Ad spending in India is slated to touch Rs 57,486 crores in 2016. However, a majority of this ad spend is non-targeted.

Traditional advertising mediums offer very low granularity of targeting, thereby, resulting in poor ROIs and high cost of customer acquisition. For example, most newspapers offer targeting at a city level. For a brand catering to any customer segment this is a waste of money as a majority of customers are outside the Target Group. The problem gets compounded with widening income disparity, low attention span and clutter of ads.

Localization is the solution to improve effectiveness of marketing, however, the moment one goes granular they know too less to target customer effectively. Data plays a significant role to bridge this gap. To be able to target effectively you need to know persona of the people which includes disposable income, preferences, etc.

Individual level targeting was effectively addressed by Digital media which gained significant traction in last few years, however, rising cost of digital marketing, inability to understand disposable income, and passiveness limits the use of this media. For example, cost of lead through digital media has become 5 folds in past 5-6 years for education, home services business etc. On top of it there are privacy concerns.

So, what is the right level of marketing? How to identify whom to target?

A community often defines cluster of people who have similar profile. It serves as a medium where marketing spend can be rightly targeted, messaging can be customized and yet it doesn’t invoke privacy concerns. The key to target at a hyperlocal level is data which bridges the gap of whom to target and appropriate messaging. We are helping bridge this gap of data at a hyperlocal level so that companies can rightly identify whom to target.

If you want to know how a data driven hyperlocal advertisement approach can help your business please feel free to contact us.

About the author: Pankaj is co-founder of Machadalo. He can be reached at pankaj@machadalo.com