Generating Conversions for Your Rehab from Local Clients
There’s no secret how powerful search engine marketing can be for your hyperlocal marketing strategy. This holds true whether you’re talking SEO or PPC via Google Ads.
Hyperlocal social media marketing is an extremely effective strategy in the substance abuse rehab center arsenal, as it allows you to select from a pool of potential clients who have a much lower barrier to entry at your facility.
They might already know about your rehab or be friends with someone that has attended. Regardless of the specifics, there’s no denying the importance of your local customers.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to leverage the power of hyperlocal social media marketing. Hyperlocal social marketing includes several different platforms – we’ll cover the most beneficial channels, in addition to paid and organic hyperlocal marketing strategies that will boost your facility and help secure your place as a reputable local business.
What Is Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing?
Hyperlocal social media marketing is the practice of hyperlocal marketing using a social platform. This practice aims to advertise to a pool of local customers with the idea that they’re a more ideal target audience for any local business.
The basic idea of any hyperlocal marketing strategy is you want your organization to appear with other local businesses when local search users or social media account holders search for “substance abuse treatment in (your local city).”
Using hyperlocal marketing on platforms like Google and search ads helps you entice local search users and even advertise things like your business location and reviews by using Google maps. But how do you obtain local customers through social media platforms?
Before we get into the best methods of hyperlocal social media marketing, let’s discuss some of the primary benefits of this form of advertising.
What Are the Benefits of Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing?
Several benefits exist to hyperlocal social marketing. You always want to be viewed by upstanding local businesses, so getting your name out there as a household topic is extremely beneficial.
But what are some of the other advantages of hyperlocal marketing?
It’s Easier to Replicate Hyperlocal Marketing Strategies that Work
When you partake in any local awareness ads or the target audience is your local community, the structure and framework of success remain the same regardless of the specific local geographic region.
This means you can easily replicate the process in various neighborhoods, local counties, cities, and other jurisdictions within close proximity to your facility.
Create Local Customers Who are Loyal and Maintain that Loyalty
Granted, substance abuse treatment facilities aren’t a business that someone frequents daily for a lifetime like a grocery store or other retail location. However, this doesn’t mean that the loyal customer principles don’t apply. When you gain trust from previous customers, it becomes easier to convey that level of trust to others in the local community.
If you’ve ever been a local business owner you know that word spreads fast, and sometimes the best form of advertising is word of mouth. Local businesses have thrived on this element for decades.
Becoming an Authority on the Local Area
It’s easy to establish yourself as a local authority when you provide content that’s relevant to the local area. Find out what places are popping up in Google Maps near your facility. Include them in your video content on social media. Write blog posts with information about services that include local businesses and repurpose them on your social media pages.
You can include local events, and local stores, and appeal to potential customers with your knowledge of the area, as well as boost local search results!
Ask local owners if they’d like to collaborate on social media platforms. This works well for charity and contests, and other exciting events that locals benefit from.
Establishing a Niche
You can leverage the power of understanding the needs of local residents and use it in your hyperlocal marketing strategy. But how?
Let’s say your area has an explosive problem with alcohol. Maybe the rate of DUI or drunk driving accidents is substantially higher than in other areas. Focus your hyperlocal social marketing on this data.
Place emphasis on the alcohol abuse services available through your facility. Create a unique program that only you offer among other local rehabs. When you’re the only show in town that offers a valuable service, you drive demand through the roof.
Multiple Channels for Brand Awareness and Uniformity
When you use hyperlocal social marketing as part of your social media marketing strategy, it gives you the opportunity to tell your brand story across multiple social media platforms. Using as many channels as possible is an excellent way to spread your brand story to locals.
However, as we’ve mentioned before, just ensure you’re keeping the brand voice uniform. It’s vital that your hyperlocal marketing content conveys the same message across all channels, regardless of the social media platforms you’re using.
Use Hyperlocal Marketing to Connect Better
Hyperlocal social media marketing allows you to connect better with your target audience. Local search and Google Maps are great for SEO, but the right social media marketing strategy can give you one-on-one dialogue with potential clients.
Using Hyperlocal Marketing to Stay Active
It’s always vital that you engage with the local community, as this presents the best opportunity to build strong bonds with your local client base. Using your social media marketing strategy to forge these bonds is the most powerful way to stay active in the community.
When you make clients and locals feel as if they’re able to engage with you and other local organizations, it makes them feel heard – like more of a name and less like a number. Take advantage of local influencers or large social media groups to create a link between you and local clients. If you see posts from past clients that resonate with you or what your organization believes in, don’t be afraid to share them.
Use Location Geotags
Using location geotags in the content you post for hyperlocal marketing is a great way to put your facility on the map. When clients tag your location on social media it creates an infinite space for your content.
When you use local geotags and local hashtags, it also spreads your content to members of the local community that may not have otherwise been a part of your reach or sphere of influence. This is one of the primary advantages of hyperlocal marketing, and the best part is most platforms use geotags.
Eventually, the numbers start piling up, and you’ll notice the growth in other users that are repeating your hashtags, especially as more people check in at your facility (assuming you allow cell phones). Your Local SEO and the performance of your Google Business Profile will also begin to measurably improve.
Use The Ad Reach Objective
One of the most powerful features of Facebook’s post-boosting and ad options is the Ad Reach configuration. This allows you to reach more potential clients during your hyperlocal social media marketing within a designated set of boundaries.
What does this feature accomplish for you? When you boost a post or select a specific ad creative, the ad reach feature allows you to target within a certain mileage radius. This gives you the power to target segments of the community based on how hot or cold these audiences are.
Taking advantage of a hot audience recently engaged with your facility or retargeting a location that garnered positive results is a great way to stay on the minds of those in the community.
The Best Hyperlocal Social Media Marketing Tips and Strategies
Now that you’re aware of the benefits of hyperlocal social media marketing let’s talk about some of the most powerful tips and strategies so you can take full advantage of this type of advertising.
Deciding On Organic or Paid
Remember, not all social media marketing efforts have to cost you money. Sometimes it’s just as easy to leverage organic reach by going viral or taking advantage of groups or other influential people and organizations on the platform.
How do you know whether to use organic or paid social media efforts? Well, this depends on what your efforts are focused on. If you’d rather go the organic route (which may trigger a larger reach and is great for awareness) you can work with other businesses or established figures in the community.
This is an excellent opportunity to work with influencers in your industry with a prominent voice in your community. Because their reach spans far, working with them on a post or some type of collaborative effort will boost your organization as well.
However, there is a huge advantage to choosing paid traffic. When you select a paid campaign, you can target potential clients more specifically. You’re also able to target users based on interests and information in their profiles. This could make a significant difference and lead to reaching users that find more value in the content you’re creating and your facility in general.
Focus On Value
When we say value here, we don’t mean money – we mean morals and values. Create content that takes a high moral stance and focuses on promoting your facility in a positive light. Present yourself in a way that allows members of the community to relate to your organization based on ideals, morals, and beliefs on important topics and local or global events.
Keep an Even Flow
It’s important that you’re consuming as much as you’re producing. The only way to truly get to know a local audience is to listen – and it’s vital that you give as much attention to local content creation as you expect them to give you.
Don’t overwhelm or bombard the feeds with posts hoping to win using a quantity-over-quality strategy. Make sure what you’re posting is useful, conveys the right message, and builds a bond between you and local users. Just as the rules apply to blog posts regarding fluff – the same holds true with social media content.
Get Personal
Don’t be afraid to personalize your content to forge stronger bonds with the community. Is there a particular problem or situation your community is facing? Is there a crisis going on? Maybe a shortage in some type of care?
Don’t be shy about addressing these things in your social media content. It will resonate in a powerful way with your audience and give them a platform to engage with you directly. Encourage potential clients to reach out during these times and present yourself as a pillar of support in the community.
Stay Updated
This goes with themes we spoke about earlier – remaining current with local affairs. This doesn’t have to be centered around hardship all the time. Keep your eyes open for newsworthy events and stories of positivity. Frame these stories in a way that connects them to your rehab.
These types of stories are a powerful way to bond with your future and current clients. Combine these with your hashtag strategies, and you create powerful ways to encourage comments and shares with regard to your organic strategy.
Use Targeting to Your Advantage
Use targeting features to your advantage but ensure you’re being selective. Don’t waste your ad spend on broad, general targeting. With the features available on Facebook, you can literally niche down to specific neighborhoods or segments of the population.
Combine your targeting strategies with any of the tips mentioned above to leverage even more effective means of connecting with your audience. Use data regarding local areas to your advantage and try to reach your target audience with the content that’s going to drive the highest amount of engagement. This can be done through paid ads but also through post-boosting as well.
Not every paid ad has to be a marketing tactic. Use boosts to increase the reach of your regular posts and repurposed content. This is also a great way to drive traffic to your favorite blog posts or landing pages that encourage signups or information submissions.
You can even use these strategies to work on certain content and information about things like insurance and funding for your program.
Be Specific and Methodical in Your Social Media Approach
Many substance abuse facilities don’t take their social media approach as seriously as they should, causing them to miss out on a huge opportunity to stay impactful and increase their reach.
Awareness of your facility is a huge part of your marketing strategy, and the more you continue to post meaningful social media content, the further you enhance your authority as a serious member of the community.
If you have alumni programs in place at your facility, this is a golden opportunity to combine these programs with your social media efforts. Create groups on various social media platforms that consist of alumni and allow them to act as a voice and community figure representing your facility.
A Brand Narrative that Highlights Local Success Stories
This also creates a feel-good story and is an excellent way to market recovery to the rest of the community. Whenever your alumni program does something positive for the community or hosts any type of event, make sure you echo information about these things throughout your social media platforms.
You can encourage other businesses to get involved with these events, especially if they involve local charities or a good cause. Finding ways to collaborate with other reputable businesses in the area is a tried and tested way to create a fast track to a top-tier rapport in your county or city.
Your Source for Hyperlocal Social Media Strategy
At Ads Up Marketing, social media marketing combined with an affinity for local outreach is just one area in that we excel. Our decades of experience in the substance abuse space combined with expert-level knowledge of online marketing and building a social media presence have helped countless recovery organizations build up their authority as impactful local businesses.
We can help you optimize your paid and organic social media strategies with services that range from consultation to full-on development and deployment of your social accounts.
Contact us today, and let’s schedule a call to talk about the future of your marketing strategy. We can start boosting your results immediately and have a history of success that speaks for itself. Let us help you stand out from the competition by contacting us today.