With today’s technology, geography plays an important role in creating customized and targeted marketing campaigns. If you’re a local business who hasn’t taken advantage of geolocation, you may be missing a crucial part of your businesses potential.
Imagine a coffee shop being able to reach out to people working in office buildings within a three mile radius of its location. Think they could motivate a few people looking for a coffee shop to pick up coffee on their way to work?
Or how about a restaurant within walking distance of a hotel. Think they could benefit from geotargeting people in town for a conference? People that may be looking for a quick place to grab lunch?
Geotargeting is the practice of delivering content to a consumer – either through mobile or web – using geographical location information about that individual. It’s one of the most detailed ways of marketing your business to people who are searching for what you do, right now at the current moment. Think of it as marketing on steroids. Location often provides a much deeper, more meaningful look at how people shop and what they want to buy.
How can you use it for your business?
Think how your target audience thinks
Think of your target customer. Now think of them on a grander scale. Because once you understand the needs and desires of one individual customer, you can find that person again and again in very specific places.
Maybe your target customer is a college student. The local university would be a pretty good place to find your target customer in mass.
Maybe your target customer is a high end business client wanting to book a dinner table to meet with clients. A classy office building filled with doctors and lawyers may be the perfect place to motivate for your target customers to visit your location.
It’s easy to think like your target customer. And if you haven’t defined them clearly by where they shop, work or live, don’t worry. That’s what we do when we work with our clients.
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Clearly define your distance
People are finicky when it comes to their time. They want things close by, convenient, and appropriate for the way they choose to live. If you meet their qualifications, they are interested. If not, you’re dismissed altogether.
That’s where geofencing comes into play. Geofencing allows you to define the perimeters around a physical location in which your mobile message is delivered. It also gives you the opportunity to get creative and very detailed with what your potential customers actually see.
You can define perimeters by location. A restaurant that is a mere three minute walk from the office can motivate a business person to step away from the office and try a new restaurant for lunch.
You can define perimeters by time. A new condo building downtown can attract workers with long daily commutes, giving them a reason to consider moving to gain more time in their long work days.
Your audience can grow and change
Geotargeting your online ads doesn’t have to be an all or nothing kind of thing. You don’t have to lose volume just because you prefer to target exclusive ads. You can prioritize and bid based on how your customers think.
If you’re planning an event, for instance, in Portland, Oregon, your primary ads could target people meeting your demographics that live within the city. You could also reach out, at a lower cost, people right outside of your geotargeted region: Vancouver, Seattle, or Boise might be an added draw to pull people in.
You raise your bid amounts for the most desirable targeted locations, while lowering the bid amount in other areas to keep your reach broad and justifiable in cost.
Discover location by search history
Have you ever searched for a specific item, only to find that item popping up again and again in the sites you visit most frequently?
Geotargeted ads can be set up to use search history and deliver location specific results based on how a consumer searches. It’s based on searching demographics, not specifically where the consumer’s tracked location currently is.
For example, if a person begins searching for information on a specific destination:
- Best things to do in Portland
- Top restaurants in Portland
- Night activities in Portland
Using this search information could allow a hotel to deliver relevant and timely search related ads or messages assuming they will be visiting the area in the near future. This can help you deliver a strong message meeting very specific needs of the searcher involved.
Analyze consumer behavior
What if you were a small bakery looking to increase traffic? What if you could reach out to people that had frequented a Starbucks location just a few doors down, offering them a free coffee with any purchase? Think that could increase your business a little?
Location history provides a wealth of information on specific locations of an individual. It tracks where they shop, how often they make purchases, what they like to buy, even the route they use to get there. By using this information, you can gain insight into the behavior patterns of your best customers, and use it to create responsive ads that reach out and interact with them on an intimate level. It allows you to get more creative, more specific, with the way you drive customers back to your location.
Does all of this sound complicated? Don’t worry; it doesn’t have to be.
These are just a few of the examples of how geography is currently being used in the way people market their businesses. It’s how businesses create customized and targeted marketing campaigns and deliver it to them in the media they use all the time … their mobile devices.
We know consumers respond better to marketing that is geotargeted and ultra specific. We know you can increase your ROI when you are very specific with the way you approach your prospects and customers. We also know the fastest growing marketing trends right now include geography at its core.
Have you considered geotargeting to help you increase your business? Let us show you how easy it can be.
