Geotargeting: Everything You Should Know About

Reaching only the “right” customers from a certain city, region, or country is a headache for most businesses. If you have faced this problem as well, the article is for you. We are going to consider targeted advertising and geomarketing to make your ads more effective and save your budget.

What is Geomarketing?

Geomarketing is a popular practice, which implies using clients’ locations to deliver personalized content or geo-targeted advertising.

Knowing the location is helpful in the following intentions:

• Improving the customer experience;
• Increasing visits in your offline store, restaurant, etc.;
• Driving transactions and conversions;

Making offers more relevant and timely.

Before considering the pros & cons of geomarketing solutions and possible use cases, we should distinguish their types.

Types of Geomarketing: Geotargeting vs Geofencing

• Geotargeting. Here, IP addresses and data from questionnaires are used to figure out the user’s location. Of course, the collected information isn’t always accurate, especially if the client uses VPN. However, it’s enough for most businesses, which are targeted at broad regions (a particular city or state).
• Geofencing. When smartphones became a part of our life, marketers started utilizing the capabilities of such devices for their own purposes. Geofencing is about using GPS to determine where users are. This approach allows specialists to know the precise location and immediately contact customers via push notification or SMS. Besides GPS, the necessary information may be provided by mobile carriers. The service is called Big Data.

Thus, to start your location-based marketing campaign, first, you must decide your true goals and expectations. There are numerous geomarketing tools, but marketers usually need just a few of them.

Pros & Cons of Mobile Geotargeting

Geomarketing is able to make life better for both companies and customers. The main advantages for businesses are:

• Reducing costs. Well-targeted advertising means that less money is spent on it. Your ads are shown only to those people who are located in the reach zone and may potentially be interested in your goods or services. The average cost-per-click (CPC) is lower while conversions are higher.
• Increasing revenue by growing local presence. It’s achieved not only by higher conversions. Within the established budget, you can involve more people who are ready to buy your products or order services. Accurate geographical targeting can be your silver bullet.
• Improving UX. Give people what they wish the most right now at their location. Valuable offers will certainly improve the attitude towards your brand.
• Successfully competing with other companies, especially if you have a seasonal business. First, you are able to attract more people. Second, you can poach clients of other companies. Here, we are speaking about geofencing. When the system sees a person near your competitor, it sends a message that you have the same bids cheaper or you have prepared a promo code.
• Opportunity to be invisible to competitors. Targeted advertising will allow you to place ads out of view from other market players. It’s easy to achieve by excluding certain IP addresses from your campaigns.

Users get the following benefits:

• Personalized content. People focus only on what concerns them. Personalization is especially important when buying something, reading local news, and the like. Companies have to know where to deliver orders and what ads/articles show.
• Special offers at the appropriate time. Mobile geo targeting allows customers to drop by your shop for making a planned purchase when they are nearby. Or clearly show the client how he can get to you if geofencing isn’t your choice.
• Support from brands that people love. Clients feel like they are being taken care of when they get the offers they really need right now.

Other disadvantages are:

• Additional time and resources are required to create special content for each location you are targeting;
• It’s easy to make a mistake and lose the entire budget. One wrong click and your advertising is shown to the wrong audience from a completely different region;
• Some customers stay unreached because they refuse GPS tracking and/or providing information about their location manually.

Thus, you should definitely include users’ locations in your marketing strategy.

Geotargeting Trends for Mobile Apps

Hence, geotargeted ads and other marketing tools will be more and more widespread without any doubts. Their rapid development has to do with the high demand for advanced digital technologies including IoT, Big Data platforms, and AI solutions related to product promotion.

Geomarketing has especially become popular during the pandemic: businesses massively moved online, stopped offline advertising, and launched online campaigns. For example, major national grocery retailers in Ukraine have created websites where users can order products with door-to-door delivery.

Another trend is security and privacy. Previously, companies were able to gather and process any information from the users’ devices. Today, before providing such data, clients must permit that. Moreover, the main operating systems – Android and iOS – show when the GPS module is active.

Location helps marketers better understand the requirements and needs of their clients. Thus, geotargeting marketing is a thing, the adoption of which allows businesses to outrun competitors and get higher income.

Now, let’s take a look at the best practices of geotargeted ads and services.

App Geotargeting Examples

There are numerous cases when it’s necessary and useful to know the users’ locations, especially for sending situational messages. Below, you’ll find some bright examples.

Busfor

It is a popular service that allows travelers to buy a ticket on a bus in several taps. To promote its solution and increase revenue, Busfor regularly sends mobile pushes, which take location into account. So, if a user from Praha is buying a ticket to Pardubice, they will be offered to order a return ticket after a while. Or if this person ended up in another city, say in Hradec Králové, the system will send a message about buying a ticket home – to Praha.

Multiplex

Multiplex is a chain of cinemas in Ukraine. When a client buys a ticket, the company figures out his exact location (city and movie theater). Then, the information is used for different push notifications:

• Inviting to parties in honor of the opening of new halls;
  

• Sharing updates (for example, new chairs have been installed);
  

• Warning about important changes or requirements. 
  

GruberGreets

It’s a delivery service that collaborates with numerous retailers and establishments to let customers stay at home when it’s cold, snowing, or raining outside.

In order to launch such a campaign, the company tracks the weather in different regions (easy enough). Instead of free shipping, there may be a delivery discount.  

But what about businesses that only serve offline? In this case, they should warm up clients in their cafés/restaurants by preparing special treats and inviting people. Such offers are often relevant for employees of business centers. For instance, if an establishment usually serves employees of nearby companies and they are around the corner from it, there is a high probability that people will respond to the offer to drop by.

Questionnaires can help to find out the visitor's place of work. Another option is to adopt the approach of Rocket (a food delivery startup): if there are more than N orders at lunchtime in the same place for a month and delivery to the business center, then the client works there.

William Hill

The experience of William Hill, one of the most famous sports betting outlets, shows that location-based push notifications achieve 400% better engagement. The market player regularly sends such messages with targeted offers (free bets and the like) and gets stunning results. The motto of William Hill is “don’t overwhelm users but ensure that all notifications are totally relevant.”

Aliexpress

It’s a simple but vivid example of location-based marketing. When users indicate where they are, Aliexpress changes currencies and delivery details. It significantly improves the user experience and simplifies the ordering process.

VoldeGlort

The name of the company, which offers electronic cigarettes, was changed. Its sales and promotions are accompanied by an invitation to an offline shop. The users’ locations are determined by the place of purchase or device registration. This is a perfect practice for regular notifications because you don't have to wait for the user to turn on GPS and allow tracking so that your system can determine their location.

Tips to use geographical targeting effectively

• Limit your ambitions. Let's assume that you have decided to conquer the market in another country. In this case, define several key cities to save your budget and strength. It’s unreal to cover all regions at once.
• Don’t forget about CTAs. All your ads, articles, and posts should contain a call to action. Otherwise, your marketing campaigns will fail due to low user engagement. Combine local occasions with your marketing materials if it’s possible.
• Use other marketing tactics. Taking into consideration the users’ location is a good but not the only practice. It won’t work without other tools. Besides geotargeting, you should add content marketing, SEO, SMM, remarketing, and so on to your development strategy;
• Pay attention to cultural particularities. The color scheme, arrangement of elements, and messages can be perceived otherwise in different countries. First of all, work on your tone of voice because, in Western countries, informal communication is acceptable even in a business environment, whereas in Eastern cultures, it can be offensive.

In order to improve your tone of voice and make your geotargeting ads and offers more personalized, you should identify the occupation, status, interests, problems, and preferences of your customers. The information about what places they attend will be beneficial for user segmentation. Do they mostly visit business centers or universities, theaters or discos? Adopt your products and services to their needs and hobbies.

Note that you shouldn’t monitor your clients by yourself: there are special services like Big Data.

Conclusion

Thus, we have figured out what geotargeting is, what its types exist, and, in addition, considered the most popular geomarketing examples. Today, it’s impossible to successfully compete in the market without adopting modern technologies, which allows making tailored offers.

Geotargeting is a relatively new tool applied already by numerous companies. Local restaurants and independent shops often avail of it. Also, geotargeting is useful for large organizations to enter regional, national, and international markets.

Boost your sales, improve the user experience, and increase revenue with the help of location-based marketing! We, at Reteno, will help you succeed. Follow the link to get acquainted with our services.