Geotargeting is a method of online marketing that uses location data to target relevant content to specific users. It’s often used in conjunction with other digital marketing strategies such as retargeting, search engine optimization (SEO), and email marketing. While the basic concept may seem simple, there are actually a number of different ways that you can use geolocation to get your message in front of the right people at the right time. In this guide, we’ll cover everything from how these different methods work (and why they’re effective) to what factors you should consider before choosing one over another for your campaign.
Geolocation
With geolocation, you can target your audience more effectively. Credit: Shutterstock
Geolocation is the process of determining the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a mobile device or IP address.
The term geotargeting refers to targeting specific locations, interests, and demographics with marketing campaigns. Geotargeting can be done by choosing from a list of predefined areas (for example, zip codes), defining custom polygons on Google Maps for precise targeting, or using an IP lookup database for more granular targeting options.
For example, if you are running an ad campaign for holiday shopping in New York City, but want your ads appearing only to people who live within city limits and not those visiting from out of town, you could use specialized geotargeting to ensure that only New Yorkers would see your ads instead of just anyone within 100 miles of Manhattan!
Geofencing
Outsmart the competition. Credit: Shutterstock
Geofencing is a subset of geolocation, and it gives you the ability to target your most prized potential clients.
By creating a geofence within a location where your target audience frequently visits—such as a shopping mall or university campus—you can increase the likelihood that they’ll see your ad when they’re near one of these places (and thus be more likely to visit). In addition, if you offer a luxury product, you could create geofences around the wealthiest areas within your target location.
To deliver the maximum amount of ads to your prime prospects, we bid higher on ads served within the geofence. Geofencing, a highly specialized process, comes with a larger price tag. It can deliver a high return on investment, however, because of its hyperspecific targeting.
Geotargeting
If your product is particularly popular with a certain group, geotargeting may be for you. Credit: Shutterstock
Geotargeting allows you to target people based on their demographic data. This can be especially useful if your product or service caters to a specific audience. For example, a medical spa that focuses on laser hair removal may want to reach women specifically within Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs. Using demographic data, we can target potential customers based on sex, age, marital status, income level, interests, and more.
Geotargeting allows you to select particular regions and further customize your campaign by targeting individuals with specific backgrounds or interests within that region. As a result, your ads will often see greater engagement and greater return on investment.
Geoconquesting
Geoconquesting can take your targeting down to a single address. As a result, you can go directly after your competition. We can deliver ads to people currently shopping at your competitors’ address. This method is especially effective if your business is offering a unique sale or discount. Customers may rethink their shopping habits if they see that your location is more affordable.
We also have the ability to target all devices that have been to a particular location within six months; this is called a “lookback.” Lookbacks allow you to go after some individuals who have visited your competitors’ locations.
Geoconquesting is also useful at trade shows. Geoconquesting “micro-proximity” targets people in real time while they are at an event like a trade show. This method is extremely effective because it allows you to deliver a message at the exact moment when it will be most relevant.
Which method is best for your campaign?
There are a number of ways you can go about targeting your audience based on location. Geotargeting is one of the most affordable and effective options, especially if you want to reach a broad group of people or even just specific cities.
Geofencing is helpful if you want to go after premium clients that are often based in a specific location. Geotargeting uses demographic information instead of location data to achieve this. Both of these methods allow you to specifically target customers you believe to be more interested in your product.
Finally, geoconquesting lets you go after the competition directly. This method is especially effective if you’ve experienced competitors cutting into your business.
These four methods of geolocation allow you to target your content based on your business’ goals. Consider your customer base as well as your location when creating your geolocation strategy. The most important thing is that you choose the right method so that your campaign is successful.
Libby Foster is a Marketing Specialist at Purplegator. She’s currently getting her master’s in Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama.
Texting is an easy way to stay in touch with friends and family. But for radio stations, the technology has even greater potential. With over 18 billion text messages sent per day, it’s clear that audiences are eager to communicate by phone. In fact, text messaging has replaced email as the preferred method of communication among Millennials—and that’s only going to increase as this demographic becomes older and more influential.
Give Listeners What They Want
Text message marketing can take your radio station into the 21st century. Credit: Shutterstock
Text message marketing is a great way to connect with your station’s listeners. Here’s why:
Americans check their phones 352 times a day, or every 3 minutes. Text messages can more effectively reach your audience than traditional media.
Call-in radio formats don’t appeal to today’s audience. People don’t want to wait on hold all day for special offers or contests from their favorite radio stations.
Listeners want two-way texting so they can interact directly with their favorite DJs. This personalizes your advertising.
Text Message Marketing to Drive Tune-In
Personalize your station’s programming with message marketing. Credit: Shutterstock
Text messaging can also drive listeners to tune in. SMS marketing can:
Promote shows. Texting is an effective way to promote your shows and encourage listeners to check out your programming. Send a message about the next episode, or just remind people that you’re on the air.
Promote new music. If there’s a band you think people should hear more of, invite them to listen in with a text message! This idea works especially well if you’re doing live concerts with local bands; it’s a great way to get their name out into the community and keep fans invested in your programming.
Run contests. Send tune-in reminders when a show will be running a contest for tickets, gift cards, etc. By making contests only available to on-air listeners, your audience will be more likely to attentively listen.
Build Radio Station Loyalty With Text Message Marketing
Texting is a great way to build loyalty with your listeners. Here are some ways to foster listener loyalty:
Customized reminders. Remind listeners about their favorite shows by sending out timely reminders for upcoming episodes. These relevant messages will make them tune in again and again.
Personalized polling. Ask questions, poll listeners and engage in other interactive activities that encourage listener feedback. This will make listeners feel like they’re contributing to your programming.
Text-in song requests. Listeners will be more loyal when their favorite songs are played. Text messaging makes requests instant, and listeners can avoid the hassle of call-in wait times.
Your radio station will also rise above competing stations with text message marketing. SMS marketing demonstrates that you are actively listening to the community and innovating along with your audience.
Text message marketing seamlessly combines one of America’s most timeless platforms, radio, with the increasingly mobile demands of the modern listener. By using SMS marketing, your radio station can satisfy listeners, drive tune-ins, build loyalty, and rise above the competition. Here at Purplegator, we’ve worked with many radio stations to build text message marketing campaigns. Contact us today to grow your station and satisfy listeners.
Libby Foster is a Marketing Specialist at Purplegator. She’s currently getting her Master’s Degree in Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Alabama.
Did you know that thousands of companies a year are getting sued over their websites? The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that all public spaces are accessible to people with disabilities. Websites aren’t an exception, a caveat many companies unfortunately often realize when it’s too late. We’ll outline the importance of your website’s ADA compliance throughout this article.
How Does the ADA Apply to Your Website?
For blind, visually impaired, epileptic, and hearing impaired people, your website may be a nightmare. If your website isn’t equipped with disability accommodation software, it may not be fully accessible to people with these disabilities. They have a right to sue as a result.
Making your website ADA compliant is ethical and cost effective. Credit: Shutterstock
Adding optional settings like screen readers, enhanced visuals, and flash-free visuals to your website can make it more accessible and safer for people with disabilities. Check out our website’s homepage for a great example.
The Bottom Line: ADA Compliance Lawsuits Are Costly
Plaintiffs file over 10,000 lawsuits against companies annually for their websites’ ADA noncompliance, according to the American Bar Association. Large and small companies are both at risk. In fact, 75% of digital ADA lawsuits target companies that have less than $25M in annual revenue. Companies that settle early typically pay plaintiffs between $7,000 and $20,000 and spend $5,000 to $20,000 on website remediation.
Since the ADA’s application to websites is so new, cases that go to court can take years to get resolved. Winn Dixie ended up spending $250,000 on website remediation over the course of an accessibility lawsuit. Small companies aren’t safe either. Midvale Corp, a smaller restaurant group, had to pay a blind plaintiff after they couldn’t access their website with a screen reader in 2019. BMI Travelware, a retailer, also lost their ADA accommodation suit. These organizations paid each individual plaintiff $4,000 along with a mountain of legal fees. All it takes is a small website update to avoid these extra costs.
Also known as “Product Ads,” Google Shopping ads are almost always at the top of the search results. They are the first thing that consumers see when they are looking for a product. Often, these ads are overlooked by retailers and those in the ecommerce industry. In fact, they only make up 20% of the overall amount Google receives for paid advertising in the vertical market.
Google Shopping ads appear first on search results. Source: Google
Google Shopping ads are very effective because they are at the top of the search results, show an image of the product, and also include a price comparison. In most cases, there are five chosen products that appear in this highly sought after position.
Building Your Google Shopping Campaign
Google doesn’t make it easy to establish a Google Shopping campaign. You need to first create a Google Merchant Center account. It does take some time to generate all of the required data and then wait for Google’s approval. If you’re in a hurry to sell something in a timely manner, it’s not your best option.
Once approved, the Google Shopping options are linked to your Google Ads account – the same way that you purchase traditional Google pay per click services.
Google Shopping is a great way to enhance your ecommerce strategy. Source: Shutterstock
There is one big difference between Google Ads and Google Shopping, however. With Google Shopping, you don’t actually pick the keywords that you want to target. Instead, you have to rely on Google to serve the ads to the right people. But don’t worry about this, it’s in their best interest to find the right market and they just may do it better than you could do it yourself. Google has great data feeds on the kinds of keywords people use when searching your product. They will get better at it over time so you need to be patient with the platform while it “finds” your best keywords and market.
Interestingly, while you cannot suggest keywords to Google Shopping that you wish to target, you can suggest keywords that you don’t want to target by adding negative keywords. This will help you get off to a better start if you take the time to do it, because it will cut back on the keywords that Google would ordinarily try out.
The Purplegator Approach to Ecommerce
Purplegator also uses the “Campaign Authority” option for your Google Shopping program. With it, we can prioritize which products are better sellers for you or which of your product skews have superior profit margins. Otherwise, this would not be taken into consideration by Google Shopping.
One of the things Purplegator loves about Google Shopping is the branding that it provides. Like Google Ads (pay per click), you don’t pay unless the shopper actually clicks on your ad. The bonus of Google Shopping, however, is that the consumer has seen an image of your product with its built-in branding, thus making it a far superior buy from purely a branding perspective.
Bob Bentz is the founder and CEO of Purplegator. He’s also the author of Relevance Raises Response.
Data is our bread and butter here at Purplegator. We use it to analyze and optimize every campaign we work on. Especially for campaigns with local targeting, data like foot traffic reports can help us understand how the community is interacting with our advertisements. We’ll outline the types of campaigns we use to achieve local targeting throughout this article, and how we use foot traffic reports to optimize them.
Foot Traffic Reports
Foot traffic reports help you see the tangible results of your campaigns. Credit: Shutterstock
Foot traffic reports help us determine how many consumers saw your ad and then showed up to your storefront. It’s one of the most effective ways to understand the tangible results of mobile and digital advertising. Foot traffic can be tracked on apps, desktops, and mobile devices. Data collected from Wifi connections, smartphones, sensors, and more all contribute to our foot traffic reports. Foot traffic reports are especially useful for brick-and-mortar stores, which often use highly local marketing strategies.
Here at Purplegator, we use IP Targeting, Device ID Targeting, and Geo-Conquesting to craft location-specific campaigns. We then use foot traffic reporting to track the success of these campaigns.
Local Targeting Through IP Addresses
We use advanced technologies to target your campaigns locally. Credit: Shutterstock
IP targeting uses IP addresses, which are the unique codes given to every wifi server. Campaigns that use IP targeting attempt to serve ads to every IP address within the client’s target location. When the IP address is successfully targeted, every device active on that IP address then sees your advertisements. This location-based matching allows clients to track their return on investment (ROI) in real time. They can view how many targeted individuals purchased a product online or visited their storefront.
We used IP targeting in a recent campaign for a senior care provider in Florida. In just one month, we tracked 1,625 visits to their brick and mortar locations after viewing our advertisements. Mobile marketing really can lead to tangible results.
Local Device IDs
Device IDs help you target individuals for your campaign. Credit: Shutterstock
Device IDs are similar to IP addresses, but they are the unique identifiers for each individual smart device. Tracking a particular ID can help us understand individual consumer behavior. Once we identify the home base of that device, we can deliver ads to both the individual device and devices nearby.
Target Your Competitors With Geo-conquesting
Geo-conquesting goes straight to your competitors to get business. Credit: Shutterstock
Geo-conquesting goes straight to your competitors to build a target audience. Geo-conquesting targets consumers who are visiting or have visited your competitors’ locations. Using location data, we can send ads to devices that were recently active at . Often, geo-conquesting campaigns use a deal or incentive in their advertisements to entice customers away from their competitors.
We use location-based targeting and foot traffic reports to maximize your return on investment. Combining your brand’s goals with our targeted strategies–that’s our not-so-secret recipe for marketing magic.
Libby Foster is a Marketing Specialist at Purplegator. She’s an Advertising and Public Relations master’s student at the University of Alabama.
The hospitality sector was one of the industries that suffered the most during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hotels and restaurants sought to rebuild their workforces post-pandemic by volume hiring to stay afloat. However, filling in many openings at once is daunting and, in many cases, ineffective. Leveraging the unique targeting powers of mobile, display, and social media marketing for hiring purposes is a proven strategy for engaging suitable candidates at the right time. That’s exactly what we employed to help our clients gain a competitive advantage in recruiting qualified people quickly and effectively!
The “How” and “Where” Matters
Purplegator has found success deploying highly targeted ads on various platforms to connect our clients with potential candidates who are actively looking to find a career in hospitality. Traditional recruitment marketing efforts have become obsolete now that digital permeates our lives. A prospective candidate is more likely to notice a job advertisement on social media platforms, third-party websites, and applications. We actively work with our hospitality clients to refine our geolocation techniques that help them find qualified candidates and reach out to them before competitors identify them.
Reduced Interest Targeting? – We Have the Workaround!
One aspect of recruitment advertising worthy of attention is the change in the expansive interface of targeting options provided by many advertising platforms. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat all have strict rules and restrictions for recruitment advertising with limited targeting to ensure there is no discrimination. Purplegator continues to be successful with recruiting ads by using aspirational imagery to connect with candidates on a personal level. Highlighting an employee-centered culture and a strong employer brand is vital for attracting and retaining loyal, happy, and motivated staff members. For example, images of a multicultural group portray an engaging and inclusive employer. If a company is looking for young, hip people to fill a particular position, we encourage the client to use images of young, hip professionals. Establishing your business as the epicenter of genuine employee support can ramp up your recruitment efforts!
Don’t Hesitate, Translate!
Making sure your ads appear in your target audience’s native language can go a long way in securing more candidates through your employment efforts. Translating your ads shows that you are mindful of your audience’s needs and cultural nuances. Facebook ads are easily translatable into many languages. Suppose our client has positions they might fill with people who do not speak English as their first language. In that case, we advise Facebook to translate the ads into whatever home language that individual uses on their Facebook profiles.
Including the Facts
We have run successful hospitality recruitment campaigns for many hospitality positions, including hosts/hostesses, servers, dishwashers, cooks, bussers, breakfast attendants, and housekeepers. The High Companies, one of Central Pennsylvania’s largest employers and leading names in industrial and real estate, have turned to us multiple times for their recruitment needs in hospitality. High develops, owns, and operates 15 select-service hotels in three states, meaning that the demand for housekeepers and breakfast attendants is high. Our recruitment campaigns have generated more than 180 leads for these positions so far! Our employment ads have also attracted many candidates for cooking and dishwasher positions. Our most recent employment campaign yielded more than 50 leads for our client, Metropolitan American Diner and Bar, a retro, sophisticated and comfortable eatery in North Wales, PA.
As the economy revamps, we understand that the hospitality industry requires a continuous influx of employees to fill in many different positions. As experts in recruitment marketing, we have the capabilities, tools, and resources to create a personalized, highly targeted, inclusive, and successful employment campaign!
Here, have a cookie! We use cookies to improve user experience and analyze website traffic. By clicking "Accept" you agree to our website's cookie use as outlined in our Cookie Policy.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
