Location based marketing: what is it and how can it help my business?

SEO agent service wales

 

Have you noticed how ads pop up on your phone that are relevant to the area you’re in? This is location-based marketing, and it’s become a hugely popular way to target potential customers.

 

Location based marketing uses your device’s location to serve you with ads, messages and offers that are relevant to where you are. It can be amazingly precise – even down to identifying which aisle in a supermarket you’re in. It’s a good choice for businesses with physical locations who want to capture nearby shoppers. It’s also an effective way to target people who are at your competitors’ locations – for example, a car dealer could target people visiting a rival dealer. Customers can be targeted in a range of ways, including push notifications, ads on social media, texts and search results. Read on to find out more.

 

Location marketing techniques to help your business

 

Geotargeting

 

This identifies the location of the user and serves them with personalised content or ads relevant to that location, for example suggesting they visit a certain coffee shop. If they have signed up to receive push notifications, these can be used to send them a direct message while they’re at the location. The user’s location is established using their device’s IP address – this is why when you type in a search term such as “Indian restaurant”, the Google search results will show you places that are near you.

 

Hyper-contextual targeting

 

This uses hyper-local data to serve users with relevant ads and messages – for example, if there has been a rise in crime in an area, a home security specialist could target people in that area with ads. 

 

Geofencing

 

This “fences off” a specified geographic area and when users enter it, they’ll start to receive relevant ads and messages. An example of this is when you enter a shopping centre, a festival site or conference venue. Retailers use geofencing to target people near their stores – for example, they might get sent notification that a product they’ve been looking at online is available there.

 

Geo-conquesting

 

This uses GPS technology to identify when someone is at a competitor’s location and serves them with ads for your business instead – as with the car dealer example described above. It’s also been used by fast food restaurants to great effect; for example, in the Whopper Detour campaign, Burger King offered discounts to people who went within 600 feet of a MacDonalds restaurant.

 

Beacon marketing

 

This uses a “beacon” which can pick up the presence of nearby devices via Bluetooth. It works in places with poor phone and internet reception and can enable highly precise targeting – for example, sending a clothing offer to someone in the clothing aisle of a supermarket.

 

Weather targeting

 

This combines the device’s location with information about the weather in that area to serve people with relevant marketing – so someone in a town centre on a rainy day could receive ads for raincoats, and on a sunny day they could receive ads for summer clothes.

 

Behaviour targeting

 

This combines knowledge of your location with information about what you usually order there; so if you always have a caramel latte at your local coffee shop, it could send you offers for caramel lattes. 

 

Want location marketing for your business?

 

At Primedia we’re experts at all forms of digital marketing, including location marketing. We can use it to win more customers and save you money by targeting your ads more effectively. Get in touch today to find out more. 

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