For brand and retail mar­keters, a con­sid­er­able amount of time, effort and bud­get is spent on encour­ag­ing con­sumers to fall in love with emo­tion­al mes­sag­ing, then cre­at­ing impact in-store at the point of pur­chase.

But what’s often over­looked is a crit­i­cal point in the con­sumer jour­ney, in real-time, when con­sumers are on the go, mak­ing numer­ous dig­i­tal­ly informed, impulse deci­sions about what to buy and where to buy it.

And this doesn’t mean tar­get­ed dig­i­tal dis­play or even bea­con tech­nol­o­gy, just mobile func­tion­al­i­ty that will reli­ably locate the near­est store and pro­vide store hours and cus­tomer reviews.

To deliv­er that, brands have to add val­ue to con­sumers in the hyper­local dig­i­tal world. It all starts with a smart hyper­local strat­e­gy.

On our lat­est Live With Linkdex webi­nar, Why Brands & Retail­ers Need a Hyper­local Strat­e­gy, we were joined by Mike Fan­tis, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, DAC Group Europe, and Kiran Prashad, who is Pres­i­dent, DAC Group New York & Vice Pres­i­dent of Group Oper­a­tions & New Prod­uct Devel­op­ment.

Here are six rea­sons brands and retail­ers need a hyper­local strat­e­gy.

1. It’s How Consumers Will Find You

Con­sumers’ dig­i­tal and offline worlds are entwined. Both are essen­tial to the con­sumer jour­ney to pur­chase, which means brands must put them­selves in the right places at the right times.

If peo­ple look for your brand, it’s like­ly they’ll find you. But for more gener­ic search­es (such as ser­vices), the real­i­ty is that if you aren’t opti­mized, you won’t be found.

2. Users Expect To Find Your Business

Con­sumers expect rel­e­vant, local results. More than just find­ing your busi­ness, they expect to find accu­rate infor­ma­tion (e.g., address, phone num­ber, hours).

So many cus­tomers now search for hours of local busi­ness­es. It can be quite dam­ag­ing to a brand’s rep­u­ta­tion and bot­tom line when cus­tomers find inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion at a moment they need or want some­thing, or want to go some­where – this will send them to one of your com­peti­tors and they may nev­er give you anoth­er look.

3. Mobile Searches are Increasing

Local and mobile go hand-in-hand. Search­es are increas­ing­ly local-cen­tric.

We’re see­ing an explo­sion of search­es that include terms like ‘near me’, ‘clos­est’, and ‘near­by’ – in fact, ‘near me’ search­es have near­ly dou­bled in just the last year. Less users are putting in their loca­tion and rely­ing on their phone’s GPS to find the most accu­rate infor­ma­tion.

4. Google Prioritizes Local Search Over Organic

Hyper­local is a chan­nel with sig­nals you can influ­ence and man­age more eas­i­ly than organ­ic. Vis­i­bil­i­ty, accu­ra­cy, strong and con­sis­tent cita­tions, and reviews are crit­i­cal here.

Google uses mul­ti­ple rank­ing fac­tors to decide which brands get seen in the local 3‑pack. There are some fair­ly basic ones that you can eas­i­ly man­age and will help with your rel­e­van­cy, such as includ­ing your city and state in land­ing page titles.

5. Paid Media Is Becoming More Expensive

Adver­tis­ers are more sophis­ti­cat­ed. They real­ize that local search­es are fur­ther down the con­ver­sion fun­nel and are plac­ing a greater val­ue on local search users.

That means local CPCs are increas­ing. So if you can get local opti­mized right, you can reduce your paid spend.

6. It Will Deliver Value & Revenue To Your Business

Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly mak­ing crit­i­cal pur­chase fun­nel deci­sions on the move. The amount of rev­enue a busi­ness with­out a local pres­ence is leav­ing on the table remains unknown.

What is known: more than 50 per­cent of search­es lead to store vis­its with­in 24 hours. Also, whether it ulti­mate­ly results in an in-store or online sale, peo­ple who vis­it store loca­tor pages are con­vert­ing and spend­ing mon­ey.

Why Brands & Retailers Need a Hyperlocal Strategy: Full Webinar

Watch the full webi­nar to find sev­er­al more great take­aways and insights that will help you devel­op a win­ning hyper­local strat­e­gy:

Live with Linkdex Webi­nar: Why Brands & Retail­ers Need a Hyper­local Strat­e­gy from Linkdex on Vimeo.