GapMaps has announced the launch of its Local Area Marketing (LAM) Service to transform how businesses engage customers and build brand awareness in their local catchment. By placing data-driven campaign controls directly into the hands of local retail operators, franchisees, restaurants, and venues, they can eliminate wasted advertising spend and drive measurable growth.

The service addresses a major pain point for local businesses: the inefficiency of digital advertising platforms that rely on broad, online signals for targeting. These platforms often cast a wide net in the hope of catching the right audience, leading to significant waste and missed opportunities. In contrast, the GapMaps LAM Service leverages real-world behavioural data to identify and reach the most relevant local audiences, ensuring marketing budgets are spent with maximum impact.

“A huge amount of money is wasted on digital advertising that doesn’t reach the right audience in the local catchment area,” said Anthony Villanti, GapMaps Managing Director and Founder.

“Our Local Area Marketing Service solves this problem by using real-world insights to pinpoint customers. We’re putting the power of precision marketing directly into the hands of local operators, helping them connect with their communities and see a real return on investment.”

Designed to help brands increase visitation frequency from existing customers while attracting new ones, the LAM Service enables businesses to target campaigns within their defined catchment areas, encouraging loyal customers to visit more often and new audiences to engage for the first time.

The service is ideal for building brand awareness in the local catchment across a wide range of marketing and initiatives. This includes promoting store openings and launching new products, running competitor conquest campaigns or driving specific daypart opportunities, such as encouraging breakfast patrons to return for an evening meal.

The GapMaps LAM Service has already delivered strong results in pilot programs, including with a major global fitness brand, demonstrating its ability to create hyper-targeted, high-performing campaigns that empower franchisees to build local awareness and measurable growth. The service is also being used successfully by global and local brands outside the GapMaps platform, underscoring its flexibility and scalability in supporting local marketing strategies. 

Key customer benefits include:

• Empowering Local Businesses and Franchisees: Provides store operators with direct control over their local marketing budgets, enabling them to launch campaigns that complement national advertising efforts.

1. Eliminating Ad Spend Waste: Targets customers based on real-world activity, such as where they work, live, and visit, reducing spend on irrelevant audiences and improving return on investment compared to traditional platforms.
2. Hyper-Local Targeting: Uses GapMaps’ advanced trade area intelligence to build awareness, increase visit frequency, and attract new patrons within a store’s true catchment.
3. Advanced Audience Segmentation: Enables campaigns to target non-customers or competitor patrons, while excluding existing loyal customers, maximising acquisition budgets.
4. Turnkey Campaign Management: Offers an end-to-end solution where GapMaps manages strategy, creative, campaign optimisation, and reporting – making sophisticated local marketing accessible even for those without in-house marketing expertise.

The GapMaps LAM Service is available now across Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America. While currently offered as a managed service, GapMaps plans to integrate LAM capabilities into its platform in future releases – further extending the value and strategic impact of its data intelligence ecosystem.