Geospatial data comes in handy for knowing what kind of things are present at a particular place and how they look and function. With such location intelligence, companies can make more informed decisions.

By the end of this article, you will understand:

• How companies using geospatial data to offer a more personalized customer experience
• How businesses increase their operational efficiency and profit margins through geospatial data 

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) analyze geospatial data. This analysis can help you map and integrate location information of a particular place, object, or person with proper description.

According to the Global BCG survey, 95% of executives across the globe consider mapping and geospatial data critical for achieving desired business goals.

 

Various Ways That Companies Are Leveraging Geospatial Data

Whether it’s a government relations agency, a clothing store, or a coffee shop, companies across the globe are trying to increase their customer conversion rates through geospatial data analysis. Here’s how companies use geospatial data to grow and retain their customer base.

 

Choosing the Right Store Location

Your business’s location plays a critical role in its success or failure. Geospatial data can help you understand the market condition of the prospective site. The data can also give you insight into the customers’ preferences and help you predict how your business will perform in a particular area. 

Before analyzing the geospatial data for site selection, ask yourself:

• Are you selecting a site for a new store?
• Do you want to move, renovate or close your existing store at a particular location?

In both cases, you need to analyze the following geospatial data:

 

Competitors

Do you want your business to stay near your competitors? If you’re going to attract more customers, select a site where your competitors set up their business. 

Customers often look for variety when shopping. This, in turn, can entice your competitor’s customer base to visit your store. It will further increase your store’s visibility and sales. 

For instance, Burger King took competition heads on by targeting McDonald’s outlets in its proximity. Here’s how the campaign worked:

• The campaign “Escape the Clown” was inspired by the American horror movie “It Chapter Two.” 

• The outlet compared the evil character of the movie to McDonald’s clown mascot and asked people to escape the clown. 
• All this took place while people were on the premises of McDonald’s. 
• Burger King went the augmented reality way. It placed a secret ad within the McDonald’s movie magazine where an article on “It Chapter Two” was present.

• Further, Burger King went ahead and leveraged location on social media. It took the help of Facebook and Instagram by setting up a calendar to target people visiting McDonald’s. Visitors instantly received a message from Burger King asking them to download its app. Visitors instantly received a message from Burger King asking them to download its app. In general Instagram for small businesses has been al lot of help.
• Once the visitors downloaded the app and scanned the said article, they received a coupon for the signature Whopper burger at the Burger King. People could redeem the voucher and get the burger for a cent.

• The catch was the limited time of the coupon. The Burger King app used geolocation to provide people with the nearest route to McDonald’s outlets. 

• Thus, as the campaign’s name itself suggested, people ran out of McDonald’s to redeem the coupon, thereby escaping the clown. 

 

Customer’s Interest

Different bases of your customers in other locations might be having different points of interest. You can set up your store in a place where you have the highest customers at a particular point of interest. GIS and GPS will help you analyze this geospatial data and map out that location. These points of interest (POI) range from parking lots, restaurants and gas stations. 

For instance, consider you want to set up an e-commerce store and find a large chunk of your customer base visiting a particular restaurant in an area. Such POI can be an ideal business location for you. “In this process, you will need to compare Wix vs WordPress to pick the best one for your eCommerce brand.”

Here’s another example from the e-commerce giant Amazon. It made good use of the geographic data of authors, sellers, and developers on the United States map. This data came in handy when it launched its first physical bookstore. 

Amazon stocked books in its bookstore based on the reading interests of the people residing in its proximity.  As a result, Amazon went ahead and set up plenty of Amazon Go Stores. It also created a significant economic impact across the United States. 

 

Level of Traffic

You can also leverage the traffic data while finalizing the store location. You should set up your store in an area where your target customers have high foot traffic. It will increase your store’s visibility and sales.

For instance, if you run a convenience store, placing it near a gas station and corners of the street will give you more footfall. Convenience stores provide easy access to essential utilities such as snacks and toiletries. So, people often visit these stores during commuting.  

Further, if you have a knack for creativity, you can use the traffic data as Burger King did. Mexico has the worst traffic in the world. People there are stuck in the traffic for as long as 5 hours. 

Burger King took it as an opportunity to increase its sales and came up with the campaign “The traffic jam whopper.” Here are some screenshots from an explainer video Burger King created. 

It combined the location data with beacon technology and sent personalized push notifications to customers stuck in traffic.

As a result, the campaign accelerated their sales by 63%.

 

Optimizing Supply and Distribution Route

If you are into the supply and distribution business, geospatial data such as satellite imagery can help you optimize your routes. Besides, you will also witness a considerable decrease in logistics costs. 

You can also strategically locate your warehouse through geospatial analytics. Such optimization is beneficial for e-commerce stores that need to streamline their delivery and inventory management.

For instance, if you run a small grocery outlet and deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to grocers in varied locations, you can use GIS and GPS to get insights on following geospatial data:

• When were the fruit and vegetables plucked from the field?
• Which routes did the inventory vehicle take for the products to reach their destination?
• What was the quality of the products after their arrival?

If your products encounter problems such as stale fruits and vegetables, you can easily track the whole process. It will give you an in-depth insight into the loopholes from which you can instantly take corrective measures. This, in turn, will ensure that your future product deliveries are top-notch. 

You can take the example of Amazon here. It launched its Amazon Prime Air Drone Project in 2020. The project worked on the combination of artificial intelligence with GIS. With this integration of geospatial data, Amazon delivers products to customers within a record time of 30 minutes. Now, that’s a brand strategy that helped Amazon fulfill its long-term goals of improving customer experience.  

 

Better Customer Segmentation and Targeting

You can make your business successful through customer segmentation and targeting. This can help you create personalized marketing campaigns for your customers. 

With GIS mapping, you can find out your customers’ consumption patterns. But, since these data contain sensitive information about your customers, you must keep it secure from cyber-attacks. When sharing it online, don’t forget to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to encrypt your geospatial data. 

• Which product/service are they using regularly?

If they consume a particular food supplement, send them a reminder email or a push notification a few days before their supplement ends. Do it the way ROCKIN’ WELLNESS does with its reminder email.

• Are they changing their buying preferences?

If they were buying custom hoodies from a particular brand, but are browsing other brands now, send them a recommendation email for similar products in new brands. Take some inspiration from Lyst to craft a compelling recommendation email.

Pro tip: Make sure your emails aren’t ending up in spam. A high email deliverability rate is a crucial indicator of reasonable conversion rates.

• Are they purchasing from your competitors? 

If they have switched to your competitors, retain them through loyalty programs, discounts, and coupons.  A cost-friendly hack would be to send them through push notifications and emails with a discount offer to increase your conversions while keeping the cost low and improving your Return on Investment (ROI) by a whopping 10%. 

Further, you can also try retaining your customers by organizing giveaways on social media.

Take a look at how Facebook did a phenomenal job with giving giveaways. 

 Make sure to have a verified social media account to establish credibility in front of your customers. 

Publishing infographics depicting how your products and services are better than your competitors can also allure your customers to come back to you. 

 

Analyzing Future Marketing Trends

From customer’s information to sales target data, you can analyze these data and come up with the following results:

• Forecasting future marketing trends
• Improving your sales strategy based on the consumption pattern of consumers

You can also take some inspiration from Walmart’s geospatial strategy. It makes use of a variety of location-based technologies to improve customer experience. These technologies include geo-fencing, store map features, and artificial intelligence. Let’s take a look at how they implement this high-end location-based strategy:

• To improve navigation through a Walmart store, the brand came up with a store map feature on its mobile app. The segment contains unique layouts of all the Walmart outlets in the US. They further provide the exact location of each product present in each outlet. 
• On Black Friday, Walmart came up with an exclusive Black Friday Store Map. It gives customers the precise location of the most exciting Black Friday deals. The map highlights the high-demand product locations with the help of color-coded maps. These maps were accessible by clicking on the “map your deals” button. 
• Walmart manages its vast inventory with the help of AI-backed robots. It installed automatic shelf scanners in its various outlets.  These scanners have cameras that monitor the items present on the shelves. If any product goes out of stock, or if the labels or pricing are wrong; these scanners alert the store manager. 

So, you see, how geospatial data helped Walmart take its customer experience to another level? 

Now, let’s take another example of how Neil Curie, an investment banker analyst, predicted Walmart sales using satellite data. 

He gathered satellite data of 100 Walmart stores and analyzed the number of vehicles in their parking lot every month. It gave him a clear idea about the regular flow of customers in the retail outlet. 

He further used the regression technique. It helped him figure out how the vehicles in the parking lot were in direct proportion to the Walmart earnings. With this correlation, he was able to predict the sales of Walmart for the next quarter year. 

Now that’s how you use geospatial data like a pro. Imagine doing the same for your business and skyrocketing your earnings!

 

Wrap Up

With the proper usage of geospatial data, businesses can pave new avenues of success. 

Amazon, Walmart, and Burger King are the top brands that are leveraging geospatial data. 

In a nutshell, geospatial data can help you understand your customers and competitors better. This, in turn, will help you develop top-notch marketing strategies and speed up your sales and revenue.

Recent innovations in modern technology have made geotargeting one of the most effective ways to improve your marketing campaigns. Although marketing agencies can help you with geotargeted marketing campaigns, companies for graphic designs can also help you with amazing visuals for your marketing campaigns.

In this article, you’ll get some insight into brands that launched more successful marketing campaigns by using geotargeting. You’ll also discover related information about the results they achieve with their campaigns, as well as strategies to help you when you launch your marketing ads.

In addition, you’ll find tips on how to implement geotargeting effectively in your next marketing campaign.

 

Why Use Geotargeting?

Thanks to location-based technology, such as geo-filters and location data, geotargeting has become very precise. In other words, digital marketers no longer have to gamble on local pay-per-click advertisements.

It’s now more practical and cost-effective to include geotargeting in your marketing campaign, especially if you’re a local business.

This explains why more brands are investing in geotargeting marketing strategies.

Customers are also joining in as many say they don’t mind brands knowing their real-time locations if it helps them achieve a more satisfying shopping experience.

It’s a win-win.

Companies utilize geotargeting marketing to provide a more rewarding way to advertise products and services. And customers are also embracing the technology as a quick and reliable way to find the products and services they need from their mobile devices wherever they are.

Let’s dig a bit deeper and explore what precisely geotargeting is, its applications, benefits, and look at some successful geo-targeting campaigns.

 

What is Geotargeting?

Geotargeting (or local PPC) is the term that encompasses the practice of delivering adverts or content to consumers (or potential consumers) based on their geographical locations.

For businesses, it means advertising products and services to local prospects.

There are several methods through which geotargeting can be utilized — from the zip code level using device IDs or IP addresses to geo-fencing, GPS signals, and more. 

The idea behind the technology is to understand a user’s needs in real-time so relevant ad content can be delivered at the right place and time. With those in place, the circumstances are right for the consumer to take the desired action — make a purchase.

Moreover, sending relevant ads to consumers creates a bond between themselves and the brand. A 2019 survey shows that 75% of consumers are more likely to be loyal to a brand they feel understands them. Geotargeting is that bridge to better understanding.

With that said, let’s look at some of the top benefits geotargeting provides to businesses.

 

Top 5 Benefits Geotargeting can Provide Your Business

Adding geotargeting to your marketing campaign comes with several key benefits. Here are the top five you can expect:

 

Personalized Content

A key advantage of geotargeting is that it allows you to create advertising content relevant to those who see them. You see, personalized ads create a better experience for users and a higher chance of a conversion.

When you know where your ads will be displayed, you can push specific products, stores, events, etc., that are unique to the people in those areas.

 

Effective Marketing Budgets

By restricting your ads to only the areas you want (places your products are available, popular, or already successful), your marketing campaigns can be more effective and cost-efficient.

 

Product and Market Development

Another advantage geotargeting offers is that it helps brands test new products or services in a more controlled market.

By displaying ads for new products in a specific location, variables can be better accounted for, providing you with cleaner data. You can then observe the results and fine-tune your offer for a larger audience.

 

Build Authority

If you want to build a reputation as the go-to brand for the product or service you offer in your neighborhood, geotargeting can help you achieve that.

By using your ads to showcase relevant community events, answer questions your customers have, and more, you can naturally connect with your local community and attract more customers and assist lead generation.

 

Hide Ads from Competitors

Finally, geotargeting can give you an advantage over the competition. How? Exclude the locations where your closest competitors are from your advertising campaigns. This way, your ads can gain a headstart before competitors see them. 

 

Where Does Geotargeting Fit?

While a geotargeting marketing campaign is effective for many businesses, certain limitations can affect others. For instance, using a local pay-per-click (PPC) may not be the best option for products that can be bought almost anywhere (e.g., milk, soda, etc.). 

 

What to Avoid When Geotargeting

Before we dive into examples of real-life marketing campaigns that got better with geotargeting, let touch on pitfalls to be aware of:

 

Locations that don’t scale

Locations that cannot scale to generate adequate audiences for geotargeting are among the most common challenges to the practice. Some reasons this could happen include choosing a stand-alone location that does not have enough foot traffic to analyze, short-lived events that do not give enough time for audience capturing, etc.

Locations with multiple tightly clustered businesses (such as malls or multipurpose buildings) can also make geotargeting challenging.

 

Products or services available everywhere

Products that are generally available everywhere are not a good fit for location-based marketing. 

 

Businesses with sensitive data

Another challenge for geotargeting market campaigns is businesses that deal with sensitive data.

A typical example is healthcare offices. In cases like this, such businesses must fulfill the requirements of privacy compliance firms such as Network Advertising Initiative, TrustArc and the Digital Advertising Alliance, and TrustArc. Such conditions ensure privacy for consumers.

 

5 Successful Real-World Marketing Campaigns Aided by geotargeting

Many notable brands have used geotargeting in their campaigns to great success. Here are five notable examples.

 

UNIQLO

UNIQLO is a company that deals in casual clothing apparel for men, women, kids, and babies. It has more than 1000 stores scattered across the world.

The marketing campaign challenge

In 2012, UNIQLO was about to launch its yearly sales campaign, but they wanted better results. They decided to promote it using Facebook — which was the most popular social networking channel among the brand’s target audience of young people at the time.

To push their sales, the brand created a ‘UNIQLO Check-in Chance’ campaign, which gave everyone who checked in (on Facebook) at any one of their stores a chance to win 100 yen. After checking in, their details would go into a prize draw with 100 yen as the prize. However, the 100 yen could only be used during the sales period in a UNIQLO store.

Also, UNIQLO made all check-ins at their stores visible to all as entertainment rather than make the check-ins on Facebook only visible to friends.

 

Results

The excitement created at the individual stores due to the Facebook check-ins quickly became a global event. The prize draw and the possibility of winning a cash coupon encouraged check-in participation and drove traffic to the stores.

In other words, the Facebook check-ins served as a geotargeting campaign for people in that area.

Over three days, the UNIQLO yearly sales garnered an impressive tally of 202,479 check-ins — which was an all-time high. Furthermore, the Facebook page for the brand experienced over 10,000 likes from the campaign. Foot traffic to their stores also reached new highs. During the three-day sale period, UNIQLO sold clothing worth over 10 billion Japanese yen (which was just under $93,000).

 

Takeaway

The highlight of this campaign is how simple it was. A good rule of thumb is to keep your marketing campaigns as simple as possible such that your customers (or potential customers) don’t feel like they have to work to keep up with you. Additionally, throwing some incentives (such as the prize draw here) is a great way to get potential customers to take action.

 

Hyundai

Hyundai is an automobile manufacturing company that was founded in 1967. The company is renowned for its high-quality yet affordable cars.

The marketing campaign challenge

Hyundai had a problem with sales. People thought their cars were ‘cheap’ and as a result, sales were down.

In fairness, Hyundai cars have always been a more affordable option, but it didn’t make them inferior. 

So, how did they solve this problem of reduced sales?

Hyundai Motors America came up with a campaign they codenamed ‘Dealer Stealer’. As the name implies, the goal of this campaign was to ‘steal’ customers from rival dealers, and they used geo-targeting to pull it off!

They digitally mapped the locations of the stores of two of their major rivals — 115 Mazda dealerships and 282 Toyota dealerships, as well as 152 of their stores. Then, they kept track of those who walked into (or came close to) the stores of their rivals and collected their unique and anonymous mobile phone data IDs.

Then, they displayed Hyundai advertising deals on the mobile phones of these people, who are primarily customers looking to buy Mazda or Toyota vehicles.

 

Results

As a result of their geofencing marketing efforts, Hyundai had approximately 815,000 pairs of eyes viewing their ads, and at least 50% of this number reconsidering Hyundai as an alternative. This number was gathered from the click-through rate (viewers who clicked the ads), 50% above the industry average.

The company also kept track of the location of the mobile phone users to see if they eventually walked into a Hyundai dealership and re-targeted them with more mobile ads if they needed an extra push.

 

Takeaway

Hyundai Motors’ approach was ingenious. Chances were that anyone who walked into a car dealership was ready to buy a car, and that made them prime picks. All that was left was to isolate and target them with relevant ads highlighting their car deals, and they used geotargeting to achieve that.

 

Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s Pizza is the recognized global leader in the business of pizza production and delivery. It has numerous stores in the US and all over the world.

 

The marketing campaign challenge

Domino’s wanted to be able to advertise more effectively to their customers. So, they came up with a campaign to use text messages for effective hyperlocal advertising (top-tier geotargeting). But, they needed one essential bit of information — the addresses of their customers.

They asked their customers to provide their addresses when opting for their email and text pizza discount offers. Once they had this information, Domino’s began geotargeting using various categories (from ZIP codes to timezones, store locations, and even states).

 

Results

With this campaign, Domino’s has been able to carry out text message ads that are more likely to convert. Their hyperlocal advertising meant that they could target people in specific locations based on real-time happenings and offers.

For instance, a Domino’s outlet in a college town can send out text ads detailing special offers on the night of major games. Here’s another scenario — if there’s a thunderstorm in a Domino’s store location, they may send out ads to the people in that area to order in rather than having to go outside.

 

Takeaway

Domino’s Pizza used the incentives of discounted offers to encourage their customers to give them their addresses. The information was then used to make hyper-specific ads that targeted customers’ immediate pain points in real-time (getting soaked by the rain).

 

Coca-cola

Coca-cola is the world’s leading beverage bottling company, with its products sold in more than 200 countries.

 

The marketing campaign challenge

Coca-cola was looking for ways to streamline and optimize its supply operations for better sales and decided to use location intelligence (geotargeting).

The company used its vending machines — one-third of which are connected to the internet — to harness customer data. The machines use facial recognition alongside payment analysis to collect data on which drinks sell the best. Also, from the data they get from their machines, Coca-cola could tell which of the vending machines got the most foot traffic.

 

Results

Based on the data they got, Coca-cola figured out their ‘best-selling’ machines and the ones that didn’t get a lot of traffic. From this, they went back to the drawing board to redistribute their supply resources. As a result of a more optimized supply chain, they could increase their profits and save more on costs.

 

Takeaway

This example demonstrates the impact of analyzing sales based on location and then using geotargeting to optimize and drive sales in the areas where there is a larger market.

 

Van Leeuwen

Van Leeuwen is an ice cream company that was created in 2008. At that time, they started by selling ice cream out of a truck. Today, they have several stores in multiple states across the US and feature various ice cream selections, including vegan ice cream.

 

The marketing campaign challenge

Van Leeuwen was looking for ways to keep track of their customers so ads could be sent to them when they are close to a store. The company decided to use the location tracking feature of the PayPal app. 

As part of the campaign, Van Leeuwen required their customers to download and install the PayPal app on their mobile devices and then link it to their PayPal accounts. That was the first step. Afterward, they used the geolocation feature of the PayPal app to know when a customer was close to a Van Leeuwen store.

Once they got this proximity alert, they sent ads with enticing offers and deals to attract them into the store and make a purchase. Then, they let them pay for their creamy treats using the PayPal app. 

 

Results

As a result of the use of mobile payment options and the location-tracking benefits it offers, Van Leeuwen could use geo-targeted ads to drive customers into their stores and increase their sales effectively.

 

Takeaway

Everyone loves a convenient payment option, and Van Leeuwen leveraged that. They chose a mobile payment option that tracks user location from their mobile data. This allowed them to influence their customers’ decisions at the crucial moments during which they were close to Van Leeuwen stores.

Hopefully, these real-life applications have given you some insight into how you can apply geotargeting in your business’s marketing strategy.

 

Geotargeting Software

Here are some of the best marketing automation software you can use to get the results you need:

 

Facebook Location Targeting

Facebook has more than 2.7 billion active users, which makes it a powerful advertising channel. The best part? The platform also allows you to target users based on various criteria — from country to region or even city. Facebook also monitors the performance of your ads, deduces your best-performing locations, and reallocates your budget to target those locations.

 

Google Ads Location Targeting

With Google Ads, you can target only people in specific regions, or cities, or the radius of a particular area based on their mobile data. You can also target users based on specific countries, regions, or a radius around a specific location. 

 

Twitter geotargeting

If you think Twitter is a good match for your advertising needs, you can use it to attract your target customers. Twitter uses geotargeting to keep track of mobile user data, including IP addresses and mobile GPS signals. With this, you can restrict your ad campaigns to specific cities, postal addresses, or countries.

 

Instagram Locations and Geotags

Instagram allows users to tag locations on their posts. This way, when other users search for that location, those posts show up. Therefore, you can take advantage of this geotag feature when you post in your feed and story. Also, you can advertise to users in specific locations (say, near your store) via Instagram. In addition, you can use tools to post to Instagram from Mac for the best content quality.

 

LinkedIn Geotargeting

LinkedIn connects professionals based on their industries and geographic locations, which makes it an excellent ad tool. Moreover, the platform makes ‘Geographic Location’ a required field if you want to share an ad, so it’s just as well. With at least 2.8 million locations globally, LinkedIn allows you to target specific areas or regions.

 

Snapchat Location Targeting

Finally, if you’re targeting the younger demographic in a specific region, Snapchat may be the way to go. The platform allows users to target precise locations, countries, or even postal addresses. You can also share your ads within a particular radius or longitude/latitude pair.

 

Ways to Deliver Your Geo-Targeted Messages to the Customers

There are several means through which you can convey the content of your geo-targeted ads to your customers. Here are some options you can try:

 

Pop-ups: How Geotargeting Works for Pop-ups

You’re probably not a stranger to pop-ups while browsing through a website. Well, in the right location and on the devices of relevant people, pop-ups can be a powerful ad tool. If you’re sending out pop-up ads, ensure that you choose the most relevant audience for your products or service. You can also throw in some open-ended sales questions to encourage interactions and achieve more productive results.

 

Geo-targeted Email Marketing

Another option is geo-targeted email marketing. Over the years, cold email software has proven to be an effective marketing tool for brands and businesses worldwide. But with geotargeting and the right email client, the results can even be more exponential. With Geo-targeted email marketing, you can send your ads to people in favorable locations for your business, which improves your chances of converting.

 

Wrap Up

Today, many successful brands are implementing geotargeting marketing and increasing their profit margins. The real-life scenarios we discussed in this article are more proof. You can also join the ranks and achieve your company goals faster.

Make your marketing campaigns better with geotargeting today.

Marketers now have a bigger arsenal than ever before. It’s a digital arsenal, an outdoor advertising arsenal, a location-based, personalized, tailor-made arsenal of marketing channels that attract customers.

All this power comes with a problem; it’s hard to tell which marketing channels have the most significant impact on your business. Creating dozens of campaigns across several channels might get the word out about your business, but you’ve got to tie leads back to the marketing channel that delivered them if you want to know what’s working.

That’s where marketing attribution comes in. Attribution means tracking each touchpoint customers have with your brand and assigning credits to those touchpoints according to how much they impacted the customer decision. According to data from HubSpot, companies that use attribution to show marketing ROI have a 12% bigger marketing budget than those that don’t.

Without attribution, you won’t know how to adjust spend and allocate resources towards the most effective, efficient marketing channels. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.

 

The Issue of Offline Attribution

Attribution can solve the problem of how to give credit to offline conversions. Imagine that someone calls your business’s call center after seeing your billboard, bus stop ad, or brochure. How do you assign credit to that marketing source if you can’t track a click?

Call tracking numbers can solve this issue. Simply put a tracking number on the ad, link it to your real number, and use call tracking software to capture that lead and track it back to the marketing source.

Offline attribution methods like call tracking allow you to quantify revenue from non-digital ads. As for the digital ads? Many tracking tools use first-click attribution; when credit goes to the first click that brings a user to a website.

 

A Simple Guide to First-Click Attribution

Picture this; someone performs a Google search for “what is CRM software.” That user finds your site in the search results and clicks. They visit your site, see your number and eventually call your salespeople. This is a lead, and the credit for this lead goes to the first marketing source they clicked on; Google organic search results.

Now let’s imagine something different happened. Instead of calling your sales team, that user ended up leaving your site without making contact. A few days later, they saw one of your PPC ads while searching for CRM software again. Recognizing your company name, they clicked the ad, called the tracking number on the landing page, and got in touch with a salesperson.

The credit for this lead still goes to Google Organic because that was the first click this user made before interacting with your site. There’s a problem though; PPC marketing also played an essential role in converting this customer.

Without the ability to track and account for all your marketing sources, you’d risk overvaluing Google Organic and undervaluing the PPC campaign simply because first-click attribution didn’t split the credit evenly between the two marketing sources. Marketers have recognized the need for more data and multi-channel attribution; a 2016 study found that 39% of marketers planned to use six or more marketing channels over the next two years.

 

Expanding Attribution with Better Data

Landing Page reports and Lead Page Reports give you the extra insights you need to assign lead credit across all marketing sources accurately. Landing Page reports tell you which web page the lead first landed on when coming to your site, a tidbit that can help you identify the keyword they used to search for your product. For instance, if they land on a specific product page, they likely used a keyword related to that product.

Landing Page reports can also reveal the other marketing methods leads used to visit your site. You may be sending out emails with links to pages on your website, or you may have backlinks from other sites, and landing page reports can reveal whether or not the people who clicked on those links ended up converting.

Lead Page Reports are a little different. They reveal which page the lead was on when they took a conversion action (calling, filling out a form, or initiating a chat). These reports reveal how effective various web pages are at turning prospects into leads.

First-touch attribution may only reveal one marketing channel’s effectiveness, but combining attribution data with a landing page and lead page reports will reveal how the various marketing channels intersect and impact the customer journey. In fact, you can even bring location data into the mix.

 

Realizing the Power of Real World Store Attribution

Attribution isn’t just for digital businesses. Integrating a real-world store attribution tool into your marketing stack will tell you when leads saw your marketing, when they came into your business and when they made a purchase. For brick and mortar businesses, this is a must. It’s also no longer a futuristic technology reserved for a select few; real-world store attribution tools are available.

With these tools, you can see how to drive traffic to your Shopify store, as well as your real0world store. You can see how long people stay in your stores, how often they visit, and demographic information about each customer. Maybe some marketing efforts drive people to your stores, but those people don’t make large purchases. You might be able to identify the marketing efforts that drive high-value customers to your stores, who make large purchases and come back for more.

The prevalence of mobile devices among the population has made real-world store attribution possible. However, these devices are just one part of the multi-device ecosystem that marketers must follow to capture every lead and trace it back to the marketing source.

 

The Need for Cross-Device Attribution

According to this Google research project, 51% of consumers will search for products across multiple devices, and 48% will directly navigate to their destination website from a different device than they used to find the site initially. Someone might search for a new CRM software on their phone, find a product they like, and then use their desktop computer to navigate that website directly and buy the product. Attribution has to be able to keep up with these changes.

That’s a lot of information to keep track of. Luckily for us marketers, that study was conducted in 2012, and attribution technology has caught up since then. While most consumers probably use multiple devices to shop even more frequently in 2020, it’s easier to track all searching, browsing, and shopping with cross-device attribution tools.

 

A Wrap-up on Attribution

Attribution is one of those marketing phrases that gets thrown around a lot, but it boils down to how well you can understand what marketing works. It’s the process of capturing data, tying it all together, and creating simple reports that explain what’s going on. If you can do that, you can calculate the exact impact your marketing has on the business’ bottom line. That’s valuable information, and it can make you, as a marketer, invaluable to your company.

It’s high time we took another look at Geofencing. The technology has been a powerful way to reach consumers in the best moment in the right locations. But how have the capabilities changed, and how can marketers best use the technology as we move into a new decade?

 

What is Geofencing?

Geofence marketing is a form of location-based marketing where a geographic boundary is placed around a point of interest. When a mobile device enters this area, the geofence can trigger several different events. These triggers are usually the delivery of some kind of advertising. Historically this has been via SMS marketing, but increasingly this process has developed to include push notifications and even fit seamlessly into the programmatic advertising stack.

 

A definition of geofencing in 2023

Geofencing is a technology that has been around for a while. It is always developing, and marketers are finding intuitive new ways to use it effectively.

Geofencing is useful for instant location-based advertising. But its use can move beyond this simple moment marketing. Geofencing can be used to identify and build large addressable audiences over time. As we’ll see, it can even have a role in retargeting, attribution, and other location-based insights.

 

How does geofencing work?

Geofencing mostly consists of the following steps:

• Identify a geographical radius around a real-world location.
• Set up a geofence (virtual barrier) around the location.
• When a device enters or exits, an event can be triggered.

 

What are the limitations of geofencing in marketing and advertising? (What you can’t do)

Not all geofencing technology is perfect. Sometimes a device registers inside a geofence when, in fact, it isn’t. Other times the geofence is set around a store, but in busy cities and other hard to measure locations, sometimes this means that devices are falsely attributed to the physical location.

These issues mean that geofencing has to be accurate. To provide maximum value to consumers, ads have to be relevant. Directly sending everyone that walks past a store, a message isn’t a viable option.

At Tamoco, we are obsessed with accuracy. We want our customers to be sure that a device is being targeted because it actually visited a location. So we build a solution that understands more than a single data point when calculating if a device is inside a POI or geofence.

Geofencing also has potential scalability issues. Being so highly targeted and in the moment means that the addressable audience in a geofence campaign might be quite small.

A geofencing campaign might work across McDonald’s stores, for example, but this is because there are a significant number of them. When dealing with smaller campaigns, the reliance on your own audience might not be enough.

For this reason, it might be better to target a type of consumer or build a segment over time that consists of visits.

 

What you can do with (better) geofencing

Simple geofencing push is no longer as powerful as it used to be. With better accuracy and a slightly different approach, you can still use location to achieve convincing results. Let’s see how.

 

Marketing and advertising

Targeting

Geofencing has traditionally been used to target devices as they enter a geofence. The brand would place a radius around its stores, for example. When a device using their app entered these areas, they would be sent a message encouraging them to visit the retail location.

As we’ve already mentioned, this isn’t always accurate in practice. Larger geofences are likely to include devices that aren’t nearby or not inside a competitor store. This can render the advertising message irrelevant.

Another potential issue with geofence targeting is the lack of audience scale. If you are using the technology with your own application, a large audience is required to send messages on the scale needed to shift the needle.

Better geodata means that you can look at device across how it behaves over time. In the moment targeting is effective, but building up a detailed profile and using this to build segments provides you with more reach and better accuracy.

Using location data for geotargeting means that you can target more devices outside of your first-party audience. You can read more about location data for targeting here.

 

Measurement geofences

Another benefit of using location-based targeting is the ability to measure the effect of location-based marketing or geofencing campaigns. For example, if you target devices based on their proximity to a location, how do you know if they performed the desired goal, especially if this is in the real world.

Using location data to target means that the same technology can be used to confirm if devices visit a retail location after being delivered any kind of advertising. Better accuracy means that you can be certain of a venue visit, rather than just a person walking nearby.

So using accurate POI geofences or polygons can help you to attribute your advertising campaigns. This extends beyond your geofencing campaigns to include your digital advertising, out oh home campaigns, and much more.

 

The future of geofencing marketing

Geofencing marketing v location targeting

Geofencing in marketing can still be an effective way to reach consumers in the best possible moment. But for brands that want to identify larger groups of relevant consumers, this isn’t always the best solution.

Instead, location-based audience segments offer the best of both worlds. These segments are still based on real-world locations and therefore carry real-world intent. They are scalable because these segments can be built over a longer time period.

Another benefit of these types of campaigns is that you can activate segments directly in your marketing channels.

This means that you don’t need to rely on push in apps. You can use the entire programmatic marketing stack to target users wherever they are.

 

About Tamoco’s location segments

Our segments provide more scale for marketers looking to do better location targeting. Our first-party data focuses on accuracy, allowing marketers to do more precise geographical based campaigns.

Activate location-based segments today.

It seems that you can’t go anywhere in the world of online advertising at the moment without the conversation moving onto the role of advertising cookies, and what the future holds.

With the implementation of GDPR last year, the California Consumer Privacy Act coming into play in 2020, the cookie has come under increasing pressure.

Combine this with Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention and the whispers that Google is also looking to block third-party cookies, and you can understand why everyone in the space is a little worried about what the future holds for the cookie.

We’re going to look at this future, how the cookie works, and how marketers and advertisers can adjust for any upcoming changes in how the advertising industry uses web cookies.

 

What are advertising cookies? How do cookies work for advertising?

First of all, what role do cookies play in the world of advertising?

Well, cookies are small code snippets that store information related to how the user behaves on the web. This cookie is stored on the user’s web browser and can be used accessed to store and change data related to the user.

Cookies can store a wide range of information, such as the pages you have visited and for how long.

We can divide these further types:

First-party cookies

First-party cookies are created by the publisher or website owner when a visitor is on their site. Cookies enable website visitor tracking which helps a business understand which user is returning and ensure that the page content is right for that user. Often, this is something like language or another element that helps with the user experience.

These cookies also include analytics, such as Google Analytics, which used cookies to measure how users use the site.

Third-party cookies

Third-party cookies are used in the digital advertising ecosystem for retargeting and for behavioral-based targeting. Adding these types of cookies to pages allows advertisers to understand how users behave across the web. Using these, they can build a profile that can be selected to target with ads that are more personalized to each user.

 

What are cookies used for?

Advertising cookies can be used for analytics and for managing the user experience. But we are interested in the role that they have in the advertising ecosystem.

Here cookies are used mainly to retarget users based on which site and which pages they have visited. What started as a simple way to deliver products to users who had already seen them has now developed into sophisticated methods to target users that have previously visited a specific page or product.

The other side of the advertising cookie is to build audiences based on profiles. As a user visits a site, this information is used to build a profile for that user. This profile contains information such as age, gender, and interests. These profiles allow marketers to build and create new audiences that are relevant for their product or proposition.

 

What’s changing

The most significant change to the advertising industry in the last few years has been the drive for transparency and user privacy.

Privacy regulators have introduced legislation that limits how advertising cookies can be used to collect user data. These have created a massive issue for the advertising ecosystem, which relies heavily on third-party cookies to build profiles and target audiences based on behavior.

This is because programmatic advertising relies on these third-party cookies as the basis for user-level targeting and attribution. Without this process, marketers can’t target users with more personalized ads and understand when these ads lead to conversions.

As well as this, the people who bring the internet to users have also started to take a tough stance on the issue. At the time of writing, Apple has already announced an anti-tracking update to its native browsers, which blocks the use of third-party cookies. Firefox has implemented a similar policy, and there are reports that Google, who’s browser user base makes up over 60% of web usage, is looking at a similar process.

Another implication for advertisers is that the world has become more mobile-first since the invention of the web cookie. Users are using apps and mobile solutions much more instead of sitting behind a computer.

With all this, it makes a little more sense that advertisers are worried about how these changes will impact their business. But it’s not all doom and gloom – we have some examples of how advertisers can still deliver personalized ads and retargeting campaigns that work.

 

Potential solutions

Focus on people and context

Instead of looking at the type of consumer and using this to build audiences, advertisers can focus on context.

Rather than focus on the user, placing greater emphasis on where the user is can be an effective way to target audiences. For example, using keywords to gauge purchase intent. Or using a user’s real-world location or environmental factors to understand factors beyond the user that make them ideal for targeted advertising.

 

Focus on first-party data and reliable first-party providers

First-party data will become an even more valuable currency for targeting users. Solutions that can combine first-party insights and compliance with privacy regulations will be invaluable for advertisers.

These datasets can help to target consumers reliably and with consent from the end-user. For example, anonymized first-party mobile location can be used to retarget users that have visited a physical store.

 

Wait for a persistent identifier

A persistent identifier is a solution that is commonly suggested as the ecosystem moves away from the cookie. Using this form of identifier, that sits with the consumer and requires explicit compliance with privacy regulations could be a solution.

The problem here is getting this to exist in one form, that’s standardized and that everyone can agree upon. Some areas of the advertising supply chain have introduced this already – but these don’t follow the same standards, making it difficult for advertisers.

 

Look at other channels

Advertisers will begin to look at channels that don’t require third-party advertising cookies. These will include traditional channels such as email, TV, and app-based ads.

These systems allow advertisers to use a persistent identifier for personalized advertising and marketing.

 

Conclusion

Marketers and advertisers will need to think about how they can focus on people based personalization in a world where the advertising cookie no longer exists. First-party data or reliable first-party data providers will become a vital source of behavioral data. Using alternative behavioral information, such as location, is a great way to deliver retargeting and personalization at scale.

Mobile ad IDs are currently universal and tracking identity across the moble infrastructure is much simple than the web. The role of advertising cookies is changing and quickly. People-based advertising and first-party data could well be the solution that the industry is looking for.