In Focus

Geotargeting in 10 Minutes

Geotargeting as Research

"The most useful data a marketer can gain from geotargeting is where to spend their marketing dollars. If ads in one market perform better than another market, you can use this data to the benefit of your future sales goals."
-- MyGeek's Geoff Gieron

Before beginning a geotargeting campaign, you may have already determined where your greatest potential consumers can be located and how to address them. If so, then bombs away! But don’t underestimate the valuable opportunity that geotargeting offers to mine the consumer field for new markets.

No matter how much you may already know about your consumer, results from geotargeting campaigns can offer multitudes of data that will continually improve how you tailor your messages and ad creative. By testing different messages and creative executions to several regions -- and then executing only those that are effective in attracting desired customers -- marketers can ensure better results during their campaigns.

 

Comments

Dylan Bennett
Dylan Bennett September 28, 2010 at 7:06 PM

Geo-targeting is a truly awesome way to increase conversions. The main problem is so many people do it wrong. Here are a few examples.

Most countries other than the US use the format *CITY*, *COUNTRY* whereas in the US we use *CITY*, *REGION*. If someone from another country saw the region, they would most likely know that this person is not local and they are being tricked. So in other words: For the US use City, State and for rest of the world use City, Country.

Another thing is to make sure it all matches up. For example if you detect the user as being in the US, don't spell color 'colour' or use region specific idioms. Change the text based on the detected country.

Last but certainly not least: Do not just display the detected city and expect the user to believe it. If the user is from some tiny little village, do you really think they will believe that the person writing the website is from the same tiny village? You need to display a nearby city that is large enough to be believable. The only way I've found to do this is with Lambda GeoIP. You can display the nearest city of a certain population (specified by you). If you're a handy programmer and have access to IP to physical location data, then you could probably whip up something on your own as well. Just don't throw perfectly good customers out the window because of laziness.

Hope this helps