The importance of word of mouth marketing has grown significantly in the past few years, with influencers of all sizes sharing authentic messaging with their followers. However, social media has become a crowded place and many local businesses find it difficult to engage with the right people to share their brand message.
Small businesses cannot afford macro-influencers because of budget constraints and thus rely heavily on collaboration with local or micro- nano-influencers, who generate higher engagement rates than bigger influencers. Consumers are no longer looking for mass reach via celebrity endorsements, they want to hear from people they can relate to.
Sounds interesting? Read on to know more about hyperlocal influencer marketing and why it is the future for marketing strategies.
What Is Hyperlocal Influencer Marketing?
Hyperlocal influencer marketing aims to leverage local influencers who live in your city, state, or region, to promote your brand locally. This marketing strategy focuses on leveraging individuals who have influence over potential buyers and orienting marketing activities around these individuals to drive a brand message to your relevant market.
While big brands are looking to partner with mega and macro-influencers such as celebrities, athletes, or models who can drive visibility and awareness on a global scale, hyperlocal influencer marketing aims to collaborate with local (micro and nano) influencers like bloggers, Youtubers, and Instagrammers who have a strong local audience and can influence purchasing decisions in their area.
What local influencers can do for your business?
- Build your brand awareness at a local level.
- Drive engagement through branded content.
- Attract new customers to your local business.
- Build your brand image in your location.
Local influencers tend to know their followers on a personal level and have genuine connections with them. Partnering with them offers a variety of benefits. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you should engage in hyperlocal influencer marketing.
1. They’re trustworthy to their followers
Local influencers are based in the same location as your business and therefore your target audience. This means that they can personally go and test out the product or service that your business offers.
They speak local, live local, and therefore can connect with their audience on a more personal level. Additionally, due to their smaller follower base, they have more bandwidth to develop and build a closer relationship with their followers. These regular interactions and connections lead to higher engagement and trust from their audience.
You can think of local influencers as regular people with a small and loyal following. They are typical social media users with the ability to engage their network better and when they’re passionate about a brand, they share authentic experiences and grow a community around it.
2. They’re cost-effective
One of the big benefits of using a hyperlocal influencer marketing strategy is its cost-effectiveness.
Why?
With 10,000 or fewer followers, these micro- and nano-influencers are getting more engagement, more interactions, and higher ROI. Also, due to their smaller audience, they typically charge less than bigger influencers and will likely post for free products or services in exchange for content.
Additionally, using local influencers limit extra travel or shipping costs as they can drop by your restaurant, shop, or salon to test your product or service, and create and post content on the ground. Having them close to your business location is a huge benefit as they will be able to meet your team, get more information on your brand and product and therefore they’ll be able to relate a better story to their audience in a very authentic way.
3. They generate higher engagements
With their organic, on-the-ground appeal, local influencers have a superior engagement for the hyper-niche communities they’ve curated. They love the content they create and aren’t afraid of advocating for what they believe in when it comes to the brands they work with. They can also better manage the size of their followers and respond to each comment personally which generates a higher engagement rate.
It is proven that engagement rates decrease as follower count increases. According to the Influencer Marketing Benchmark report 2020 on Instagram, influencers with fewer than 1,000 followers have seven times the engagement rate than macro-influencers with greater than 100,000 followers (7.2% vs. 1.1%).
Additionally, local influencers and their followers reside in the same geographical area and there’s a good chance that many of their followers may know the influencer personally – friends, family, and co-workers.. As a result, it can increase the likelihood of them engaging with the influencer’s posts and believe the recommendations they make for the campaign.
4. They’re more authentic
Authenticity is king. In fact, 90 percent of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support.
According to Influencer 2020 Report (Influencer Intelligence), influencer marketing has been highly adopted over the past few years and are instead demanding higher levels of authenticity and relevance, and it’s without a doubt that hyperlocal influencer marketing can do wonders for your local business.
Whereas big influencers produce polished content and may even have an entire team working behind the scenes, the content of micro- nano-influencers is more down-to-earth and real. They’re seen as regular people, which makes them authentic voices more relatable and approachable. Content seems to be even more authentic because local influencers usually take time to test and review the product or service personally.
Another plus of local influencers is that they are often motivated content creators who go above and beyond to impress their audience (and the brands they work with!). This kind of authenticity attracts engagement, awareness, and brand recall.
5. They generate credible and powerful content
Finding fresh and unique content to post about daily can be quite a challenge for local small businesses. Fortunately, hyperlocal influencer marketing can provide a boost to your content marketing efforts in the long run.
But there are some rules you’ll need to follow and the most important one is to give the influencer the freedom to create their own content. Of course, you may provide basic content guidelines, suggestions, information about your brand (the hashtags you want them to display), but let the influencer figure out how to talk to their audience. After all, they know them best.
Additionally, if the influencer can drive some user-generated content from their audience, you’ll have more new content to use on your social media accounts. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Conclusion
It’s no secret that the influencer marketing industry is constantly evolving and that it can be tough for small local businesses to find and engage with relevant influencers to boost engagement and awareness. And as consumers are bombarded with non-stop advertisements, local influencers cut through the noise and their authentic voices will help you increase brand awareness, engagement, walk-ins, and sales.
Want to collaborate with local influencers near you? Tokotown Pro is an all in one hyperlocal marketing solution allowing you to activate local influencer campaigns directly from your mobile phone.
Download the app to know more or get in touch with us!