A customer’s location can be just as important as their purchasing history. That is why brands are taking advantage of geo-targeting. Geo-targeting is basically a way of delivering content to any given customer based on their location. Where a customer is and has been can determine where they’ll be next, and allows businesses to be specific in what they offer, streamlining the way they serve the customer. While a history of what a customer browsed when searching for a specific brand is important, geo-targeting enables a brand to match the most relevant content to what the customer needs based on where they are, or where they’ve been.
Here are five reasons why geo-targeting will be the next big thing in real-time customer insight.
1. It’s Already Improving The Customer-Brand Experience
Brands that look to meet customer’s needs via their shopping habits are able to streamline those services with geo-targeting. When a customer’s purchasing needs are combined with location, the experience is appreciably improved for both brand and customer. Customers want a personalized experience when interacting with a brand, and geo-targeting can be utilized to give him or her that experience by offering them relevant services based on where they are, where they’ve been and where they’re going.
2. It Meets Customers’ Needs While Expanding the Brand
Companies utilizing geo-targeting are not only offering their goods based on a customer’s location, but they’re also able to meet those needs before their even expressed. For example, in 2015, Coca-Cola partnered with cinema chain CAPA to launch a geo-targeting campaign to promote their products before and after movie credits rolled. The campaign offered mobile users a free Coke before the movie began. Those who responded to that offer were then offered a free movie pass to the same cinema days later. A little more than half of the customers who took advantage of the free Coke then also took advantage of the free movie pass, thus bringing them back to the cinema and its concession stands. Likewise, grocery store chain Whole Foods used geo-targeting to measure how consumers shopped near competing grocers and used the information gleaned from geo-targeting to target and win over customers via the Internet and mobile devices. The campaign resulted in a 4.69% post-click conversion rate, nearly tripling the national average.
3. It Helps Brands Deliver Services to the Right place, at the Right Time
Geo-targeting accelerates a brand’s ability to meet the relevance of a consumer’s needs via their location. What does the customer need, and how can their location specifically serve them? As the customer travels about with their mobile device, a brand is ever present to meet their immediate need through geo-targeting. Social networks such as Foursquare uses location-based marketing, and help brands target customer’s needs via their geographic locations. A brand can serve their customer’s needs while getting their services out to a broader, international audience. Geo-targeting allows a brand the flexibility to send out their goods and services to specific areas of the globe, particularly to the geographic location of where the customers either are or were located.
4. Customers are Open to Geo-marketing
Customers are getting their goods and services via mobile devices more than ever, and their options are ever expanding. Studies have shown that customers are more likely to build loyalty with a brand they feel they have a relationship with. And, according to the Local Search Association, 70% of customers are open to sharing their location information via their mobile devices if doing so means getting their needs met, or receiving certain perks from any given brand. Having those needs and content delivered based on location is something customers are open to in a massive way.
5. Geo-targeting Helps Find New Customers
Targeting potential customers is made easier when a brand knows where exactly to look, and geo-targeting makes that search more efficient. Specifically, when customers located in a certain location are hitting up a brand for their services, it’s likely more people in said location will be looking for the same services. Moreover, a brand can more easily predict what customers will need based on past locations they visited. Geo-targeting helps a business better understand a customer’s needs based on where the customer has shopped, traveled, or eaten. This information gives greater insight into future behavior, thus giving a brand the heads-up on knowing how exactly to meet a customer’s needs quicker than ever.
