Hyperlocal marketing, for e-commerce?

By STS News Desk On Aug 29, 2019

Davines and Hyperlocology prove the model for success

How exactly does hyperlocal advertising and e-commerce work together? After all, hyperlocal advertising traditionally leverages accurate and precise location data to reach consumers within the vicinity of a brick and mortar store to drive in-store sales. However, e-commerce is completely online. There are no physical stores to drive traffic to.

So how then would a hyperlocal approach drive results for e-commerce?

Hannah Dixon, Marketing Director for Davines North America, a leader in sustainable hair care and beauty, has found the answer.

Hyperlocal is as much about locally-relevant as it is location-specific. When viewed through this lens, hyperlocal marketing will drive outsized results against marketing and sales objectives both in-store and online.
Consider how “hair care” and “sustainability” mean different things to each community, and each person within that community.
Customs, competition, and demographics all vary greatly by location and drive how consumers interact with the brand and ultimately influence purchase decisions.

It’s no surprise, with clear social priorities beyond revenue, Davines thinks differently.

“Understanding our customers and how they interact with our products as local communities is extremely important to us. Audience targeting alone is not enough. Our brand has been built through local relationships at the salon level and we wanted our messaging to be curated and specific to each community – otherwise it feels inauthentic and falls flat. This belief has been an integral part of our success. The ability to identify communities and address them each specifically no matter where they are online with content curated to their geography is the experience we want to create for our customers,” says Dixon.

Increasing e-commerce revenue and providing an authentic customer experience requires a new hyperlocal approach.

One not possible through traditional automated display media buying terminals that apply optimizations more broadly across local audiences and operate within silos. Execution must be handled differently. Community messaging. Community data. Community growth. Identifying and addressing relevant audiences within specific geolocations with unique messaging ultimately drives faster and greater results.

To accomplish this Davines partnered with Hyperlocology, a platform already widely adopted by franchises, financial services, and multi-location brands to execute hyperlocal marketing, because of their unique ability to automate and power individual community campaigns at scale.

Together, through a partnership with Whalar, a leading creative influencer marketing company, Davines selected authentic, diverse and brand-aligned local influencers and created assets specific to each influencer, which were then assigned to the relevant geos and used across multiple marketing channels. Utilizing Hyperlocology’s Distributed Automated Marketing platform, Davines was able to seamlessly build, execute, and analyze hundreds of specialized local marketing campaigns within one user interface.

This campaign hit the marketing sweet spot of delivering measurable and immediate sales return and growing brand awareness. Davines was able to achieve a three-fold direct sales return on investment for this campaign, over 130% vs. the target, while also growing brand awareness off a small investment by reaching over 11M people via the influencer campaign and the digital advertising.

Dixon adds, “We are extremely proud of the results from our first digital campaign in partnership with Hyperlocology and Whalar. It was a big step for our brand to test advertising online for the first time and partner with influencers in a paid manner. It also provided great insights into the geography of our consumers across North America and showed us how authentic, diverse and brand-aligned content can deliver real engagement with the brand. Since the initial campaign, we’ve continued to leverage the learnings and partner with Hyperlocology and are trending significantly above our plan for e-commerce.”

Hyperlocal and e-commerce are a powerful combination; breaking the mold of how marketers typically believe hyperlocal marketing is best utilized.

To do hyperlocal right requires the ability to easily view unique communities as individual campaigns, across all channels, to drive the required results. This community up approach allows Davines to outperform their e-commerce objectives and improve how they connect authentically and stay true to their mission of beauty and sustainability within their desired communities.