Use cognitive insights to tackle local marketing

Myriam says: “For local SEO, you really need to tackle your local marketing with cognitive insights. One of the biggest is brand familiarity.

You need to think about how to establish that and how to pay attention to it, because it can cost you big now.”

What are cognitive insights?

“Ultimately, instead of chasing machines and trying to figure out what they know about humans, how about we figure out humans and let the machines catch on?

Instead of trying to create content that is local on the surface, to please a machine looking at a set of rules, focus on the signals that do matter, that machines can pick up on. These are your local insights – things that you know that your competitors, or any big global competitor entering your market, may not know.”

Is SEO now more about optimizing for humans rather than algorithms?

“Algorithms are getting more and more interesting if you work in SEO. Nowadays we’re not trying to mediate with the machine as much.

We know that machines are more nuanced and more sensitive. With machine learning, it can pick up on trends and habits, and it can figure stuff out. A lot of the core updates that we’ve been facing in the industry over the past few months are very focused around understanding the meaning behind the query.

Start paying attention to what matters to the people you’re trying to sell to or speak to. Working on this localised approach means that you build brand familiarity. You show up where people are looking for you, yes, but you show up in a way that is memorable.

Brand familiarity translates to increased cognitive trust. It’s not an instinct. It’s just that, now, it’s in our heads. When users have to make a decision, your brand is already onboarded into their internal process.

If I say the word ‘ketchup’, what’s the first brand that comes to your mind? Heinz. That is brand familiarity. You have taken a cognitive shortcut. You made a snap decision. That’s what we should be focusing on.

When we pay attention to what goes on in the decision-making process – when we understand local behaviours and preferences, and we truly create content that resonates locally – that’s where we build trust. That’s where we build credibility.

Heinz actually faced another problem. They accomplished brand familiarity, basically worldwide, but restaurants started keeping the bottle and putting cheap ketchup inside. So, Heinz decided to not let others capitalise on their brand familiarity. They came out with a wonderful marketing campaign where the border of the ketchup bottle is a very specific colour of red. It’s the ‘Heinz Ketchup’ red. That way, customers coming into a restaurant can quickly compare the border with the ketchup to know they’re getting the real deal. This stuff matters”

Is this an SEO role as well as a brand marketer’s role nowadays?

“It is an SEO role. Let me explain why.

Little known fact: I grew up in Hawaii. McDonald’s is famous for their apple pie, but if you look at their main website for Hawaii, you will see ‘haupia pie’. They also give out pineapple for Happy Meals, but the haupia pie replaces the apple pie. It’s the pie you know in Hawaii because it has traditional coconut pudding inside.

When I’m saying to lean on those cognitive insights, you need to figure out, as a brand, what are the local customs? What are the local dialects? What are the cultural references? What is the local imagery? What are the traditions?

That way, you can deliver localised experiences to users based on their geography, language preferences, and a lot more as well.

I’ll give you another example on the Hawaiian theme. Poke bowls seem to be trending right now. Everyone is obsessed with it. You’ve probably seen restaurants that sell them. The issue is that most of the folks outside of Hawaii think of this product as a restaurant food item. I think of it as a supermarket special. That is an SEO thing.

If you’re selling this product, you have to know exactly what context it’s used in. True localisation will transcend language. It taps into the psychological drivers behind decision-making.

If you go on AlsoAsked.com and look for questions about poke, you will notice something. The first question might be, ‘Does TIMES supermarket have poke?’ That’s a supermarket chain here in Hawaii. If I zoom into it, then the keywords that pop up are, ‘Does Safeway have poke?’, ‘Does Costco have poke?’, etc. It’s not a restaurant cluster of keywords. It’s a supermarket cluster of keywords. It’s an SEO thing.

Think about formal attire. Have you ever tried wearing a wool suit in tropical weather? It doesn’t work. When we talk about formal attire in Hawaii, it’s going to be called ‘aloha wear’. It is going to be a traditional, formal muumuu. Most people think of muumuus differently, as something you wear around the house.

You need to pay attention to differentiate yourself. Talk about the little things that make you feel familiar. Make users feel like you are a trusted brand so their brains can choose you as the easy go-to.”

What is the main difference between translated content and hyper-localised content?

“This is key. Whether you are an e-commerce giant looking to enter a market or a small local brand, if you localise your promotions, you’re going to find different keywords. Once again, you’re focusing on knowing what people are familiar with in specific locales.

If I talk to you about a Kama’aina discount, first of all, you’re going to ask me how to spell that. The second question is, what is that? It’s a very specific ‘tradition’ for locals where, if you’re a local and you live or are born in Hawaii, you will get discounts in restaurants and hotels in different areas of the islands. It’s something that tourists will not have.

If you are entering the Hawaii market and you don’t know about the Kama’aina discount, you may be at a disadvantage with locals. You’re also missing out on, roughly, 3,600 monthly searches for ‘Kama’aini hotel rates on Oahu’, according to Semrush. That’s a big chunk to miss out on if you’re a hotel.

Something else that you wouldn’t know about Hawaii is that, if you go shopping, at some point throughout the day you will hear, ‘Do you offer a military discount?’ This gets asked everywhere. It could be at a convenience store or a high-end boutique, it doesn’t matter. There are three military bases on the one tiny island of Oahu. You can be sure that the local brands know you need to offer a military discount because that’s a specific local audience.

This customer base has different expectations. They use different words and have different intents. It’s very important for SEO.”

How do you deliver hyper-localised content to ensure that your brand appears for the right phrases?

“I think we should turn that around. We are very used to making sure we show up, but what if we looked at our website and asked, ‘Do we even have a local store page that would be trustworthy?’ and ‘Do we even have the information people are looking for in those pages?’

If you want to make a difference, then go into EEAT, but apply it to what we’re talking about. Use imagery that contains local scenery, symbols, people, products, and other visual elements that feel familiar. In Hawaii, if you have images of a blonde person wearing a little off-the-shoulder, summery, daisy pattern, it can feel like California. It doesn’t really feel like Hawaii. The print is off. It’s not the right type of flower. It’s not the right colour scheme. It’s not what you would expect to see.

If you’re talking about ice cream, then there should be a photo of shave ice. If you are an international brand trying to move in, you would use a photo of the pineapple flavour.

You can dig deeper. You can localise microcopy, meta descriptions, image alt text, and button text. If you can get reviews, testimonials, and local press, that will make a lot more sense to the people who are checking the content.

When I walk down the main shopping street in Montreal, I will know, based on the stores, who is a marketing director from France and who is a marketing director from Quebec, aka French Canada – and I can do this online as well. The words they use are not the same. Even for the word ‘sales’, in French, we use the plural but in Quebec French, we use the singular. We announce the ‘big sale’, not the ‘big sales’.

These are the little things that you can tell if you’re a local. The problem is, if I’m not hyper-focused on all of this, and I don’t narrate this to myself, it simply coalesces into a feeling that something is off. I don’t quite trust you, and you don’t feel like the right brand for me, even if you show up. Humans take these mental shortcuts, and now search engines are able to do the same thing.”

In a competitive landscape, can you be successful in local SEO without having local people involved?

“You don’t necessarily need to have local people involved, but you do need to pay attention to things. If I’m an SEO who doesn’t know the lay of the land, the first thing I’m going to notice is the keyword patterns.

Go through your internal searches. What are people searching for when they already know your brand and they want something? Look at paid keywords. Look at what you rank for and what competitors rank for. You’ll start noticing patterns and you can ask why that is happening. Why is this word used instead of the one I would have used? Why am I not getting any data for the keywords I thought I would target? That’s what you need to focus on.

Not only that, but you also need to know whether your competitor is so well known in this local market they have become a verb, and they are now the word that describes the product. If you’re fighting against that, it’s complicated. Dole, in Hawaii, is pineapple. Good luck establishing another pineapple brand. You can advertise your tissues, but Kleenex is going to be a hurdle. You should be aware of this, and you don’t need a local to know it.

You can find this by doing quantitative and qualitative research, but you need to pay attention to it. It’s very important because, if you don’t look into regional holidays, colour symbolism, and local laws, you are not going to succeed. You might then think that the market is complicated or it’s not worth your time. Actually, it’s because you have the wrong approach.”

If an SEO is struggling for time, what should they stop doing right now so they can spend more time doing what you suggest in 2025?

“Stop producing generic content that you think will rank. If you really want to go after a market, figure out which markets you want to target. Do not take out a bazooka and try to shoot a fly. That’s not how it works. Focus on what matters to you.

If you are going to be tasked with really getting to the nitty-gritty of it, look at your website and ask yourself, ‘If I were coming here as a local, would I find the information I need?’ If the answer is that you would have to work hard and make a lot of inferences, and you would need to know certain things beforehand, then you’ve got it wrong. You need to review it.”

Myriam Jessier is Senior Performance Consultant with Pragm and Neurospicy Agency, and you can find them over at Neurospicy.Agency.