There’s an old adage: quality over quantity. Every business certainly wants more customers, an increase in sales, and more products or services shipped. But there is, more than ever, something to be said for driving a more certain outcome with your marketing efforts. As many marketers know, the more qualified a customer, the more likely a sale will occur.
One of the more surefire ways of ensuring better marketing outcomes is by employing location-based advertising. This concept is interchangeably called “place-based advertising” or “geo location based advertising.” And it should be a cornerstone in your marketing stack.
As a strategy, marketers have noted, thanks to place-based advertising strategies:
- 86% increase in client base
- 84% increase in consumer engagement
But what is location based advertising? And how does location based advertising work with regard to a target audience? Moreover, are there location based marketing examples that your business can pull inspiration from?
In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of location based marketing. We’ll also share some place based advertising examples for inspiration in your next marketing campaign. By article’s end, you’ll have a better hold on place advertising concepts to enact in support of your business.
How Does Location-Based Advertising Work?
One of the great benefits of our modern age is the abundance of data that we have at our fingertips. Now is a truly revolutionary and unprecedented time when it comes to the power of location based marketing.
Even just a single generation ago, marketers were largely reliant on insights from anecdotal sources. Focus groups were widely relied upon. Prior results spoke volumes about expected results. And the marketer’s own gut carried the burden when devising a marketing strategy.
But today, marketers have a wealth of potentially useful insights at their disposal. And each of these insights can be integrated with a marketing campaign to serve targeted ads to target users.
They can access everything from common customer persona information to demographic data collected and offered by social media platforms. The amount of data can be staggering. But if you know where to focus your efforts, you can unlock the power of place-based advertising with relative ease.
The easiest way to think of location-based advertising is through the lens of geographic specificity. Location based ads rely almost entirely on geographic specificity as their main source of effectiveness.
Location-Based Marketing Examples
In practice, location-based advertising can be used to serve a variety of business types. Everything from B2B to B2C is potentially on the table. And everything from service tradespeople to humble coffee shops can potentially benefit, if the right strategies are used.
For example, imagine a company wants to sell flood insurance coverage in the United States. It might be simplest for them to merely advertise to everyone in the United States. A single campaign with a single asset would be cheap and easy to put into play.
But deeper consideration is needed here. Consider how there are many people in that category for whom flood insurance is wholly irrelevant. And consider how an even smaller fraction of those folks might actually want a new insurance provider.
This is marketing funnel 101. If the ad were served to the entire country, its effectiveness would be muted. Why? Because it would be irrelevant to the majority of prospective customers who see it.
Instead, the company might use location-based insights about specific locations to their advantage.
Their location based ad campaign might turn on or off depending on home address data. It might only display on social media or website banners to adults who live near a body of water. Or they could specify that the ad only runs to customers who live within a few miles of an ocean. They could even use real-world data about prior flooding events to target messaging based only on likely customers.
The company has used location-based advertising to ensure they are marketed only to relevant parties. By favoring quality over quantity in their campaign’s breadth, sales are prioritized over general awareness.
As you can see, geo targeting is a great way to target consumers and increase engagement strategically. But you needn’t stop at major landmarks or metro areas for your targeting efforts.
Foot Traffic Considerations
Another way to consider location-based advertising strategies is to consider customer foot traffic. Our above example uses a fairly broad level of geographic specificity. Namely: a zip code, town, or portion of an entire state. But digital platforms offer enormously specific data about where potential customers are and where they move during their day.
Consider GPS data, which nearly every mobile device user offers up as they browse the web, use apps, and more. These insights are commonly captured by advertising platforms to get a sense of helpful metrics to arm the marketer. Everything from foot traffic density, population shifts, commuting patterns, and more are on the table. And all of that data is worth its weight in gold to a marketer like you.
More Location-Based Advertising Examples
As an example for the above, imagine you run a network of pet grooming franchises around a major metro. Imagine customer growth is the goal with awareness as a secondary goal. Pretty straightforward campaign elements, if we’re honest.
Like our above example about flood insurance, easier doesn’t always mean better. It would be simplest, in truth, to activate your digital advertising pipeline with breadth in mind. Target everyone within a certain radius of your city and job done, right? Wrong.
This would be location-based advertising in its most basic, and least effective form. And it’s unfortunately an attempt at location based marketing that too many marketers fall victim to.
With a little tweaking to the place-based advertising strategy, you can get really specific in who sees your ad. With GPS data, you can serve your ad to customers when they enter your store’s radius. This is commonly referred to as geofencing or proximity marketing.
By targeting your recipient, you ensure a relevant customer base. By tailoring the message to make assumptions both about who and where they are, you speak to them directly. And by serving it to them at strategically convenient times, you can grow the likelihood of a potential sale.
Each of these elements are critical to a truly results-oriented location based marketing approach. Without all three, your campaign becomes like a restaurant recipe that’s missing a key ingredient.
Part of a rock-solid location based advertising strategy is also to have a mechanism to turn it off. With a place-based advertising plan, customers no longer see an ad once they move outside of a set radius. This helps stymie budget waste and focus your marketing dollars on more likely conversions.
Partner With a Geo Location-Based Advertising Leader
Now is the best time to roll out a place-based marketing strategy. AllOver Media has helped customers devise and perfect robust and results-oriented geo location based advertising strategies. Looking for some help with Geo-Fencing? See how AllOver Media can help!
