Should you be using geo-marketing to increase profits? In today’s global economy, many businesses have turned to marketing techniques that market their products to customers worldwide. These techniques help companies to increase customer count by broadening their customer base.
As businesses find new customers all around the country and globe, it’s essential to market products locally as well. With geo-marketing, marketing to local customers and those who live long distances away is relatively simple. Keep reading to learn what geo-marketing is and how businesses like yours can use geo-marketing to increase profits.
What Is Geo-Marketing?
Geo-marketing is a type of marketing that uses location intelligence to reach the right customer at the right time and is an extension of Local SEO. Businesses can use geo-marketing tactics better to reach intended audiences, such as geo-targeting and geofencing. Understanding the different types of geo-marketing is critical to ensuring your business uses the suitable types and ensuring your marketing budget is being put to its best use.
How Does Geo-targeting Work?
Geo-targeting makes it possible to deliver marketing messages and content to a person based on their geographical location. In most cases, this form of marketing is carried out on a city or zip code basis using a person’s IP address.
It can also be conducted using location data based on a device ID. More granular level geo-targeting is possible when using geofencing and GPS signals.
The benefit of geo-marketing and geo-targeting is that they allow businesses to use real-time location data to deliver user marketing messages. It is thought that a person’s geographical location and environment significantly impact their mindset at any given time. Meaning businesses can use the data to ensure the right marketing messages are delivered to a person when they are most likely to make a purchase.
The key here is relevancy.
Location data makes it more likely that marketers are reaching people with relevant ads.
Take, for example, a person who is visiting a car dealership. Knowing this information, marketers can assume the person wants to purchase a car. By knowing this information, marketers from other dealerships can deliver ads within seconds or minutes of knowing the person’s location.
Marketers from the same dealership the person visited can also serve up relevant ads to boost the person’s odds of making a purchase.
How Does Real-Time Location Tracking Work?
To deploy geo-marketing, marketers need access to an audience’s location data. This type of access is relatively easy with today’s marketing tools and platforms, particularly when working with Google’s data. Google and other large marketing platforms partner with thousands of businesses to improve marketing efforts.
Let’s say Mindy uses an Android phone, always keeps her location on, and has already given permission for Google to access her location at any given time.
As she travels to her local mall, Google uses her location to deliver ads for some of the businesses it partners with; these businesses are near the mall Mindy is using. As she sees the ads, she is persuaded to visit some of the stores.
A lot of businesses think you need permission from a person to track their location.
They fail to realize that most people have already given permission to other apps on their phones to track their location, and these apps are generally partnered with third parties to whom they release real-time location data.
To fully understand how this works, it’s crucial that marketers and users both read through their privacy policies on the various apps they use.
Top Three Reasons to Use Geo-Marketing to Increase Profits
Here’s a look at the top three reasons businesses should use geo-marketing to increase profits.
Get to Know Your Customers
The better you know your customers, the more personal you can be in the ads you deliver to them. Take, for example, you have customers in Florida as well as in Washington. The ads and marketing content delivered to customers in these two areas shouldn’t be the same.
Why?
Because customers in Florida are much different from those in Washington, everything from language differences to personal preferences likely differs. Thus, marketers need to ensure their marketing content is tailored to each audience in each area. With geo-marketing, this becomes possible.
Identify New Business Opportunities
Geo-marketing is also ideal for analyzing and optimizing your existing commercial network. It helps pinpoint locations where opening new stores would likely benefit your company, and it also helps determine the location of areas where sales will likely suffer, giving you a strong indication not to spend your marketing dollars in those areas.
Find New Transport Routes
Using geo-marketing to increase profits largely depends on your ability to find efficient transport routes. When you combine geo-marketing with your company’s logistics, you can paint a picture of the most efficient transport routes for delivering products and services to customers. You may even find it’s best to open a new distribution center to improve transport routes and serve your audience better.
Final Thoughts on Using Geo-Marketing to Increase Profits
So, should you be using geo-marketing to increase profits?
Geo-marketing is one of the best marketing types because it lets you make your customer profiles more detailed. The better you get to know your customers, the easier it is to create marketing ads that appeal to them. It also helps you create marketing personas that appeal to potential customers who fall into a persona’s categories.
If you’re looking for a way to expand your customer count while increasing profits, geo-marketing is a tactic to include in your marketing efforts.
