Technology has become so inevitable that we humans cannot think about our lives without it. Every sector or we can say the business niche is becoming dependent on new technologies to create a strong market presence. If we talk about the current trend, geo-targeting is being practiced a lot by businesses to generate more local leads by targeting people based on their geographical location. We must say that it has become an important tool for businesses to improve conversions, especially for local customers.
New techniques & strategies are being developed to generate more business and compete strongly in the digital world because that is the place where most of the revenue is coming from. But our prime focus in this blog is to explore geo targeting.
What is geo-targeting?
Geo-targeting is a practice of delivering relevant ads or offers to the target audience based on their location. With geo-targeting, the goal is also to deliver different content to the targeted people than the rest of the website visitors.
Geo-targeting is considered best for businesses with physical location irrespective of the condition whether they serve in a single location or multiple locations. For example, you are serving in Wisconsin and found any user visited your website in that location. In such a situation, you can deliver a customized website experience with exclusive offers. This will increase the chances of getting users to your store and buy your products or service. This is how powerful geo-targeting is.
One of the best uses of geo-targeting is for the PPC campaign, as you have the liberty to show the ad to users present only in a specific location. By doing this, you can save the cost of getting clicked by irrelevant people. Or in other words, we can say that geo-targeting helps businesses in attracting potential customers with high chances of buying your product or service.
How geo targeting works?
We must say that all internet users have a smartphone across the globe and that is their prime source of surfing on the internet for social media and app-based online shopping. Every internet-connected device has a unique IP that also shows its location. Geo-targeting works by identifying the location based on the IP address of the internet users.
So, by identifying the geographical location of users who come to your website, a customized message is shown. Besides, geo-targeting can also be done by sending push notifications on the mobile, customized emails, text messages, or showing social media posts.
Benefits of geo targeting
For anything to become popular, there has to be a strong reason behind that. Similarly, there are many reasons why geo-targeting is highly admired by businesses and why it is being used as an effective tool for digital or online marketing.
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Better user experience
Geo-targeting is a great way to improve the user experience of your website. When the user is present in any of the location you serve, it is best to show a message, coupon, or discount offer that tempt him/her to buy the service or product you are offering.
For example, if you own a bar with a physical presence in multiple locations, and a user visited your website from any of those locations you serve in, then showing him/her customized web page along with a great offer will tempt him/her to visit personally to your bar.
The reason to show personalized content to that visitor is that he/she is present in your serving location and being present on your site or app shows the willingness to buy the service or product offered by you. In such a case, a tempting or attractive triggering to the willingness of the user can make him/her your customer.
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Better engagement
Yes, you have read that right, geo-targeting can help your audience engage better they normally do. This is because of the personalized content that is shown to them. For example, if you have a registered app or online user, you can show customized content addressing that user. This will create a good impact on your brand and build trust in your target audience.
If people are getting engaged on your website or application, the chances are high that they will make the purchase sooner or later. So, by targeting the right people at the right time you can engage with your audience in a better and more humanized way and this will create a huge positive impact on your business.
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Strengthens you locally
Local customers play an important role in generating a big part of revenue for most businesses, especially with brick & mortar presence. Employing geo-targeting in your online marketing strategy will help you get the attention of your local customers and drive them to your physical location.
To achieve that, it is required to show every user a unique or exclusive content whenever they open your website or app while being present in the location your service is offered. Doing this will not only improve the relevance of your business but also enhance its reputation.
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Optimize advertising returns
As with geo-targeting, you are only showing ads to people who are in a specific geographical location, this will help you save a lot while running your PPC campaign. Without geo-targeting, the ad is shown to everyone who is using social media or visiting your web page. In such a condition, most of the clicks made by the people will be waste you but you still have to pay for all those clicks.
While on the other hand, this is not the case with businesses using geo-targeting. With this technique, irrelevant ad clicks will be minimized because the ad will only be visible to target people who are there in your service area. Thus, you can re-strategize your advertising budget and get better returns.
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Strong promotions
Now you might be thinking about how geo-targeting can help in business promotions. Let us clarify it for you. When a user lands on your website in search of something that you provide, it shows that he/she is in need of that product or service. While with geo-targeting, it got confirmed that the user is in your service location, then you can send a promotional push notification, email, or text message with discount offers or free coupons.
Applying this promotional strategy will increase its success rate by convincing the user that your company is the best one nearby for buying the required product or service. For example, if a visitor lands on your apparel website in search of a formal shirt, then you can flash a 30 or 40 % discount coupon on formal shirts or simply send a push notification. This will create a strong desire for buying a shirt. Seeing the exclusive discount coupon, the user might end up buying more.
Even if the user has not visited your website, still you can send push notification to the users by knowing their location to generate new leads.
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Quicker service
By offering the information about the closet source of the product or service the user is looking, service times are reduced and delivery speeds up. Thus, with the help of geo-targeting, the user gets to know about the nearest destination where he/she can get what is desired. Plus, the one who provides the best offer for that product or service will be chosen by the user.
So, in this scenario, the faster will be the service the better will be your reputation and customer satisfaction.
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Build authority
With the help of geo-targeting, you can highlight information in your advertisements about relevant community events in your specified locations. This will make you more engaged with the people around and will help build your brand authority. It is also of great help in making relationships better with your target audience and existing clients.
You can also get engaged with your audience by running geo-targeted campaigns and informing people about your presence near them. Considering this will increase the visit of people on your physical location and improve the reputation of your brand.
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Stay a step ahead of your competitors
Another advantage of using geolocation is to have a competitive edge over your competitors by hiding your offers or discounts that you are providing to your customers. While considering this, a big question that arises is that competitors are everywhere, thus, it is not possible for you to hide ads from all your competitors. So, how will it work and how will you implement this?
Now, we are talking about geo-targeting and with that, you need not worry about the competitors that are far away or the ones serving in the locations you are not. So, what you can do is hide the ads from your closest competitors based on the location. Doing this will help you privately send offers to your potential customers.
Another plus point of geo-targeting in this context is that you can prevent fake clicks on your PPC ad campaign by your competitors and save the cost that you will be required to pay to the advertiser.
These are the benefits that you’ll get by implementing geo targeting with your digital marketing campaign. The more refined audience, better reputation, high lead generation, better conversion rate, and good brand authority, that’s all you can get by effectively using geo-targeting for your business. Let us briefly discuss the ways by which you can get the best of geo targeting.
Effective ways to implement geo targeting
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Exclude smartly
Geo-targeting never means only inclusion, it is a balanced combination of both inclusion and exclusion. Thus, one of the effective strategies to make your geo-targeting campaign work is to make smart exclusion of the locations that do not come under your service area. Doing this will hold your ad back for the people who are not physically present in the area you offer your services.
This is must not only concentrate your target audience but also save the money wasted on the clicks made by people with the least possible chances of generating revenue for you. Doing this will have a direct effect impact on ROI.
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Use keywords
Another card in the deck that could work for you is the use of keywords while running the geo-targeting campaign. Let us see an example for a better understanding of this point. Imagine you provide car driving lessons in different locations across the United States. Now, what this service provider can do is create location-based specific pages like car driving lessons Seattle and car driving lessons Chicago and run a campaign for that as well.
Considering this will boost your geo-targeting campaign and deliver better results as compared to only relying on the campaign. This will also have a positive effect on your website’s visibility and drive more web traffic.
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Target Mobile
Almost all internet users own a smartphone and most of them prefer using that for doing internet surfing. So, ensure new lead generation and target travelers to buy your product or service if they are looking for the same, it is important for you to also run a mobile-only Ad campaign.
Doing this will help you reach your target audience present in your service location through their smartphones. It might also assist you in getting more attention.
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Add target language
This is one of the most important factors that require consideration. While selecting the locations for geo-targeting, you must also add the native language of that location for the ease of visitors. For example, you serve in any of the Spanish areas, then adding the Spanish language is also a must to make visitors more engaged and ensure friendliness.
Considering this is an effective strategy while using geo-targeting and will help deliver the right content to the right audience in the right language. Besides the language, you must also choose the right currency based on the location of the service.
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Location-specific ads
Creating location-specific ads might also work for you along with geo-targeting. Adding local search terms in your ad will be a boost in getting more visibility and in turn more traffic on your website. Placing location-specific ads will also help you tell your target audience how you are different from your competitors. This will have a great effect on the improvement of your web traffic, lead generation, and conversion rate.
The Bottom Line
Customers are everywhere but it is not easy to target them at all locations. Doing this not only requires a lot of resources, manpower, and efforts but also a handsome sum of money as well. Thus, in this process, the smartness lies in specifying the locations at which you can easily offer your products & services. Here came the concept of geo-targeting that helps businesses focus on the target audience present in the geographical locations where their services and products are offered.
Adopting this strategy along with a digital marketing campaign has helped numerous businesses to make a strong online presence and it is doing so for many more as well. Strategic and effective implementation of the geo-targeting campaign can do wonders for your business and help you make the king in specific locations. This strategy is considered best when it comes to grab the attention of the local audience and generate leads with a high conversion rate.
Hence, considering this along with the digital marketing could be the card with the ability to win you the game.