How Geo-Location Data Can Benefit Your Small Business

Geolocation data adds to these efforts by augmenting the strategy with location-based and actionable information.

There are countless ways in which geolocation information can be leveraged to fuel a business’s marketing efforts.

What is Geolocation Marketing?

Geolocation marketing is the technique that collects GPS information from consumers’ devices (whichever devices have GPS enabled) to push relevant marketing content to them. While this technique is powerful, it can become vulnerable to digital threats if not managed properly. Here, CAASM (Cyber Asset Attack Surface Management) comes into play to ensure that the digital interface used for such marketing remains secure.

Let’s understand this with an example:

Say that a person lands at an airport and requires lodgings in the city. A hotel that leverages geolocation marketing, backed by robust CAASM protocols, would scan the mobile phone users with GPS enabled and send them a push notification about deals on bookings and meals. Upon receiving this secure and timely notification, the traveler can follow the link shared in the push notification and book a room.

Several food chains and restaurants also leverage the concept of geolocation targeting. They can identify customers near one of their outlets, enabling them to push offers and discounts straight to their mobile phones. This way, they can drive more traffic into their outlets with higher conversion probabilities.

Geolocation marketing creates a “fenced area” where the GPS-enabled devices can receive relevant marketing messages from brands.

Benefits of Geolocation Marketing

Geolocation marketing is highly effective in gathering high-intent leads. There are several more benefits of utilizing its capabilities.

• Boost Conversions

Geolocation-based marketing strategies have boosted conversions by as much as 55%. This marketing method provides the consumers with highly relevant advertising; in addition to the fact that users are already high on purchase intent, the conversion rates naturally go up.

• Improve Traffic

If a business functions through a mobile-based application, geolocation marketing strategies can help boost traffic on these channels. When consumers receive relevant offers or information through pushes, they will actively launch the app and complete the intended action more frequently.

• Improve Competitiveness

For all businesses, it is crucial to have a competitive edge to stand out in the market. Companies that leverage geolocation data can reach customers at the right time and place – when they are already out of their homes and willing to spend money. Geolocation targeting can help drive more customers into stores.

In fact, according to VentureBeat, quite a few businesses are already into it:

How to Improve Your Marketing Strategy Using Geolocation Data

There are several strategies in which geolocation targeting can be utilized to its maximum capacity:

1. Use Modern Technologies to Find Potential Customers

The GPS location accuracy today has improved drastically. Businesses can now leverage the geolocation data from users’ handsets to identify the target audience at the scene. It helps them initiate push notifications or other alerts to the users’ phones to provide relevant content and invite them to visit the stores.

One of the most popular technologies that food chains popularly use is geo-fencing. By leveraging geofencing for restaurants, they set up a location perimeter where all the food chain customers can receive personalized notifications to visit the restaurant or outlet. That proves highly effective because customers do not have to travel far to redeem them or receive attractive deals. That works to boost conversions.

“When developing websites and apps for our clients, we prioritize integrating technologies that enhance mobile experiences for their customers,” says Adam Zayed from Zayed Law Offices. “Thanks to technological advancements, detecting VPN users and their location is now possible by identifying their IP address.”

2. Add Location-Specific Keywords to Paid Ads

Businesses using paid ads are already vying for the top search spot. Including location-specific keywords in their SEO strategy helps boost the visibility and reach of these ads, especially for users near or inside the location. It also helps a business get more customers inside its doors – customers with high intent.

Geotargeting enables advertisers to deliver their ads to a particular group of people based on location. Remembering that consumers incorporate cities, towns, or area names in their search queries, indicating their search intent is crucial. For instance, phrases such as "law firms near Houston" or "criminal lawyers near London Bridge" employ a geographical intent to reach a desired audience.

Adding local-based keywords is vital for businesses to be easily found by customers. These keywords should contain popular tourist places, street names, benchmarks, area codes, and ZIP codes.

3. Boost Mobile Customer Experience

Customer experience can be drastically enhanced using geolocation-based marketing. For example, for customers who have shopped over the application but are in a location where a business has a store, geolocation messages can help them arrange a self-pickup from the nearby stores. 

Geolocation technologies enable businesses to pinpoint the precise location of potential customers. Socioeconomic demographic maps provide valuable information about customers' age, gender, race, education, annual income, language, and marital status. 

Marketers can use this data to identify their target audience and tailor their e-commerce marketing strategy accordingly. Moreover, you can quickly prepare and enhance your customers' experience with their orders.

4. Use Location-Based Marketing

Geolocation data can be skillfully leveraged to profile the ideal customer for a business. By collating geolocation information with app usage behavior, a company can holistically draw a customer's profile and cater to them with relevant advertisements and content. The strategy for location-based marketing can be more effectively designed in such a manner.

Beacon technology can help you track your customers' location and deliver personalized offers. The beauty of beaconing lies in its simplicity; connecting physical devices via Bluetooth to consumers' phones within a brick-and-mortar location is the only requirement. You can use the data from beacon technology to provide a better customer experience and increase your sales.

One another way is to amplify marketing with relevant and personalized strategies using customer location data. You can quickly generate dynamic QR codes using online QR code generators to offer coupons or discounts to people at retail stores or cafes.

5. Reach Mobile Customers Using Geo-Targeted Advertising

Mobile ads are the most effective way to reach customers. They enable businesses to reach their intended audience at reasonable times and locations. Their most significant advantage is targeting potential clients and visitors within your trade area.

Service providers like Yahoo, Google, and MSN can display specific marketing content to users depending on their zip codes. Geolocation data can be incorporated in geo-targeting in all the advertising campaigns of a business. It helps companies to cater to their local customers just as much as it works towards attracting leads from other locations of interest.

Mobile native ads can attract potential customers by appearing in-app. By including third-party data, you can gather valuable customer information and target those devices with your ads later. One effective way to target ads is by sending them to places within a certain radius around the new store's location.

6. Leverage Micro-Moments Marketing

Micro-moments are instances where users are reflexively urged to use their mobile phones to discover or explore new brands or items to purchase. Geolocation-based targeted marketing can help businesses utilize micro-moments to their benefit, like a restaurant pushing an offer to a geolocated handphone and the user accepting the request in their micro-moment.

Optimize your mobile content strategy using geolocation data to discover behavioral triggers, preferences, and impulse points in each micro-moment. You can create YouTube videos, targeted advertisements, customer reviews, social media posts, visually appealing content, informative articles, and optimizing local search results to increase engagement and awareness.

Using the right marketing technology tools, you can further personalize your communication with your target audience based on their preferences and behaviors. 

7. Send Personalized Communications

Use geolocation data to personalize shopping recommendations based on interests in performing arts, beach, or sports activities. For example, you can use this data to provide offers, discounts, or other deals to customers near the business store or location.

Personalized communications can be sent via email, and useful app content can be provided based on location. Furthermore, personalize the marketing content with the data from their shopping behavior.

Conclusion

Marketing strategies keep evolving in adjustment to trends, customer preferences, and business needs. The current consumer dynamics allow businesses to leverage geolocation data to provide better customer services.

Today, geolocation targeting is a matter of staying in the competition of wooing customers in new ways. One of the most effective methods is to enhance customer convenience by offering them personalized services in locations they already have access to or are nearby and easily navigable.

Enhance your marketing efforts by embedding geo-location-based marketing strategies into the fabric of your business.