Influencer marketing for local businesses 🛍

You probably have this type of person in your entourage. The person who loves organising activities and finding restaurants, each one more unusual than the next. To make her selection, she can obviously go to Google and do her own research. But nowadays, another tool makes it easier: social networks.

On Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, a feature has been developed that is a boon for local businesses. Users can discover them by specifying a location. A whole series of content will then unfold before their eyes, highlighting these places to visit within a city, such as a shop with its beautiful decoration or a restaurant with its more than gourmet dishes. All they have to do is click on the account to find out the address.

For a business, this location tool is becoming an indispensable part of a good content strategy. It is also available on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Specifying the location is a reflex to have if you want your content to gain visibility. This information complements that given by the caption or hashtags, which allow algorithms to better suggest publications.

According to a study recently conducted by HubSpot and Mention, having the reflex to specify the location of your post increases engagement by 79%. This can be explained by several reasons: users like the picture, the publication has been discovered thanks to the precision of the location or the picture has been re-shared by a tourist organisation.

Location is becoming an important data for social networks, so TikTok would work on a feed called "Nearby". In this way, the application would be able to suggest videos recorded right next to the place where you are. If this type of information is more than welcome for users, it is also welcome for advertisers, especially in their influencer marketing campaign.

How can brands leverage this local aspect on social networks? What is the role of content creators in this type of campaign? How can they be implemented and why?

Proximity, the indispensable asset of influencers

Let's start with a little history. When Facebook wanted to monetise its advertising product further, the team thought about the best way to differentiate itself from Google. The choice then fell on location. "On Google, advertising was very diffuse. Facebook proved, for example, that it was possible for a restaurant in the 14th arrondissement of Paris to target the surrounding area or people interested in the theme. In this way, Facebook was able to legitimise its strategic and advertising tool, which accompanied its growth", recently indicated David Dubois, professor at INSEAD and specialist in digital consumption, big data and digital transformations.

This local dimension has become important for brands. By targeting a territory, they are able to better understand their customers' expectations from one place to another and therefore adapt their communication. "If you want your brand to communicate and connect with your audience, it's really, really important to regionalise your content. You need to understand who you are talking to. That's why influencer campaigns are so effective, because they speak to their own, very local audience," Livia Gonçalves, senior account manager at Media.Monks, told VeraContent last August.

American researchers have also conducted a study, proving how the proximity aspect should be more than thought through, especially in influencer marketing campaigns. Published in the Journal of Marketing, their work shows a positive link between online influence and the geographical proximity of an influencer's followers. "We found that the likelihood that a person who saw a tweet mentioning that someone they follow had bought a product, would also subsequently buy that product, increased the closer they lived to the buyer."

Local content creators therefore have a more than important role to play in the communication of companies, especially those who want to reach very specific profiles. In addition to being discovered by local people, these advertisers also have the opportunity to increase their brand awareness. 93% of internet users search for local businesses, according to a study by Local Consumer Review Survey.

To run this type of influencer campaign, brands mainly turn to micro-influencers. These are influential profiles that have a community of less than 100,000 people on their profile. Most often, they are followed by people who live around them, and are therefore solicited by local businesses to help them promote themselves. Facebook, which, as we said above, relies heavily on a local strategy, quickly understood the importance of these profiles.

The team carried out a study to find out if the profiles were of interest to local businesses.

Examples of local campaigns with influencers

It's easy to understand that using local influencers for local communication can meet several objectives: to get known, to sell, to gain visibility... To show you how these campaigns can be orchestrated, we suggest you discover some of the projects carried out by our team at Clark Influence.

The City of Montreal

The city of Montreal has been working on an initiative called "Vision Zero". With this project, "the city wants to ensure the safety of all road users: pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and passengers of all ages and conditions." To ensure that as many residents as possible were reached, the team called on six content creators. They were activated to encourage citizens to find out more about the initiative and to sign the charter. More than 1756 signatures were registered.

With this local campaign, the city of Montreal was able to engage citizens around a project that concerns them all. On social networks, 47 contents were created mixing posts and stories, encouraging subscribers to find out about the number of pedestrians who died or the rate of people injured in the city.

Clark Influence, an agency of enthusiasts who will accompany you in carrying your messages on social networks

We will find the best content creators to be ambassadors for your business. We believe that the right profiles can give you more impact than a traditional media campaign.

If you would like us to find you talent that can embody your company's image through a turnkey local influencer marketing campaign: contact us! We would be delighted to send you a service offer: info@clarkinfluence.com.