Geo-Targeting Blueprint: Discover How to Get More Leads, Sales, and Revenue with Location-Based Marketing
Whether you’re a small business looking to expand your reach or a large corporation looking to maximize your digital marketing ROI, geo-targeting can revolutionize the way you reach and engage with your target audience.
The power of geo-targeting is that it lets you reach the right audience in the right place at exactly the right time.
And with these tips and success strategies, your business can start using geo-targeting to generate more leads, sales, and revenue.
Get ready to take your marketing game to the next level with our tips and best practices as we dive deep into the world of geo-targeting to explore how it works, why it matters, and how you can make it work for you!
Contents:
- What is Geo-Targeting?
- How Does Geo-Targeting Work?
- Geo-Fencing vs. Geo-Targeting
- Why Geo-Targeting Matters for Your Business
- Creative Ways to Use Geo-Targeting to Drive Leads, Sales and Revenue
- How to Use Geo-Targeting on Facebook, Google Ads & More
- Facebook and Instagram
- Google Ads
- Geo-Targeting Done Right: Proven Tips and Strategies for Success
- Maximize Your Marketing Results with the Power of Geo-Targeting
What is Geo-Targeting?
Have you ever wondered why the advertisements you see online or on your social media feed are specifically tailored to your location?
That’s the magic of geo-targeting.
Geo-targeting in digital marketing is the practice of delivering personalized content or advertising to people based on their geographical location, with the goal of maximizing your marketing messaging’s relevance and impact in specific locations.
It works by using location data such as IP addresses, GPS coordinates, and other technologies to pinpoint a user’s location. The next section of this article will go over these geo-targeting methods in depth.
With geo-targeting, you can tailor your offers, information, and advertisements to specific geographic areas such as cities, regions, or countries. If you want to get really specific, you can even target a single zip code or postal code.
You can also use geo-targeting to exclude geographical locations that are unlikely to produce results or are not relevant to your campaign. In fact, excluding certain locations can be just as valuable as including others.
Bottom line: geo-targeting helps you deliver more relevant and effective marketing campaigns across a wide range of digital marketing channels — including PPC advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing.
How Does Geo-Targeting Work?
Geo-targeting works by using location data to pinpoint a person’s geographical location, then delivering personalized content or advertising to them based on their location…or, if you exclude that location, blocking people there from seeing your content or advertising.
There are several ways to gather location data, including:
- IP Address Targeting: Determining a person’s general geographic location based on their IP address. This is the most common geo-targeting method in PPC advertising.
- GPS Targeting: Using GPS technology to track a person’s exact location through their smartphone or other GPS-enabled device. This method is usually used for in-app advertisements or location-based services.
- Radius Targeting: Setting a geographic radius around a specific location, such as a store or business, and delivering targeted content or advertising to people within that radius. Great for hyper-local advertising, such as targeting conference attendees, university students, or employees at a specific business.
- Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Targeting: Using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals to triangulate a person’s location based on their proximity to nearby hotspots or beacons. Many businesses take advantage of this method to deliver in-store advertising or to track foot traffic.
- Location-Based Keyword Targeting: Targeting people who are searching for specific keywords related to a specific location, such as “pizza delivery near me.” These are a cornerstone of both Google Ads and SEO to reach users who are actively searching for local products and services.
- Contextual Targeting: Estimating a person’s location or interests based on contextual data collected from a website or app. It’s often used in programmatic advertising to deliver relevant ads based on individual users’ interests and proximity to said interests.
Once location data has been gathered, platforms like Google Ads and Facebook can use it to deliver personalized content or advertising to your prospective customers based on their geographic location.
For example, your business could use geo-targeting to show different advertisements to users in different cities or regions, or to promote location-specific promotions or offers.
The possibilities with geo-targeting are endless. If you want help getting started or taking your geo-targeted marketing to the next level, our experts are here to help!
Geo-Fencing vs. Geo-Targeting
Geo-fencing and geo-targeting are two related but distinct marketing techniques that use location data to target specific audiences.
Geo-fencing is a type of location-based marketing based on setting up a virtual boundary around a specific geographic location. When someone enters or leaves this boundary or “fence”, it triggers an action such as delivering a targeted message or showing a specific advertisement on their device.
Geo-targeting, on the other hand, refers to the practice of delivering personalized content or advertising to users based on their physical location. This can be done through IP address, GPS, or other location-determining technologies. Geo-targeting allows marketers to reach customers in specific geographic areas, such as cities, regions, or countries.
In short, geo-fencing is a more specific form of location-based marketing that involves a small virtual “fence”, while geo-targeting is a broader approach that uses various kinds of location data to personalize content or advertising.
The Power of Location: Why Geo-Targeting Matters for Your Business
With geo-targeting, marketers can deliver more relevant and personalized content based on the physical location of their target audience.
The use of geo-targeting in digital marketing is advantageous for a number of reasons, including the following:
- Increased Relevance: Geo-targeting allows you to deliver content or advertising that is specific to a prospective customer’s location, making it more relevant to their interests and needs. This leads to higher engagement and conversions, since prospects are more likely to respond positively to content that is relevant to them.
- Better Targeting: By targeting prospective customers based on their physical location, you can ensure that your messages reach the right audience at the right time. For example, you can use geo-targeting to show different advertisements to users in different cities or regions, or to display location-specific promotions or offers.
- Improved ROI: Geo-targeting can help you achieve better ROI by delivering higher click-through rates, conversions, and customer engagement, which ultimately drives better results and a better return on your digital marketing investment.
- Hide Ads from Competitors: Say you want to keep your competitors from stealing your offers or marketing messages. You can use geo-targeting to hide ads from competitors by excluding specific geographic locations where the competitor operates or has a strong presence, or by adjusting the targeting criteria to only show the ad to users who are not within a certain radius of the competitor’s location.
- Responsiveness: Geo-targeting allows you to run short-lived but highly relevant campaigns, such as offers specific to the people attending an industry conference or trade show. Or, if you’re a roofing contractor, you can display ads related to roof repair in a town that just experienced bad weather. Taking dynamic advertising to the next level!
No matter what size your business is or what you do, geo-targeting can revolutionize the way you share and engage with your content!
Creative Ways to Use Geo-Targeting to Drive Leads, Sales and Revenue
With geo-targeting, businesses like yours can reach the right audience, at the right time, with the right message, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
Here are just a few of the various ways that geo-targeting can be used to boost your digital marketing revenue, including targeting specific locations, matching local currencies, delivering real-time offers, and more!
- Geo-target offers and information: Use geo-targeting to deliver location-specific information, promotions, and offers to current and prospective customers. This enables you to generate more business in a particular region without having to make the same offer to everyone, or market different offers for franchises in different locations.
- Match local currencies: With geo-targeting, your e-commerce website can display prices and other information in the customers’ local currency based on their location automatically. This happens so often nowadays that we barely notice it, but geo-targeting makes it possible!
- A/B test based on location: Geo-targeting allows you to deliver different versions of an ad and/or website to people based on their location, making it possible to test different designs and layouts and see what’s most effective in different regions.
- Steal customers from competitors: With geo-targeting, you can deliver targeted ads to people who are near a competitor’s store or office to entice their customers away. Say you’re browsing Instagram while stuck in a long line at Disney, and see an ad for Universal promising shorter wait times — that’s geo-targeting!
- Use lookback data to get granular: The ‘lookback window‘ is the period during which a person can see or click on an ad and it will be recorded as a conversion. Using look-back data and geo-targeting together, you can analyze where a user was at the time they converted and uncover location trends that help you deliver more relevant and engaging content.
- Market across channels: Using geo-targeting, you can deliver targeted ads and content to different platforms and devices based on the user’s location. A local restaurant, for instance, could use geo-targeting to promote walk-in specials to mobile device users nearby, and take-out specials to desktop users further away.
And that’s only the beginning. There are virtually no limits to the applications for geo-targeting. In that sense, it’s as valuable for the most local of local businesses as it is for huge multinationals!
To learn how geo-targeting can work for you, get in touch with our experts for a quick consultation.
How to Use Geo-Targeting on Facebook, Google Ads & More
Knowing how to utilize geo-targeting on each platform will make a huge difference in maximizing your digital marketing efforts and ROI.
Below, we’ll explore the various platforms that offer geo-targeting options, including Facebook, Google Ads, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Facebook and Instagram Location Targeting
Facebook and Instagram offer location targeting options for advertisers on the Meta Ads Manager platform, which allow you to reach people based on their current location, hometown, or recent location history. Advertisers can target users by country, state, city, postal code, or a specific address, and can also choose to target people who have recently been in a specific location.
To use Facebook or Instagram location targeting:
- Select a campaign objective for your ad set in Ads Manager.
- Select your audience source in the Audience section.
- Click on Locations and follow the prompts to choose your locations based on:
- Location status: target customers living in a location and/or recently in a location, or traveling in a location
- Enter a location: target customers in specific countries, states, provinces, cities, congressional districts (in the United States), or ZIP or postal codes
- Browse locations: choose from suggested countries or regions
- Location radius: target customers in a smaller, relevant area within a larger geographic area
Google Ads Location Targeting
Google Ads offers location targeting options, which allow you to show your ads to users in specific geographic locations. You can target by country, region, city, postal code, or a specific address, and can also target users based on their device’s location or by using a radius around a specific location.
To use Google Ads location targeting:
- Go to the Settings tab in your campaign.
- Select Locations and specify the geographic locations you want to target based on:
- Countries: target customers in an entire country, or multiple countries
- Areas within a country: target customers in specific cities, regions, or ZIP/postal codes
- Radius around a location: target customers within a certain distance from your business
To exclude people in specific geographical locations from seeing your ads:
- Go to the Settings tab in your campaign.
- Select Locations.
- There are two ways to select locations to exclude:
- In the search box, type the area you want to exclude and click Exclude.
- Click Advanced search, and check the box next to Add locations in bulk. In the box, paste up to 1000 locations to exclude. Add locations from one country at a time.
Twitter Geo-targeting
Twitter allows you to target their ads based on the location of the user by countries, regions, metros, cities, or postal codes. You can also target users based on their device’s location.
To use Twitter geo-targeting:
- Go to the Targeting section of your ad campaign.
- Scroll down to Demographics.
- Within the Locations section, input the locations you want to target.
Radius targeting (showing ads to customers within a certain distance of a specific address) is currently only available to ad accounts in the United States or Japan.
LinkedIn Geo-targeting
LinkedIn allows you to target users by country, state, city, postal code, or a specific address, and can also target users who have recently been in a specific location.
To use LinkedIn geo-targeting:
- Create a LinkedIn new audience in Campaign Manager.
- Customize your target audience’s location(s) following these steps:
- Choose either a Recent or permanent location or Permanent location from the Locations dropdown.
- In the search field, type the location name you want to include in your targeting audience and select the desired locations.
- Add more locations by clicking the X at the end of the location search field to clear the field.
- Remove selected locations from your target audience by clicking the X next to the location name.
- Click Exclude and select the regions and/or countries you want to exclude from your campaign.
Geo-Targeting Done Right: Proven Tips and Strategies for Success
Geo-targeting is a powerful tool for digital marketers, but you have to deploy it strategically with purpose to maximize your results.
Your geo-targeting efforts are more effective and drive better results when you incorporate the following key considerations and best practices.
- Be precise in defining your location. To achieve the best results with geo-targeting, you need to reach people who want your product or service, are able to pay for it, and in the case of a local business, are close enough to travel. Additionally, areas that are too small will strictly limit your potential conversions, while areas that are too large will waste ad dollars on irrelevant audiences. You need to strike a balance between making sure your ad spend is being used effectively and reaching a large, relevant audience.
- Exclude irrelevant locations. As well as targeting specific locations, it’s also important to exclude locations that are unlikely to generate conversions. Your ad spend will be more effective and you’ll avoid wasting money on ineffective campaigns.
- Use tools like Google Trends to gain insight into your customers’ regional preferences. Identifying how their interests and habits differ on a regional basis will help you hone in on messaging and imagery that boosts your geo-targeting efforts.
- For search ad campaigns, include regional terms in your keyword lists even if you are geo-targeting. Your campaign will have a higher chance of success if you reach a more relevant audience.
- If possible, include your target location’s name in your ad. You can improve your campaign’s relevancy and impact by including the name of your target location in your ad, helping you connect with local customers and build brand awareness in the target area.
- Add location extensions and call extensions to local ads. Location extensions and call extensions can be incredibly valuable in local ads, since they provide your customers with important information like your address and phone number instantly. The easier people can reach you, the more likely they are to convert.
- Test, monitor, optimize, repeat! As with any campaign you launch, geo-targeting campaigns should be monitored to identify what’s working and what’s not so you can adjust to achieve better results.
You can explore and leverage so much more when it comes to geo-targeting, but the above are good tips for beginners.
Maximize Your Marketing Results with the Power of Geo-Targeting
By tailoring your marketing campaigns based on location, you can boost your ROI and improve your overall marketing performance.
The geo-targeting methods, tips, and best practices shared in this article will help you get the most out of your geo-targeting efforts, but there is always more you can optimize. When you’re ready to take your digital marketing to the next level, contact us today.