Geo-location analytics is defined as the analysis of IP address data to determine a user’s location. With geo-location being the new buzzword in marketing, brands who ignore this powerful tool risk losing out on a valuable way of reaching new customers.
In this blog, we discuss three powerful ways in which geo-location can be used in marketing.
Driving traffic to brick-and-mortar stores
In 2018, any store needs a digital presence. With the help of geo-location, your digital strategy could drive traffic to your physical stores. Setting up geo-fencing around your stores creates a radius for digital ads to be served. If someone steps inside the zone while reading an article on their phone, your ad will appear, and with the right messaging, direct them towards your store.
With predictive analytics making great strides, this type of advertising can even be pre-empted if customers don’t go online while in the physical zone. By gathering geo-data over an extended period, a predictive algorithm would be able to determine when it’s highly likely your customer will be in the vicinity of your store and show them your ad even before they’ve left their house. You’ll be able to forecast user’s locations and serve them relevant and targeted ads based on that.
Target display campaigns based on geographic, demographic and economic data
Display campaigns are a sure way of getting your brand in front of potential customers’ eyes, but the CTR is generally not very high. You are ultimately left reporting back to your manager or board on impressions served, and while that number is impressive, you are likely a bit disappointed in the results.
With advanced geo-location analytics that gives you the ability to determine economic and demographic data, your targeting can be improved, and your ads are shown to a more relevant subset of the population.
By pinpointing a user’s home location, instead of merely their location when they are online, you can determine a much more significant amount of information. Knowing which area a user lives in will give you their average household income, income class, LSM attributes, predominant language, ethnicity, amount of cars per household and average property value.
By targeting your ad campaigns based on these attributes rather than interest or location at the time of a search, you can target your ads to your intended target audience and show your ads to a very specific and relevant audience.
Geo-location identification in smartphone apps
Most big brands have smartphone apps nowadays. By adding a geo-location layer that links to in-store systems, apps will be able to let your store staff know when a customer (who has your app) has entered the store. Your in-store system should also be able to tell your staff when last the customer was in store, whether it was a good experience, what was purchased and make product recommendations. Your staff can read up on the new customer, identify them in store and, armed with data, create a personalised in-store and human experience for the customer. Your staff will be able to greet customers by name, check in on how they like the previous items purchased and make highly relevant product recommendations. You’ll create brand-loyal customers who purchase more in-store, as well as creating an environment in which your staff find it easy to score wins.
These three strategies include ground-breaking uses of geo-location data, but it’s highly likely you are already using geo-data in your marketing efforts. If you are interested in implementing an advanced strategy, read more on MarketWise, our tool that helps you build effective, targeted campaigns with real-world demographic and lifestyle data.
