How to Utilize Geotargeting in Advertising Campaigns

geotargeting, the newest and sharpest tool in your advertising arsenal. But how can we use geotargeting in campaigns to get the most value? Let’s find out.

Francis King //March 28, 2024//

Geo targeting concept design

Geo targeting concept design

Geo targeting concept design

Geo targeting concept design

How to Utilize Geotargeting in Advertising Campaigns

geotargeting, the newest and sharpest tool in your advertising arsenal. But how can we use geotargeting in campaigns to get the most value? Let’s find out.

Francis King //March 28, 2024//

You wouldn’t dream of throwing money behind an ad campaign targeted at anyone and everyone roving the web, right?

Targeting is a core and necessary part of designing high-performance advertising campaigns, and expert advertisers are adept at understanding the ideal audience for a campaign’s goals and building accordingly. While it’s commonplace for adverts to be targeted via a host of characteristics — age, gender, interests, domain visits, cookies — far too frequently, location is left out of the equation.

Enter geotargeting, the newest and sharpest tool in your advertising arsenal. But how can we use geotargeting in campaigns to get the most value? Let’s find out.

READ: Determining Your Business’s Target Market – Why It’s Necessary and How To Do It

What is geotargeting?

Geotargeting is the practice of leveraging modern location data to augment your ad campaigns. By using GPS data from mobile phones, IP address geolocation or user-provided information, advertisers can target ads to show in specific locations only and ensure that advertising spend isn’t wasted on areas that offer little to no value for your business. 

Campaigns can be made as granular as required, and they can be incorporated into your broader integrated marketing communications strategy. 

Who can benefit from geotargeting?

Although we recommend every advertising campaign to include some form of geotargeting, even simply to a country or state level, there are many business cases where deeper levels of targeting are required. 

For example, any brick-and-mortar business that relies on footfall and customer retention to generate business — restaurants, hair and beauty salons, and so forth — should use strict geotargeting rules to ensure only customers within their catchment radius are shown their ads. 

Any businesses that can only provide services in a given radius or location, whether for cost-efficiency reasons or logistical, will also want to use hard-line rules for their advertising strategy. 

How do you use geotargeting effectively?

Geotargeting is only one link in the chain when an effective marketing campaign is concerned. It takes the sum of all parts to ensure that your advertising spend is used effectively and generates conversions. 

1. Understand the local audience

At the core of any focused campaign is the audience. If you don’t intrinsically know who your ideal customer is, how can you design messaging to answer their needs? 

Advertising is no different. While advertising focuses on directly promoting products or services to drive sales, Public Relations (PR) concentrates on managing the reputation and fostering relationships with the public. Understanding the difference between advertising and PR is essential as it helps tailor your messaging not only to meet customer needs but also to shape perceptions and maintain a positive brand image.

From the initial step of brainstorming ideas for domains or new product names, a business needs to always keep its customers at the heart of its strategy. Advertising is no different. 

Build “personas” of your ideal customers and learn what makes them tick. Once you’re confident, it’s time for the next stage.

READ: 7 Reasons Local SEO is Excellent for Small Businesses 

2. Consider your platform

Each platform handles geolocation data slightly differently, and it’s important to consider this when building your campaign. Social platforms are excellent sources of rich geotargeting data, thanks to the user behavior of location tagging being commonplace. 

Search engines, on the other hand, will have geolocation data but often rely on IP address methods to estimate a user’s location. 

In addition to these considerations, it’s worth noting the unique benefits that social media platforms bring to geotargeting strategies. They offer precise geotargeting capabilities and also the added advantage of fostering engagement and interaction with potential customers. 

By leveraging social media’s interactive nature, advertisers can create more personalized and engaging campaigns that resonate with their target audience on a deeper level. This increased engagement can lead to higher conversion rates and greater overall success for geotargeted advertising efforts.

3. Build strong keyword targeting

Keyword targeting is your strongest asset when choosing who will see live ads through search engines. Start with your seed keywords and build a robust list of target terms that form the initial launch of the campaign. 

Ensure to add negative keywords to your list, too, and add location-specific terms as appropriate. Never be afraid to change your strategy if something isn’t working — be flexible.

READ: Unlocking the Power of Keywords — A Comprehensive Guide to SEO Strategies

4. Create killer copy for target locations

The key to securing the conversions is the messaging itself. While the targeting work has put your ad in front of an audience, the content has to connect if you’re going to land the sale.

Think about the location you’re advertising to and build your content with personalized messaging in mind. Providing identifiable information that shows your ad is targeted — landmarks, matching local dialects and so forth — will help to build confidence with individuals who view your ad. Powerful content marketing tools can help to optimize your copy and get the best results.

The bottom line

Geotargeting should become an integral part of all advertising strategies moving forward. Take the time to add geolocations into your ad campaigns, support them with granular messaging and — as with all advertising — test, test and test again. 

With patience, you’ll see increased conversions and more efficient campaigns as a result. Always remain humble when something isn’t going right in a campaign and do what’s best for the customer.

 

Francis King is the Head of Demand Generation at OnlyDomains, a domain management solution that offers global services and support that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Francis has been a part of the team since 2009. He is our go-to guy for everything online advertising. Originally from Melbourne, Francis cannot go a day without lifting weights; he is considering taking on Jiu-Jitsu next. Francis has written for other domains such as CEO Blog Nation and Together Platform. Here is his blog.

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