Geo-Targeting – Online Advertising

Online advertising. We get it. Figuring out how to have the best online advertising in the market is hard. There are so many different marketing avenues to use! But – there are some ways that have more impact than others. There are many important attributes when it comes to internet marketing. Design, text, images, navigation, etc, but how do you target the people you are most interested in reaching. More importantly, how do you drive the RIGHT people to your website? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has uncovered many ways to maximize your online marketing opportunities. Through various online marketing strategies such as geo-targeting companies can reach the specific market they are looking for while keeping spending as low as can be. Now-a-days, everything is done through data research.

Ggeo-targeting is the method used when determining the geo-location of the website visitor, delivering a variety of content depending on the city, state, zip code, organization or IP Address. So, how do you use this to win more market share? Since everyones computer is tied with an IP Address that indicates the specific location, you can focus on where to target.

Searchengineland.com has a great 10 practical tips for using geo-location targeting, starting with finding a venue where your target audience will have specific needs or wants. For example, if I am interested in selling sporting goods, I could target stadiums, fields and other specific areas where this market is. As they search on their phones, you can purchase geo-targeted mobile ads.

A cool aspect of geo-targeting is you can restrict the market as easily as you can target them.  Check out this image to show you how the opt-in/opt-out strategies can work.

Just look at this. Using our sports analogy again, let’s say there is a game in Charlotte, but you don’t want to advertise heavy in areas that don’t a) have much disposable income and b) aren’t heavy sports fans. The purple areas are where we would focus, and the reds we would not. Obviously, this takes some market research, but its well worth it to know who your market is and to target them specifically.

Another common sense thought, but one that needs to be said is the exclude where your target audience is not. Selling sporting goods to a ballet-going crowd is probably not your most intelligent form of advertising. 

Something that could be perceived as invasive, but you might as well use as a company is discovering location intents by search histories. Like, if someone is looking at tickets to a Reds game, you could drop some advertisements showing some sports paraphernalia. Though it’s creepy, it works!! Read the rest of those for some great, great tips.

Another awesome tool to use — PROXY SERVICES! By using a premium proxy service, you can view, monitor, validate geo-target content, either web ads to mobile ads as they will appear in each location – which is AWESOME. Take a look at all of these different proxy services for the best geo-targeted marketing ads ever.

Let’s discuss costs. There are pricing levels for all different sizes of companies. I would recommend looking at Darwin. Pricing ranges from $1200 a month to $7500 a month depending on what you are looking for.

I know — i know — it can be intimidating to begin. What if you fail? What if it doesn’t work? What if you do it wrong? Here’s what i’ve learned. You can “WHAT IF” yourself to death, but if you don’t try- you will never know. So give it a shot and let me know your successes and failures! Like a wiseman once said, failure is not the opposite of success…its PART of success! Go Gettem’ Tiger!