Are you familiar with the term ‘Geolocation’? Imagine a scenario. A person is new to an area and they need to purchase a home appliance. It happens that your appliance store is in that location. How will you make sure that they find you? In such a case, Geolocation will come to the rescue of you and that person as well. Using Geolocation will help them find your store easily.
Now, you must have got a brief idea about what Geolocation does. But, when did a brief understanding come of any use? In this blog, we shall cover all aspects related to Geolocation, what is it? How does it work? How it is beneficial for your business? I hope that by the end of this blog, your doubts related to Geolocation will be cleared. Let us start.
Table of Contents
First Things First: What Is Geolocation?
Let’s be simple but precise. Geolocation is a method in digital marketing that uses the technology of mobiles to trigger sales of your product or services locally. It involves tracking a potential user’s physical location in real-time so that you, as a business can find them easily. It is a type of advertising strategy that helps you gain information about the location and other habits of your potential customer, and then use it in your favor for conversions. Quite simple, isn’t it! Well, I would not just say it is simple, but it is quite effective too, as it ensures that you are advertising to the right person at the optimum time. This will increase your chances of getting sales and more conversions.
Geolocation is primarily mobile-based but unlike other mobile-based marketing techniques, it is unique in its way. Geolocation uses the location of a mobile user through GPS to track them and then provide them with the results of their search.
How Does Geolocation Work?
As discussed earlier, we now know that Geolocation technology is for mobile interface. It operates through GPS or Global Positioning System, which is a network of 30 satellites orbiting Earth regularly. So, Geolocation uses GPS as the main aspect of identifying the location of a user. Apart from GPS, location is also determined through some other factors like signals of the cellular stations, signals through Wi-Fi, with A-GPS technology, and through indoor geolocation technology systems. Apps using Geolocation have two types: ‘real-time’ and ‘non-real-time’. Real-time Golocation tracks the location of a user in real-time, and on the other hand, non-real-time doesn’t track the location of a user constantly.
Benefits Of Using Geolocation In Digital Marketing
After knowing how it works, we come to the next step. The benefits of using Geolocation. Some of the benefits of using Geolocation as a technique in digital marketing are:
- It is better at targeting your audience as it works through GPS and other tracking systems. This ensures that you reach out to your customers at the right time and reap the maximum benefits out of it. This helps in increasing the effectiveness of your marketing exponentially.
- As it primarily involves using mobile technology, it is easier for you to check on the things that your customers visit, and what their preferences are. This enables you to collect genuine information about your current customers. It also helps in tracking the social media preferences of your customers to assist you in predicting behaviors and increase awareness of your brand.
- In the previous point, I mentioned the social media aspect of using Geolocation. Since you can track the frequency of the visit from your customers, it will be easier for you to identify them. You can reward your loyal customers and enhance your position in their eyes.
- It can also help you in attracting more customers by providing you an opportunity of converting both online and offline traffic to add new customers. It also helps you in tracking the local customers in need of your services by using GPS.
- It helps in an increase in the precision of ad campaigns and thereby reducing wastage of ad expenditures and boosting ROI by targeting needy customers.
- Through Geolocation, you can check on the gains of your customer traffic and sales and also optimize your SEO rankings by taking the advantage of geographically based reviews.
How Can You Leverage Geolocation To Increase Customers?
Since we have covered every aspect of Geolocation. From its meaning to its work process, and benefits. Now we shall discuss how you can use Geolocation to increase your customer acquisition.
- Location-Based Marketing
Yes, it is the first thing. With the help of Beacon technology, you can access the location of your customer at any point in time. This enables you to send them targeted offers like push notifications, promotions, among other things. Through Beacons, doing business through mobile has provided a feeling of ease and has added value to customers. A study indicates that around 73 percent of customers receiving a beacon-triggered notification are likely to shop, while nearly 61 percent are likely to visit the store.
- Micro-Moment Marketing
Micro-Moment is a consumer behavior wherein the customer relies on a smartphone if they want to discover something, or learn something, watch, or buy something. Research by Google points out that about 82 percent of users search for the thing they want to shop online while they are in a store, 50 percent of users conduct local searches before visiting a physical store, and 18 percent of searches lead to purchase. You can take appropriate steps through it to increase awareness about your brand. Just ensure that the strategy you want to use is fully mobile-optimized for everything.
- Geo-Targeted Mobile Ads
You can target an audience of a particular country, state, city, or even a ZIP code and then place your ads to get more effectiveness out of your advertisements. You can include it through some of the examples like sending digital ads to local households about your new store, digital coupons to loyal customers, or using the IP data to get more in-store traffic.
Using Geolocation is a sure shot way to enhance the digital business experience of not only you as a business but to your customers as well. This will enable your customers to reach out to you easily and help you to drive more sales and increase your ROI. If you are confused about how to use Geolocation, you can hire a digital marketing agency to assist you in it. As a business, you must try the things that might prove beneficial to you. Don’t shy away from leveraging new technologies in your business and seize every opportunity for getting the better out of your business always.
________________________________________________________________
Author Bio: Rakesh Bisht – Lead generation expert at LeadMuster. As a passionate heart, he writes avidly about digital marketing and mobile application development trends and shares his opinion on subjects to spread awareness.