This guide is for Local businesses, SEO professionals, brick and mortar stores, ecommerce, professional services and just about anyone with an online offer and low conversion rates.
While I’ll cover the proven on-trendy geotargeting strategies that made businesses millions in 2020, this post goes further to reveal the latest tips in geotargeting you can use to reach your 2021 marketing goals.
So if you’re looking to:
- Generate more relevant ready-to-act traffic
- High-quality Leads
- Increased Sales
- High return on investments (Less Ads Spend)
Then, the simple, no-mumbo-jumbo step by step techniques revealed in this guide will help you alot.
Sounds cool?
Alright, let’s jump right into it!
Contents
Table of Content
- Fundamentals of Geotargeting
- Proven Geotargeting Marketing
- Quick Geotargeting tips for 2021
Fundamentals of Geotargeting
If you’ve ever wondered: “what is geotargeting?” You’ll find your answer in this section. Plus, I’ll also show you why this practice is important and if you’re a good fit for it.
Read on.
A. What is Geotargeting
Put simply, geotargeting means serving mobile and web users with content specific to their location using any or a combination of their IP, WiFi or GPS information.
To avoid confusion, location here could be the country, state, city, or specific geo-area. This thus implies that visitors could then be restricted to content unique to the country, state, or city they are in.
B. Examples of Geotargeting
If you use the internet often, I’ll bet you’ve been a “geotarget” at some point. Below are two most common examples in which geotargeting is seen today.
Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)
Speaking of satisfying search intent with the most relevant content, SERPs are winning the price for this.
Do this: enter the query “French cafe” into google search. Then compare your result with your friend at other city or country
Spot the difference yet?
The results will Definitely vary. And that’s your first example of geotargeting in action.
Location specific on-site content
A lot of people are doing this, not just the big brands. In this case consumers are served in the language native to their location. This is how smart businesses are tapping into huge traffic sources (which are also cheap).
There are thousands of cultures out there and chances are high that no matter what you have to offer, there are individuals who would be craving for what you have to offer. Sometimes you only need to reach them via content they relate to.
C. Why is geotargeting important
Ever heard of the term “conversion optimization”? I hope you have.
There are a tone of definitions flying around for it. However, the general gist involves doing all it takes to get the most amount of visitors to your website or any offer to do your bidding.
Now, let’s not pretend that’s not what you’re trying to achieve with geotargeting.
For after all is said and done, increasing conversion is the very essence of geotargeting.
D. Elements Used in Geotargeting
There are bits and bolts that make up the process. These are the elements of geotargeting. And you should be paying close attention to each
Here is a list of the common elements in geotargeting:
Audience: At the heart of the entire process are the people you’re trying to reach.
Language: This relates to the most favored means of communication associated with the audience.
Location: The geographical space occupied by your target audience. This location is known for its unique language which may or may not be shared by other locations.
Currency: The appropriate means of batter specific for your audience.
Marketing message: The angle, culture, and nuance that is most appropriate to your target audience’s point of view.
Onsite visual elements: They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In geotargeting it is crucial they represent the right words or you might as well go home.
Time and Distance: These are important variables that heightens the relevancy of your campaigns. The wrong timing can easily spell doom even if other elements are in good standing.
E. Who uses geotargeting
Based on experience combined with learnings from different research papers, geo targeting can be used by a wide and eclectic range of individuals and businesses in their online undertakings.
Let me give you examples:
● Professionals
● Ecommerce stores
● Automobile brands
● Local Handyman services
● Local, National and International Brands
● Solopreneurs
The list is endless really. Anyone with a product or service can leverage geotargeting.
F. Pros and Cons of Geotargeting
Benefits of geotargeting
Increase business: Geotargeting can help businesses increase sales by targeting customers within a close proximity to their business or competitors with special marketing.
Valid marketing insights: marketers can gain authenticated marketing data such as consumer behaviour, demographics, interests etc. from their campaigns which can be used to improve subsequent campaigns which increases chances of conversion.
It saves time: a lot can be gained from geotargeting within a short period of time since you will be dealing with smaller, specific parameters and audience. You have less tweaks to make when compared to say general targeting.
Less spend: with geotargeting models like cost per visit (CPV) advertising, marketers can be confident of maximizing their return on ad spend.
Improves consumer satisfaction and loyalty: By making your messaging relevant to a select audience can make you gain their trust and loyalty.
Disadvantages of geotargeting
Unfortunately, there are challenges associated with geotargeting and other location based forms of advertising as well. The common issues encountered are:
Use approval Requirements: It requires users to use the location technology on their devices as well as provide approval for apps to access data. Many people find this threatening and do not consent. This means the marketer will be losing out on such a category of potential business.
Users: A fair number of people worldwide are still not using smartphones and other smart technologies. This means that your marketing will not be able to reach this set of audience.
Erroneous optimization: Consider Washington D.C. and Washington state. Common names, different places. It is quite common for marketers to mistakenly enter the wrong location.
Hypertargeting can be expensive: Hyper-targeting audience segments tend to be more expensive.
2. Proven Geotargeting Strategies: How you can use geotargeting
A. IP address Geotargeting
IP = Internet Protocol. And as long as you have a device connected to the internet, it has an IP address.
Like the physical address, it can be identified to a particular location and it is what is used to link a internet user to their online activity.
Because IPs are tied to physical locations, an internet user can then be provided with content customized to suit the peculiarities of their location.
Over the years, this has proven to be one of the best geotargeting techniques due to its reliability.
B. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
This method is not free. However it is effective.
PPC advertising allows you to target in the location of your choice. Here you would need to use a platform that allows PPC advertising such as FaceBook, Google AdWords, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and a whole host of social media platforms.
It works because you can easily set your campaigns based on the location, language and behaviour of your target audience and leave the rest of the heavy lifting to the algorithm of these platforms.
C. Weather targeting
This is another smart form of geotargeting I see more people doing. It seems natural to the user who often feels the content is godsend.
Imagine this: you are about when suddenly it wants to rain, then voila an ad promoting offers that can protect you from the rain such as umbrellas. Wouldn’t you be delighted? That’s weather targeting in a nutshell.
D. Geoconquesting
With competition for new customers more fierce than ever, “geoconquesting” allows you to conquer your location by “stealing” business from competitors.
How?
You simply target people in close proximity to your competitors with an irresistible offer.
E. GPS marketing
The information gleaned from mobile GPS technology is used to target users.
F. Beacon advertising
Here beacons (these are devices found in business premises) are used to home in on people near such premises. Once a user is matched to a beacon of a known location, a tailored marketing message can then be used to reach them like magic.
3. Quick Geotargeting tips for 2021
- Identify where your audience would naturally hangout
- Exclude locations where your audience are not likely to be
- Use time or distance to make your targeting more effective
- Maintain a flexible ads bidding strategy
- Use keywords specific to a particular location in your PPC campaigns
- Use location to predict your target audience
- Use Search History to determine location intent
- Use custom made landing pages for every location
- Get the most out of location specific events
