Audience Geotargeting: Re-Engaging Your Audience With Tailored Content
Geotargeting is one of the most clever and lucrative ways to promote your brand. It connects with individuals on a deeper level and can draw them in better than generalized marketing.
A popular geotargeting strategy is audience targeting, which combines classic demographic marketing with location radiuses and perfectly tailored content. Learn everything you need to know about audience-based geotargeting here.
What Is Audience Geotargeting?
Audience geotargeting is when you combine location data with user demographics and behavior. This is a step beyond identifying your target audience and focuses more on engaging the audience you already have based on their location.
Audience-based geotargeting campaigns take information like historical location data, shopping habits, purchase histories, and prime demographics to hit the right people with the right ads at the right time and in the right place. It takes standard audience marketing to the next level by bringing geographics into the equation, bolstering the impact.
With audience geotargeting, you can create more precise audience segments, allowing you to target specific profiles or interests within a location range.
What You Need For Audience Geotargeting
It starts with knowing your current customer base. If you’re not sure who your target audience is or the demographics of your current customers, that’s something to focus on first.
You should know the following information about your customer base:
- Age, sex, race, religion, and more basic demographics
- Interests and preferences
- Shopping and spending habits
- Professions and average income
- Needs and pain points
- Values and priorities
- Brand perception
Now, we bring in location data. This can include where they live, where they work, where they attend school, where they shop, and any other places they frequently visit.
Perhaps your target customer resides in the suburbs but frequently visits the nearby major city. That kind of information and habits are crucial to successful audience geotargeting. Even understanding their commute routes can be helpful.
How to Utilize Audience Geotargeting
Once you’ve collected all of this pertinent information, you can create your marketing campaign and advertisements.
Identify Your Goals
To start, identify your business needs.
- Is there a specific product you want to promote?
- Do you just need to get more foot traffic?
- Are people unaware of your services?
Define your campaign goals before doing anything else.
Define Your Location
Are you targeting an entire city? A specific neighborhood? One square block on a busy street? Your target radius is important, as this is how you’ll decide who to reach and when. It may be within a certain distance of your brick-and-mortar store, or maybe around your competitors, if you’re executing a geo-conquesting campaign.
Create Localized Content
Now it’s time to build your campaign content. Start with messaging that’s tailored to the location and audience you’ve already outlined in the previous steps. You can highlight local culture, events, or even slang. Reference landmarks, festivals, beloved foods, sports teams, and more concepts that will resonate specifically with your audience.
When creating your ads, whether they’re push notifications, videos, or social posts, ensure they’re optimized for mobile devices. Most geotargeting success happens on smartphones.
Choose Tools and Execute
Choosing the ideal platform is essential. Options include Instagram posts, Meta ads, push notifications, and more. You can learn more about choosing the perfect vehicle for your content in our Geotargeting Roadmap Guide [Coming Soon!]. Once the content has a home and is ready to go, you can start your campaign.
Monitor Performance and Make Adjustments
The work isn’t over just yet. Audience-based geotargeting requires some trial and error, so track key performance indicators, adjust your location radius, and experiment with different tools until you achieve satisfying results. Never be afraid to pivot!
Case Study #1: Ulta Styles Every City on the Cowboy Carter Tour
During Beyoncé’s iconic Cowboy Carter tour, Ulta released makeup tutorials and curated lists for each stop along the way. These city-focused campaigns were released as Beyoncé moved from city to city. Users could shop for related products on the Ulta app to recreate the city-specific look, and Ulta posted on its social media accounts to promote the styles.
This is an excellent example of using an event to create ads for an existing customer base. Ulta knew that a large number of its app users and social media followers would likely be attending a Cowboy Carter concert, and might even be shopping for new makeup for the occasion. By creating these city-inspired styles, they gave people an extra push, guiding them toward specific products.
Case Study #2: Seattle Transit Targets Traffic-Fatigued Commuters
Sound Transit employed a combination of digital geotargeting and strategically placed advertisements, encouraging Seattle commuters to opt for public transportation instead. The marketing campaign featured zombies stuck in traffic, hunting for parking spots, and filling up their gas tanks, with the tagline “Break a mindless habit.”
The digital ads targeted all of Seattle, while the related billboards and posters could be seen along busy highways and near major parking garages and areas with high car traffic throughout the city. The ads reached Sound Transit’s target audience, particularly in places where they knew people would feel peak frustration with their personal vehicles. It perfectly hit on Seattelites pain points, offering a solution while being comical.