Why You Shouldn’t Overlook the “Geo” in Geotargeting

Marketing is all about connecting with your audience at the right time and place to draw them into your store.

While national marketing increases overall brand awareness and reputation, local marketing is what drives conversions and sales.

And what better way to do that than by serving perfectly tailored ads to customers located all around you?

That is the magic of geotargeting.

When combining geography and marketing, your marketing campaigns can hit the bullseye every time, reaching the right people at the right place to boost engagement and sales.

What is geotargeting?

Geotargeting in digital marketing is the practice of delivering content or advertisements to consumers based on their geographic location. By leveraging data such as IP addresses, GPS, and other location-based technologies, businesses can create highly personalized marketing campaigns tailored to specific regions, cities, or even neighborhoods.

This strategy allows companies to reach their target audience more effectively by considering local preferences, language, cultural nuances, and time zones. Geotargeting enhances user engagement and improves the relevance of marketing messages, leading to higher conversion rates and more efficient use of marketing resources.

Types of geotargeting

Radius

Using radii for geotargeting involves creating a virtual boundary around a specific location to focus marketing efforts on consumers within a certain distance. This method enhances campaign relevance by targeting individuals who are nearby, making it ideal for local businesses and event organizers. The adjustable radius allows for flexible targeting, ensuring efficient and tailored marketing strategies. However, companies have limitations on the size of these radii in order to prevent overlap and competition between individual locations/agencies.

Zip Code/County

Zip code and county geotargeting is like using radii, but it defines virtual boundaries using postal codes or county boundaries. This form of geotargeting can be especially useful due to the availability of data that allows businesses to locate where the bulk of their consumers are located, and therefore focus marketing efforts in those areas using zip codes and counties.

Things to consider when using geotargeting

Mountains

People mostly live toward the bottom of mountainous regions compared to the tops, where individuals tend to be more sparsely located. Therefore, simply setting large radii around mountain regions would be ineffective since the geotargeting at higher altitudes would reach fewer people.

To avoid this issue, smaller radii can be placed around the bottoms of mountains to focus on the larger populations in those areas. By doing so, costs can be reduced significantly since the ads are not being sent to regions that have low population density.

Lakes and coastlines

Since individuals don’t live directly in lakes or other bodies of water, these locations should be carefully navigated around when setting virtual boundaries. Additionally, it is common to see that people located by those areas or on coastlines live in rental properties only during certain times of the year, which can affect the seasonality of marketing campaigns directed towards those areas.

Using a radius can extend the region of geotargeting into the water, which would be an ineffective use of resources. Since zip codes and counties don’t include these bodies of water, using that form of geotargeting is the most efficient way of going around big bodies of water. However, some zip codes and counties may be split up by these lakes and rivers, in which case it would be best to set small radii around these big bodies of water. It is important to consider the size and distribution of consumers in these areas.

Roads

In many rural or deserted areas, most residents usually settle around major roads and highways in a region.

Setting small radii alongside these roads would help target most of the population in that area. Not only does this help focus on the more densely populated areas, but it also allows businesses to target people who are more likely to visit their stores due to their proximity to these roads.

Population density

Advertising in a 20-mile radius in New York is not the same as advertising in a 20-mile radius in Texas. It is important to consider the density of the population to avoid either targeting areas with little to no residents or targeting areas with extremely dense populations where there are more likely to be multiple locations of a company positioned close to one another.

Understand the population density and geographies of the areas being targeted and adjust the marketing radius accordingly.

What about double layering?

Double layering refers to the practice of combining two or more geographic targeting methods to refine and enhance marketing campaigns in specific areas. For example, businesses can set a broad boundary on the map, then add smaller radii overlapping those boundaries to increase marketing efforts in those areas. Although it may be more expensive in terms of cost-per-click, the cost-per-acquisition is significantly lower, leading to higher conversion rates and the result of a more successful campaign.

Why does geographic marketing matter?

Geotargeting is essential for hyper-local marketing due to its ability to deliver highly relevant and personalized messages that resonate with local audiences. By focusing on specific geographic areas, businesses can optimize their marketing budgets and resources, leading to more efficient and effective campaigns.

Here at BrandMuscle, we emphasize the importance of hyper-local marketing, and geotargeting is crucial to giving businesses a competitive advantage by building a strong local presence.

Master geography in your marketing

Geotargeting is a very complex but powerful tool that can transform your marketing strategy when used effectively, and the good news is — you don’t have to do it alone!

Book a demo of BrandMuscle to make your business stand out.