Automate Print & Mail: Location-based Marketing

Location-Based Marketing Strategies

Successful marketers spend hours and days creating the perfect marketing strategy. But, even seasoned marketers sometimes overlook one aspect of their marketing: the locality or geographical area of their prospects.

Location based marketing could offer a solution to this problem. A location-based marketing effort ensures that your campaigns are relevant to the geographical area or locality you want to target. Also, businesses can increase brand recall and drive more sales with a location-based marketing strategy. Just considering the geographical location of your prospects and analysing their demographic trends can give priceless insights.

Using location data for marketing is so versatile that we are still coming up with new & innovative ways to make use of it. Let us look at some popular location-based marketing strategies and learn how they can work for your business.

What is Location-Based Marketing?

Location based marketing is a marketing strategy that enables business organisations to target their audience based on their physical location. It also goes by the name geolocation-based marketing. You can use both online and offline channels for your location-based marketing campaigns.

You can employ online channels like email and offline channels like direct mail in location-based marketing. The only requirement in both cases is that the targeting uses the prospect’s physical location.

Using location data, marketers can target customers based on their proximity to the store or events conducted in a specific locality. Furthermore, location-targeted advertising is one of the few marketing strategies that are effective throughout the customer lifecycle, which includes:

Discovery
Purchase
Engagement
Retention

Apart from all this, geolocation-based marketing also helps you with:

Target specific customer segments with unique offers.
Improve customer experience by offering relevant products and solutions.
Appeal to the customers who are constantly looking for instant gratification.

Top 6 Location-Targeted Advertising Strategies For Your Business

Location-based marketing is relatively new to marketers and business owners. Today, we use several IoT or connected devices in our everyday lives. Everything from our wristwatch to our car can now connect to the internet in one way or the other.

“But, why is it relevant here?” you may wonder. More often than not, the connected devices that we use have access to our location data. In other words, the amount of location data is directly proportional to the number of connected devices.

Additionally, you need to ensure you have the right tools for your location-targeted ads, such as PostGrid. Specialised tools like PostGrid gives you access to address and location data that can be crucial for your location-based campaigns.

Now that we have a good understanding of what is location based marketing and how it works, let’s discuss their different types. We have compiled a list of different location-based advertising strategies or methods you can employ for your business.

1. Geocoding

Geocoding is an advanced location-targeted advertising method that uses offline communication channels like direct mail. It involves determining the physical location of your customers based on their postal addresses.

Geocoding usually comes equipped with advanced direct mail automation tools such as PostGrid. It enables you to use plain postal addresses and get their geographical locations. Using a tool like PostGrid, you can even map these locations and identify patterns.

Marketers can use this geolocation-based marketing to find neighbourhoods with a cluster of prospective customers. You can then conduct events or run direct mail campaigns in these areas to market a product or service you are selling.

Working

In geocoding, the system takes the address data from you. It analyses the address data, including the postal codes, to provide you with the geocodes of an address. The accuracy of the latitudinal and longitudinal values you get can vary based on your tool. With an advanced tool, you get a rooftop level of accuracy, which is as good as possible.

Benefits

It helps you identify clusters of prospective buyers in a specific area.
You can map your potential buyers and better understand the demographics.
It helps you better manage customer data and categorise them into different segments.

2. Geotargeting

Geotargeting is a location based marketing method that determines the physical location and sends them a personalised marketing message. You can customise the marketing message based on specific geographical areas or localities in geotargeting.

As with any other marketing strategy, this also has some weak points. For example, geotargeting cannot work if the customer does not give location access to your mobile app. But, generally, users do not have a problem giving location access to mobile apps.

Suppose the customer gives your mobile app location access. In that case, you can use location based marketing to send marketing messages or push notifications. These messages and push notifications are usually relevant to geographic regions or proximity to a store.

Working

The working of geotargeting is pretty simple. It uses your target audience’s IP address for pitching relevant marketing offers to the customers. The IP address is unique and identifiable for every connected device. Hence, location data based on IP addresses are reliable for your geolocation based marketing campaigns.

Once the system has the target’s IP address, the system compares it against the physical address of the target. The matching or comparison process includes every detail, including country name, postal code, etc. However, to ensure the accuracy of the process, you need an accurate postal address database.

The most convenient option is to use an advanced address verification software like PostGrid to validate your postal address database. It can validate your addresses against Royal Mail’s official address database and ensure you have the correct information.

Benefits

Enhance customer experience through superior personalisation.
Target users based on their specific location, weather, local news, and events.

3. Geofencing

Geofencing is a location based marketing method that creates boundaries within a specific locality. As soon as the target enters this boundary, they become an active target of your marketing strategy.

Once a target turns active, you can start sending them your marketing content or offer or messages. So, let’s say your company has a physical store or outlet in the local shopping centre. Here is how you can use a location based marketing method like geofencing in that case.

Every time a prospective customer walks into the city centre, they receive a marketing message or push notification from your business. You can study your prospects’ buying habits and behaviour and pitch them relevant products/services for better results.

Working

Geofencing uses GPS technology for creating or setting boundaries within a specific geographic area or locality. This location based marketing strategy detects the prospect’s location using their GPS location.

When the prospect crosses the boundary set by the business within a locality, they become an active target. The system then sends personalised marketing messages, push notifications, or offers that encourage them to visit the store.

If the product, service, or offer you send the customer is relevant, then the target is likely to visit your store.

Benefits

Cover large areas such as malls and events.
Target all prospects within a specific area.
Ideal for boosting your stall/store traffic in events and conventions.
It uses real-time location data.
You can promote customer engagement with your products/services.
Minimise the engagement of your target with competitor brands.

4. Beaconing

It is a geolocation based marketing method that uses Bluetooth or WIFI networks and connected devices. These connected devices act as a beacon, but they can only work with some predetermined applications.

Beaconing is a perfect way to target existing customers within a geographic area. However, unlike what we saw in geofencing, the geographical location, in this case, is relatively small. Just think about your devices’ range of Bluetooth and WIFI networks to get a realistic image of the beacon’s catchment area.

For example, a prospect walks around a big furniture store, and they reach the bed section. At this point, the store can send or inform the details of the sales offer of bed frames.

Working

This location-based marketing involves the beacon or the customer’s device sending a signal to your (business) device. Once your device receives the signal or information, it prompts a server to send the appropriate content to the device. The content sent to the customer’s device could be an email, a push notification, etc.

Benefits

It provides a more direct communication channel with customers.
Ability to track customers indoors, which implies high precision.
It enables you to get a better understanding of customer behaviour.
The prospect does not have to be online to receive the notification.

5. Mobile Targeting

Mobile targeting is a location-targeted advertising strategy that involves targeting your customers with ads specifically for mobile devices. It is no secret that the general public hates ads, and they will go out of their way to avoid them.

Hence, with mobile targeting, you must make the ads context-specific. But, doing this is easier said than done. Basing your ads on time, device, location, etc., can significantly help you enhance your results.

Social media ads are a perfect example of this type of location based marketing. You can target your marketing efforts based on location data with social media ads. It is especially effective to push customers into visiting your store, nearby events, and more.

Working

Mobile targeting works with the help of segment creation in your mobile ad platform. Here, you can define the qualifications of your target audience. Facebook ads are a perfect example of advanced mobile targeting. It enables you to narrow down on the ideal prospect for you.

However, with a location based marketing strategy, the marketing process is initiated only when the customer enters a specified area or comes in proximity to your store.

Benefits

It enables you to target prospects directly on their devices.
Mobile targeting is ideal for creating more personalised connections.
It often leads to a higher ROI for your ads as it is highly targeted.

6. Geo-Conquesting

With geo-conquesting, you get geolocation based marketing that can help you get the upper hand over your competition. How does it do it? Geo-conquesting diverts prospects from your competitors using location data.

The logic behind geo-conquesting is much easier to understand than you might think. Suppose you are a realtor and want to get the upper hand against your competition. Here, you can set up a boundary around a busy open house your competitor is executing.

So, whenever a potential real estate buyer comes near the property, you can send them offers on similar properties at a lower price. You can even set up another open house around the same time as your competitor’s open house to create a sense of urgency.

Working

Like geofencing, geo-conquesting is also a location based marketing that employs GPS technology. But instead of setting up a boundary near your store, you set it up around your competitor. Everything else in geo-conquesting is similar to the other strategies we discussed above.

As the prospect comes close to your competitor, they start receiving marketing messages that divert them to you.

Benefits

Enables you to earn more market share.
Allows you to get new customers for your business.
It lets you target genuinely interested prospects in your product/service.

Conclusion

Location based marketing offers a lot of benefits to business organisations. It enhances the user experience, increases foot traffic, delivers relevant ads, and even lets you divert customers from your competition.

However, more often than not, location-based marketing strategies can only work as well as the tools you use. Take PostGrid, for example. It enables customers to conduct easy and convenient geocoding to reveal valuable information about their target audience.

Furthermore, geocoding is only a tiny part of what PostGrid can do for your business. PostGrid’s direct mail automation tool lets you personalise, print, and deliver marketing materials to your customers. Similarly, you can use other advanced tools to implement different geolocation based marketing campaigns.