LOCATION-BASED MARKETING: HOW TO ACE IT?

Still sitting in the market and waiting for the customers to form a queue on their own? 

In today's world, everyone is more focused on their running marketing campaign and tries to figure out the best way to get profitable output out of it. In a rapidly growing marketing world, there sits a behemoth in the lap of digital marketing called location-based marketing. 

 You might be asking yourself what it is? So, location-based marketing is direct marketing that uses the mobile's location to alert the user about an offer from a nearby business. This is the main reason why retail stores still send direct mailers to their customers. 

The location-based campaign sent the alerts through SMS to the users' phone, or you opt to send the notification through your brand mobile application as well. However, location-based marketing comes with the opt-in process for the end-users. Users have a choice to participate in your marketing program or not. The opt-in process usually takes place when users press “Okay”' and allow you to use their current location. 

 Technology which is being used under location-based marketing is categorized on the basis of the distance, how far they are from brick and mortar store. If you are planning to target the whole city in your marketing plan, then it would be great to make use of geo-targeting as it takes the help of the IP address. But it wont to be precise about the location of the end-user as it can be challenging to target a particular IP Address. 

If you want to target people in specific geo-fence, whether it would be a city or a place in your neighbourhood. It is advised to take help from geo-fencing technology as it uses the mobile device's GPS location rather than an IP address. Therefore it more effective in targeting precise users in a specific area. 

Last but not least, here comes the beacons which track location data via Bluetooth. It is more helpful for a very close range, like a specific place in a store. It can be helpful to promote a specific product that is placed inside the store. 

A location-based marketing technique is suitable for all, but not all industries can benefit from it. Here is what makes for successful location-based marketing. 

 Where it works 

Brands that have a physical presence in the market are the best fit for location-based marketing because they can capture the audience visiting their store. In the geo-targeting campaign, the audience is built based on the visit of the customer to the store rather than likes and follows from social media. From this, marketers know they are reaching a prospect audience and are delivering the right message to them.  

Not only the big brands can use this technique, but even a small business with a local reach can also take benefit from location-based marketing. The main reason why small businesses should also consider location-based marketing:

• Generates More Business

The goal of all marketing is to attract more customers, whether it is traditional or digital marketing. Not far away from all this, location-based marketing is used for the same reason but in a specific location to be precise. For instance, you run a local boutique store, and your clients are scattered over the city you live in. You can create facebook advertising or google advertising that is limited only to that city or can opt to particular zip code as well. This will increase the prominence of your boutique in your city.   

• Market Segmentation Becomes Easier 

Market segmentation is a marketing technique that demands the grouping of the customers based on their actions, interest or age groups and much other shopping patterns. Bifurcating customers based on their location is the easiest of them. If you master the technique of finding the customer form their places, then you can tailor your marketing message according to that specific location, this will make it more relevant to the customers. 

• Higher Rate Of Return 

Marketing is all about smart play rather than hard work. Therefore, you should always try to increase your ROI on your marketing activities. From location-based marketing, you are more specific about your audience. collecting and analyzing the data from your marketing will help you generate more engagement on your advertising dollar. 

How to Navigate Through It

A survey from BIA Advisory Services shows, marketers will spend around $31 billion in 2020 on location-based marketing campaigns. 

Keeping this in mind, location-based marketing could be the next big step in the marketing world. Now that you have understood the basics of location-based marketing, here is a time to start implementing it in your marketing campaigns. Here are the things that you should focus on. 

• Optimize The Optimized Local SEO

A local presence business can significantly improve the engagement rate from local SEO listing. Local SEO refers to the organic traffic generated from your google my business listing. 

Local SEO can be improved by location-specific content creation for your website, encourage the customers to give a 5-star rating, and optimizing your Google My Business Listing. The more you optimize the local SEO, the less you have to pay for the customers to come. You should be aware of your surroundings or your competition. What are the techniques or the keywords your competition is using to generate more leads? Etc.  

• PPC + Geo-Targeting 

PPC is Pay-Per-Click advertising. Right now, it is the most powerful tool in digital marketing. Mixing geotargeting with PPC can be very helpful in creating huge location-based opportunities. Geo-targeting lets you filter the audience that can have access to your PPC content. This helps you to save extra clicks that can cause you extra dollars from the people outside your target area.   

• Location Tags 

Your listing in Google My Business can also help to find your location on any social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Through these social media platforms, you can use a location tag that uses the GPS of your mobile device to pinpoint where the image is taken, or event occurred. 

Using location tags on social media platforms can increase your visibility, and your post can gain some organic impression as well. 

How is your business leveraging location-based marketing?

Share your thoughts in the comment section below!