Geotargeting and its role in media buying

The use of geography in sales today is an important and popular tool in the hands of marketers. Users share information about themselves on social networks, and their behavior can be tracked by IP addresses. They use Maps and Search to find the right product or service.

All this makes geographic targeting possible. It makes advertising messages more targeted, which helps marketing campaigns drive more conversions.

What is geo-targeting?

Geo-targeting is a web development and online marketing algorithm that delivers content based on the user’s geographic location.

This mechanism for displaying ads and content allows you to segment your target audience as accurately as possible. At the simplest level, it is the use of consumer location data (country, city). More precise geolocation information allows you to collect even more data about the visitor and his interests, which helps to make advertising as relevant as possible.

Depending on the tasks and peculiarities of the business, geotargeting is used in search, contextual and display advertising, social media, and SEO optimization.

What is geographic targeting for?

It is difficult to say in which situation geotargeting will not be useful. For some areas of activity, its use is essential. We are talking about:

• Regional companies that offer their advertising only to the relevant target audience and, accordingly, use the advertising budget rationally.
• Businesses that don’t sell online, but can attract more customers by telling the interested audience about themselves in their immediate environment.
• Companies that work exclusively for delivery or provide services only locally. In this case, it is more effective to search for a customer based on location rather than gender, age, or interests. In addition, if a company claims to deliver within, for example, an hour, you should set up ads only for those to whom it will have time to deliver its goods.
• The service sector (medical centers, beauty salons, fitness clubs, law offices, etc.).

However, even national brands will be able to feel more confident in the market if they customize campaigns for specific areas. In addition, more targeted advertising will help you better understand who your customers are.

How does geo-targeting work?

It is present on all major ad management platforms. You can set up geo-targeting in almost any advertising system: Google Ads, Facebook Ads Manager, and others.

Before you start setting up, your marketing team should study the geography of your audience in detail. Determine what scale they want it to be and how individualized it should be. Targeting visitors based on their past or current visits?

The more you know about your customers, the more effective your advertising campaign will be. The following technologies are used to find out the exact location of a user:

• IP addresses for determining locations through stationary devices;
• data from mobile network stations to obtain information about the user by device location;
• cookies are data on user requests and movements that remain in the browser history;
• queries in search engines indicating the location, for example, “campsites in Rome”, “phone repair in Odesa”, etc;
• social media data – information shared by users on social media (about their place of residence, work, and notes about places visited).

All of these tools help to customize the most relevant impressions.

The pros and cons of geotargeting

Pros of geotargeting:

1. Increased conversion due to:

• high accuracy of determining the location of the target audience;
• budget allocation by region (CPC depends on the geo-zone);
• attracting customers who are nearby;
• studying the behavior, tastes, and preferences of customers through their search histories;
• localization of landing pages.

2. Reduced competition. Geotargeting allows regional companies not to focus on search engine optimization when they compete with large national businesses in search engines. You just need to set up ads for a specific region.
3. Budget optimization.

Google Analytics tools allow entrepreneurs to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by geography. This helps to optimize the use of the budget.

Cons:

1. Understanding the audience. You need to know the target audience by geography.
2. Errors during the setup. There is a risk of losing customers due to too strict restrictions.
3. The probability of error. The data collected by the system will not be completely accurate if a highly specialized sample is created.
4. User privacy. With the use of VPN and the ability to hide IP, it becomes more difficult to determine the location.

All in all, geo-targeting is not only a marketing tool, but also the art of balancing the use of technologies and strategies to achieve maximum results. Do you manage to cope with it? And share any fuck-ups you’ve encountered – we’d love to hear your feedback!