area of online advertising that remains untapped: small-town and local businesses. A casual walk down the main street of many towns will reveal a variety of small antique, pizza, coffee, and other eccentric shops. Amongst the variety of stores in a small downtown there is the common factor that they lack an online advertising presence.
For many stores, the reasoning follows the logic that the stores reach is only in a local vicinity and going to the web would serve little purpose or functionality. Debunking this logic is the movement towards hyper-local marketing. Hyper-local online advertisements are ads that target a particular area based on area code or other geographic information.
For example, say you go to your favorite travel site and click on article on Chicago pizza restaurants. The typical banner advertisements could quickly change ads placed by local Chicago businesses. In essence, the small businesses that would never consider to use online ads have an opportunity to reach a relevant market.
Quicly growing are firms that provide the advertising services to small businesses that allow them the ability to market effectively via hyper-local ads online. The growth in the sector represents a new way to rethink the scope and focus of online ads. Relevancy is a pillar of marketing and hyper-local makes this its strength.
In summary:
- Hyper-local introduces the small town business into the online ad market
- It creates relevant ads to users
- Opens the door to a new, vastly untapped segment of the advertising market
2 Responses to “Main Street Online: Hyper-Local Marketing”
I agree, I have a friend who works in a family business, they have been around for many years and never used online marketing. Slowly after being urged by a consultant they tried some marketing and only very recently did they even get a website. The introduction of a website to their marketing has done amazing things for their business. The owner said that he would reccommend the internet for all small businesses!
It’s definitely true that a lot of small businesses never see the need to create a website, but it’s so vital that they have one. It might even be more important that a small business have a website purely to increase their clout than actually provide solid information. Sure they can have featured products and contact information, but sometimes just being able to find their business online will lend more credibility to any small business and increase repeat customers when they can log on and find out what the name of that cute little coffe shop was they visited last summer when they went on vacation. Great point, Jon!