You may have never heard the word “sub-neighborhood” before, but I can virtually guarantee that you know what they are. Think about it like this: Manhattan is a city. Little Italy is a Neighborhood. And those two blocks of Little Italy where they have street vendors who sell nothing but delicious cannolis is a sub-neighborhood.
Maybe a sub-neighborhood has its own name and its own strong identity that is unmistakable to anyone who enters and leaves its boundaries, or maybe the sub-neighborhood is entirely undocumented and known only to those who live or work there.
But sub-neighborhoods should hold a special place in the hearts of marketers, because they bring you one step closer to your customers. Just like the way neighborhoods are better than cities at letting us reach groups of people who share a common identity, sub-neighborhoods let us get even more specific than that. And this is a powerful thing, because it has never been easier to show an irrelevant ad (some advertisers are even printing ads directly on the eggs that you buy from the grocery store, for instance), and this means that the only messages that are going to have an impact are the ones that are relevant. So if you’re a marketer and you’re thinking about how to increase the relevance of your marketing, think sub-neighborhoods.