Local marketing has numerous benefits for companies that offer products and services to a local audience, such as faster market penetration, increased brand loyalty, and expanded Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Pet spas and salons in particular can generate significantly more business with a good local marketing strategy.
But did you know that hyperlocal marketing can be an excellent addition to your digital strategy? Below, we discuss this subsect of local marketing and how you can utilize it to generate more ROI for your pet spa.
What Is Hyperlocal Marketing?
Hyperlocal marketing is a specific marketing strategy that targets users within a short distance from the physical location of a business. The idea is to capitalize on searches made using Google Maps or Google Search for products and services within a few blocks of where they currently are.
For example, if you wanted to get ice cream after a movie in Denver, Colorado, you might type “denver ice cream shops near me,” or something similar. The search results will be listed in order of proximity, with the closest businesses listed first. A good hyperlocal marketing strategy will target users who are most likely to be searching for a business like yours in their physical location. Done well, a hyperlocal campaign will generate additional foot traffic to a business’ brick-and-mortar establishment.
Hyperlocal Search Terms
Hyperlocal marketing uses specific search terms to target users looking for local products and services. For example, since the advent of voice search, the phrase “near me” saw a 510% increase in total search volume! Some hyperlocal terms may have a low number of searches, but by targeting these highly specific key phrases that have low competition, you can more easily position yourself at the top of search results that will be seen by a highly motivated audience.
Other Factors In a Hyperlocal Marketing Campaign
Search engines use a number of different metrics to determine how to display search results to each user. Explore these below.
- Recency. How often are you posting new content to your website? Google will prioritize local businesses that have consistently fresh content over websites that hasn’t posted a blog for more than six months.
- Distance. Google will list local search results mostly in order of physical proximity to the user, however, neighboring competitors may be ranked above or below each other based on other metrics.
- Prominence. How do others on the internet treat your brand? Do they link to your website for authoritative or quality original content? Your website’s prominence plays a significant role in how you are ranked compared to your physically close competitors.
- Relevance. Does the content you create provide actionable value to your target audience, or is it mostly fluff decorated with keyword spam? Google understands how to tell the difference between quality and thin content and will rank a website or blog accordingly. For example, businesses that publish actionable content on trending or important topics within their industry will be ranked higher than similar businesses that have scant or outdated information.
- Availability. If you’re tempted to skip over filling out your business hours on your Google Business profile, here’s why you shouldn’t. One of the ranking metrics used in hyperlocal searches is your availability during the time that a target user is performing a search. If you don’t have your hours set to open at the time users are searching for your pet spa, your listing will not be displayed.
Top Hyperlocal Marketing Tips for Pet Spas
There are many facets of a good hyperlocal marketing campaign that differ from business to business depending on various things like industry, target audience, and products and services. Here are some tips we’d recommend to pet spas and salons to create a robust hyperlocal digital footprint.
Optimize Your Google Business Profile
Arguably, your pet spa’s Google Business profile is the most important facet of your hyperlocal marketing efforts. It accounts for 33% of your local reach, which is more than any other single factor. Customer reviews come second, comprising just 16% of your local reach. Make sure to fill out your hours of operation, bio, contact information, and other important information about your pet salon.
Publish Content Regularly
There’s not much you can do about distance when it comes to your location in relation to someone searching, but you can do something about recency and relevance. Make sure you’re creating and publishing original content to your website, blog, and social media channels. Even if your content isn’t getting shared by users, it’s still getting indexed by search engines, which is critical to your local marketing strategy. Include local search terms in your page titles and descriptions for even better optimization.
Encourage Customer Reviews
With reviews comprising 16% of your local reach, having a plethora of good, well-written reviews for your pet spa is of critical importance. Take the time to encourage your customers to leave reviews after you service their pet by letting them know where they go to leave a review and that you appreciate it.
Make it as easy as possible for customers to know where to leave reviews of your pet spa. Also ask customers to post pictures of their pet’s haircut along with their review for maximum engagement. Make sure you are consistently getting new reviews – a staggering 48% of internet users report that they only pay attention to product and service reviews that were written by customers within the last two weeks.
It’s also incredibly important to respond to your customer reviews, especially when they are negative. Resist the temptation to ignore or bury negative reviews. Today’s consumers don’t expect that a business will have zero negative reviews. Instead, they expect establishments to address the customer’s complaint in a kind and straightforward manner. Businesses that regularly respond to each of their reviews typically gain ¼ star rating on their Google Business profile.
Include Hyperlocal Tags In Your URLs
When you publish blogs and pages to your website, make sure to include your location in the URL. For example, if you have a page dedicated to San Francisco dog grooming, make sure the permalink includes the term “san-francisco.” An easy way to start your hyperlocal marketing campaign is by creating individual service pages for each city, town, or county you provide service to. This allows your pet spa to be listed in local searches using those location keywords.
Create a Robust Contact Us Page
Your contact page should prominently display your location information, along with a map and driving directions on how to find your establishment from various directions. If you have multiple locations, be sure to list these here as well. Include a mailing address, telephone number, and email address for each individual location as applicable.
Optimize Your Website For Mobile Users
Did you know that over half of all website traffic is now from mobile devices like tablets and smartphones? The same number (52%) of paid ad clicks are also generated from mobile. This is particularly important for hyperlocal campaigns that are targeting people using their cell phones to find nearby establishments. Make sure your website is responsive and displays your menu, blog posts, and images without the need for horizontal scrolling. Make sure your fonts and paragraphs are formatted to suit smaller, narrower screen sizes.
Reduce Your Load Time
How quickly your website loads after a user clicks on your local search listing can make or break their decision to use your services. A whopping 47% of users reported that they expect a web page to load completely within just two seconds of clicking on the listing.
If your website takes longer than this to load, chances are higher that users are going to bounce. Statistics also show that users abandon sites that they’re interested in if the page takes more than just three seconds to load completely. Each second of page load delay results in a 7% loss of lead conversions. You can shave load time off your site in a number of different ways, but the most effective are compressing file sizes, leveraging your browser caching, and reducing the number of redirects.
Expand Your Digital Footprint
Your pet spa should have a business listing in as many places as possible with your physical address. These local citations increase the number of valuable backlinks to your website and also gives your spa a branded presence on multiple platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Google Business, Angie’s List, Thumbtack, and more. The more high-quality and accurate information that is on the web about your business, the more authority you will generate and the higher you will rank in local searches compared to your nearby competition.
Demo Surefire Local’s Business Intelligence Marketing Software
At Surefire Local, we know how valuable hyperlocal marketing strategies can be for pet spas and we’re dedicated to helping you create a customized marketing strategy designed to generate the most traffic, conversions, and ROI possible. Request a demo or to get answers to your questions about hyperlocal and other forms of local marketing.
