It is safe to say that marketers are always looking for an edge. Whether it’s an independent marketer or someone who works for the area’s leading digital marketing agency, she needs something that will give her an advantage over the competition. Here is a suggestion: geo-targeting. It is a secret weapon every digital marketer should take advantage of.
What It Is
Not familiar with geo-targeting? It’s pretty simple to understand. Geo-targeting is the practice of targeting customers with digital marketing messages based on geographic location. It is a fairly common practice in local SEO.
By targeting a local audience with messaging that takes advantage of local knowledge, preferences, needs, etc., digital marketers can focus more on the customers that need to hear their messaging instead of investing time and effort in those who do not.
Webtek Digital Marketing is a Salt Lake City, Utah digital marketing agency that knows a thing or two about geo-targeting. Like me, they believe in the power of geo-targeting to improve what they do. Here’s why:
1. It Enhances Personalization
People living and working in the same general location tend to have similar needs. As such, geo-targeting can improve campaign personalization by focusing on those needs. For instance, Webtek might run a marketing campaign for a Salt Lake City client active in Utah’s ski scene. That same campaign would be meaningless in Key West, FL.
2. It Improves Targeting
Geo-targeting gives a digital marketing agency yet another metric to work with. The more metrics available, the more refined targeting becomes. Precision targeting produces the best results through highly personalized messages that speak to customers where they are. This leads to greater engagement.
3. It’s Perfectly Aligned With Local SEO
As previously mentioned, geo-targeting is common practice in local SEO. Digital marketers utilize geo-targeting through a number of strategies including keywords with a local emphasis, focusing on ‘near me’ searches, and optimizing content for Google My Business profiles.
One could make the case that geo-targeting’s benefits are more important to local SEO than any other form of digital marketing. By its very nature, local SEO is highly targeted to specific geographic locations.
4. It Allows for Location-Based Experiences
Geo-targeting can be combined with geofencing to create location-based experiences. Marketers do this by concentrating on mobile customers. For instance, imagine a client with multiple locations in the same city. Different experiences can be offered at different stores. A customer’s experience is dictated by the location they choose to visit.
Location-based experiences are the epitome of personalization. So many marketing details can be targeted in a location-based campaign. And yes, the strategy can even be deployed online through the use of zip codes and IP addresses.
5. It Can Make an Organization More Competitive
When you add all these factors together, you come to the reality that geo-targeting can make an organization more competitive. Targeting messaging based on geographic location translates to putting more marketing resources into more specific groups of people. While the competition continues to do things generically, the geo-targeting organization is laser focused on a perfectly segmented audience.
Break Through the Noise
In closing, the internet has become a cluttered wasteland of generic content. Digital marketing agencies often find themselves frustrated by this reality. They are frustrated by not being able to break through the noise. In such cases, it is worth looking more deeply into geo-targeting.
Geo-targeting is the digital marketing agency’s secret weapon. Every digital marketer should know how to use it, why do you use it, and when to use it. Getting a handle on geo-targeting changes everything.