The dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal shop­ping worlds are two pieces of the same puz­zle. It’s easy to think of them clash­ing and col­lid­ing, with each look­ing to steal a piece of the pie from one anoth­er; but in real­i­ty, most cus­tomer buy­ing jour­neys are like­ly to criss­cross between the dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal worlds.

Con­sumer buy­ing jour­neys may be ini­ti­at­ed with a nation­al touch­point such as the web­site, TV adver­tis­ing or cus­tomer ser­vice, but many still end up on the hyper­local envi­ron­ment in phys­i­cal stores. Thir­ty-eight per­cent of con­sumers research online before pur­chas­ing offline (ROPO), and  research by eBay and Deloitte found that near­ly 40 per­cent of con­sumers make pur­chas­es inside a phys­i­cal store at least once a week, com­pared to just 27 per­cent who do the same online, accord­ing to PwC’s annu­al con­sumer sur­vey. This means that brands still have to win “the last phys­i­cal mile” with cus­tomers, and increas­ing­ly brands have to win it dig­i­tal­ly. At the most basic lev­el, Google reports that the “get direc­tions” but­ton is the sin­gle most used fea­ture on a smart­phone. Seri­ous­ly, take a moment and con­sid­er how many mil­lions of cus­tomer jour­neys that now include that sim­ple but fun­da­men­tal step! The dig­i­tal hyper­local space is an open goal for brands that take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put them­selves in the right place at the right time, and cre­ate real val­ue for the con­sumer. After all, why spend time and mon­ey build­ing a nation­al brand, to not cap­i­tal­ize on that invest­ment all the way through to the local brick-and-mor­tar store? So what do mar­keters need to know about the hyper­local oppor­tu­ni­ty? Here are five hyper­local mar­ket­ing trends busi­ness­es can’t ignore.

1. Consumers Expect & Demand That Brands Deliver Digital Hyperlocal Experiences

When was the last time you searched online for a pre­ferred brand or gener­ic ser­vice local­ly and found fan­tas­ti­cal­ly opti­mized and rel­e­vant local results? I sus­pect, rarely! Which is a cry­ing shame giv­en that local­i­ty and mobil­i­ty go hand in hand. Fur­ther­more, in the ‘push’ era our phone OS and nav­i­ga­tion apps are telling us what they think we need, when, and who can sup­ply it. Accord­ing to recent research by Ipsos Mori, 52 per­cent of cus­tomers look specif­i­cal­ly for local busi­ness hours on search engines.  Con­sid­er that against data from the InfoGroup, where 44 per­cent of peo­ple report hav­ing an out­ing “ruined” by incor­rect infor­ma­tion relat­ing to trad­ing hours. This is not triv­ial stuff, and just one exam­ple of the incom­plete hyper­local expe­ri­ence most busi­ness­es are deliv­er­ing. In his Think With Google arti­cle, Matt Law­son, the company’s direc­tor of search ads mar­ket­ing, wrote:

“We want things right, and we want things right away. As a result, the con­sumer jour­ney looks marked­ly dif­fer­ent than it did just five years ago. Instead of a few moments of truth, it’s a series of ‘micro-moments’ when we turn to mobile to act on a need.”

We’ve grown to expect our smart­phones to serve rel­e­vant, local results. ‘Near me’, ‘clos­est’, and ‘near­by’. All phras­es that would have meant lit­tle just a decade ago are begin­ning to dom­i­nate the bil­lions of queries every month. In fact, ‘near me’ search­es have near­ly dou­bled in the last year. Whole Foods, one of the largest U.S. pub­lic food and drug retail­ers, attrib­ut­es much of its busi­ness suc­cess to hyper­local mar­ket­ing. The gro­cer rec­og­nized that its cus­tomers’ needs are dif­fer­ent and vary from region to region, result­ing in region-spe­cif­ic social accounts and con­tent mar­ket­ing strate­gies. It builds tremen­dous brand loy­al­ty and trust by inte­grat­ing its stores into the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties it serves. Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly mak­ing crit­i­cal pur­chase fun­nel deci­sions on the move and the amount of rev­enue a busi­ness with­out a local pres­ence is leav­ing on the table remains an unknown quan­ti­ty.

2. The Technology Giants Are Delivering Against This Expectation, Ahead Of Everyone Else

Over the past few months we’ve seen many of the tech giants of this world, name­ly Google, Face­book, Apple, Pin­ter­est and Ama­zon make local a major focus. When these guys bet big, they are usu­al­ly right. Per­haps the most inter­est­ing devel­op­ment from the giants is Facebook’s M, its new vir­tu­al assis­tant. A com­bi­na­tion of AI and human inter­ven­tion, M seems to be a large scale per­son­al assis­tant avail­able serendip­i­tous­ly via Face­book mes­sen­ger and dri­ven by a huge local data­base of reviews, cita­tions and NAP infor­ma­tion. How pow­er­ful is that? And how sig­nif­i­cant for brands who rely on local pres­ence for the final yards of the con­sumer jour­ney? Facebook’s goal, it says, is to make Mes­sen­ger the first stop for mobile dis­cov­ery, for any­one look­ing to do or buy any­thing. It’s some­thing local busi­ness­es can’t ignore. Addi­tion­al­ly, Pin­ter­est recent­ly announced that users will be able to make phone calls and get direc­tions to bricks-and-mor­tar loca­tions from with­in their iOS app (with web and Android com­ing soon). They will also be able to see store open­ing hours and read tips and reviews left by cus­tomers. Pin­ter­est is auto­mat­i­cal­ly pulling in the loca­tion data via the pub­lic Foursquare API, for its near­ly sev­en bil­lion Place Pins. And don’t for­get Ama­zon, which has just part­nered with Yelp to give Alexa, its voice assis­tant, some street smarts. Alexa, who lives inside Ama­zon’s Echo Blue­tooth speak­er, now plugs into Yelp to pull out local search results. These devel­op­ments show how keen the big tech com­pa­nies are to deliv­er an amaz­ing local expe­ri­ence for their users. For con­sumers, find­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice in their local area used to require a clunky com­bi­na­tion of the Yel­low Pages, a map, and a tele­phone. Look how far we’ve come.

3. Reputation Management Is Going Hyperlocal

There is much research to show that the num­ber of con­sumers read­ing online reviews to deter­mine the qual­i­ty of a local busi­ness is high­er than ever. The vol­ume of reviews cus­tomers are read­ing is also on the increase, with many review­ing a min­i­mum of five before they put their trust in a local busi­ness. The amount of faith a cus­tomer has in online reviews is now almost equal to a rec­om­men­da­tion from a trust­ed friend. This means that neg­a­tive local reviews can dam­age a brand per­cep­tion at a nation­al lev­el, if they are not addressed prop­er­ly. How­ev­er, a recent poll by AYTM Mar­ket Research found that few con­sumers actu­al­ly post local busi­ness reviews. Near­ly three-quar­ters of US inter­net users said they had nev­er post­ed a review of a busi­ness on Yelp or a sim­i­lar site, while 16 per­cent had only done so once or twice, and just 10.5 per­cent many times. This rep­re­sents a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the review rat­ing is one of many rank­ing fac­tors Google uses with­in its algo­rithm. The bet­ter the rat­ing the more chance of rank­ing high­er in the web search or map results. In com­ing months, we are like­ly to see local busi­ness­es doing more to encour­age cus­tomers to write and pub­lish reviews, and par­tic­u­lar­ly when they’ve received a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. With­out reviews, you are at risk of hav­ing no rep­u­ta­tion sig­nals, or worse, that you have one sin­gle, scathing review, vis­i­ble in your local search list­ing. In the near future, man­ag­ing your local rep­u­ta­tion and being aware of the hyper­local con­sumer jour­ney won’t sim­ply be the respon­si­bil­i­ty of your local area man­agers or acqui­si­tions team, it will be core to your DNA and bot­tom line.

4. The Local Search Ecosystem Is Gaining In Prominence

Google now lists local search results above organ­ic results, which is an enor­mous trans­for­ma­tion for busi­ness­es. It’s a game chang­er, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the mobile con­sumer who rarely scrolls below the fold. Google has also made its local results fea­ture a three-pack of busi­ness­es instead of sev­en, which cre­ates a pret­ty tough envi­ron­ment in which to cut through. This is in addi­tion to it rolling out an updat­ed, clean­er look for its Google Maps search results, incor­po­rat­ing a new list­ings card for local busi­ness­es. Con­se­quent­ly it is more impor­tant than ever for busi­ness­es to opti­mize their local land­ing pages with infor­ma­tion that is rel­e­vant to the loca­tion, so that they can be found on their own as well as through the main brand site. Unique­ly local land­ing pages should be devel­oped for indi­vid­ual loca­tions, and be SEO opti­mized to take into account shop­ping behav­ior for a spe­cif­ic store, or store-spe­cif­ic offers or dis­counts maybe.

5. Media Spend Is Going Hyperlocal

Local adver­tis­ing spend is pre­dict­ed to reach $157.7 bil­lion by 2019, a 14 per­cent cumu­la­tive increase of $139.4 bil­lion in 2015, accord­ing to BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Fore­cast 2015. Busi­ness mar­keters are increas­ing­ly real­iz­ing that their local stores or deal­er­ships now own the brand rela­tion­ship with the cus­tomer, and this is what needs to be nur­tured with­in their media spend. Addi­tion­al­ly, social media plat­forms are offer­ing an increas­ing array of loca­tion-spe­cif­ic mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness­es. This is indi­ca­tion that they too believe hyper­local is an area ripe for mon­e­ti­za­tion. Con­sumers are nat­u­ral­ly more open to deal­ing with orga­ni­za­tions that present them with infor­ma­tion in a way that works for them per­son­al­ly, and par­tic­u­lar­ly at a local lev­el. Sure­ly there has nev­er been a stronger case for busi­ness­es to tru­ly con­sid­er their hyper­local strat­e­gy, and keep abreast of this rapid­ly devel­op­ing mar­ket.