International Address Validation: Location-based Marketing

How To Get Quality Leads Using Location-Based Marketing?

Marketers and business owners often struggle to target prospects belonging to large geographic areas. They don’t know where to start or how to start marketing when all you have is a target area for marketing.

With location-based targeting marketing, all your troubles go away. It lets you target your marketing campaigns to specific localities. In other words, it allows you to target high potential customers within specific geographic regions. As a result, it lets you save a lot of money that you would have otherwise spent on randomly targeting low-quality leads within a geographic area.

What is Location-Based Marketing?

Location-based or geolocation-based marketing is an advanced marketing strategy that lets you target customers at a granular level based on their physical location. You can target individuals residing in a specific area or locality through online or offline messaging.

It is beneficial when marketers want to target customers based on qualifiers such as store proximity, region-based events, etc. The location-based marketing is also effective across different customer lifecycles, which include the following:

Customer Discovery
Purchase
Customer Engagement
Customer Retention

If you can execute it right, location-based targeting marketing to close in on customer groups with highly targeted offers. Apart from this, it also improves your customer experience and provides them with gratification.

For example, location-based targeting is perfect for notifying customers about long-awaited products reaching the store nearest to them. Hence, customers can get their hands on much desired and on-demand products.

What Are The Different Types Of Location-Based Marketing?

Geolocation based marketing has improved significantly over the years, thanks to the advancements in connected devices and IoT. You can connect almost every conceivable device to the internet today. Your phones, cars, watches, and the list of IoT devices we use every day continue to grow.

The thing about these devices is that they are almost always tracking their user’s location. What does that mean? It means a tremendous amount of spatial and location information is available now. Marketing teams can use this information to access valuable insights.

In turn, these insights help the marketers extend their reach to relevant audiences and improve the customer’s overall experience. Some of the ways a marketer can use the location data in their location-based targeting marketing campaigns are listed below.

Geocoding

Geocoding is the best location-based targeting marketing method to detect the physical location of your target audience using nothing but their address data. It is perfect for direct mail campaigns where you can target specific neighbourhoods based on their location and demographic characteristics.

Working Of Geocoding

The working of geocoding is pretty simple. You use the address data of your customer and prospective customers to get their physical location. Retailers, realtors, and other industry verticals can use this to create a comprehensive map of their target audience.

You can use it to find clusters and launch direct mail campaigns. However, it would be best to have an advanced direct mail tool like PostGrid to ensure quality geocode data from your addresses. Furthermore, you can also use PostGrid’s address validation API to confirm the validity of your target’s addresses and ensure that you have accurate geocoding data.

Why Should You Use Geocoding?

Geocoding is a geolocation based marketing method ideal for businesses like real estate that focus on specific geographic regions or localities. It enables you to find clusters of target audiences based on their location. You can then pitch them with personalised direct mail for marketing your business. Furthermore, direct mail offers a significantly higher response rate than most online marketing strategies.

What is an Example For Geocoding?

Realtors use this geolocation based marketing method to create a map of their prospective buyers/sellers. Using an advanced direct mail tool with a geocoding feature, you can easily send marketing postcards with attractive pictures of properties to prospects.

Geotargeting

Geotargeting is a location-based marketing method that lets the marketer determine the user’s location. Once the marketer has the target’s location, they can use the personalised messages based on their location and demographics.

Have you ever noticed how certain apps send you messages and push notifications that lead you to their nearest store? It is an application-level use of geotargeting. However, it can only work if the customer provides location access to the app.

Working Of Geotargeting

Geotargeting is a location-based targeting marketing that works based on the IP address of the users. Every smart device has a unique IP address that lets you identify them quickly. The system then matches the IP address against the country, postal code, etc.

Why Should You Use Geotargeting?

The most significant reason businesses use geotargeting is to personalise the customer experience. For example, you can assess the target’s needs based on their location by accessing information such as weather, events, and even local news.

What Is An Example For Geotargeting?

The best example one can give for location-based targeting marketing like geotargeting is none other than Google search results. Whenever you search for something generic like cafes in Google, it automatically shows cafes nearby.

Here, Google uses location data based on the IP address of the device you used for searching it. Hence, the system searches that specific area for cafes. As a result, the customer can easily avoid all the noise and find what they are looking for.

Geofencing

Geofencing is location-based targeting marketing that involves creating a boundary within a specific region. In other words, whenever a target audience enters the border you set, that particular target is considered active.

It means that your business can actively target that specific customer. But what does being an active target mean? You can start sending relevant content, offers, etc., from your company. For example, a retail store can send such marketing messages when the customer steps into the mall they are situated in.

Working Of Geofencing

Geofencing uses GPS technology for creating the border that determines when a target audience becomes active. Hence, as soon as the target audience enters this catchment area, the customer receives notifications and marketing messages.

Why Should You Use Geofencing?

Geofencing is an ideal geolocation-based marketing method if you want to cover large areas such as malls, exhibitions, etc. Furthermore, it lets you target all the prospects in your vicinity or specified location. Hence, it is ideal for large conversions and grabbing the user’s attention to your local store.

It is also worth noting that geofencing uses real-time location data. It means marketers can effectively encourage prospective customers to engage with their products.

What is an Example For Geofencing?

A standard example of geofencing is when retailers target customers and encourage them to step into their store. For instance, you can analyse the buying /browsing habits of the target to find the products they recently viewed or added to their wishlist. You can then alert the customer when that product is in store.

Beaconing

Beaconing is another essential geolocation-based marketing method that marketers and business owners can employ for their brand. Beacons are electronic devices that use Bluetooth or Wifi technology to connect with a specific set of applications. These beacons remain inactive until the target audience steps within the specified range of the beacon.

Working of Beaconing

In this geolocation-based marketing method, the beacon devices send a signal to a device prompting the server to send targeted content. It could be in the form of a push notification, email, text message, and so on.

Why Should You Use Beaconing?

One challenge involved in beaconing is that the user needs to opt-in or give access to their device for you to send the content. However, beaconing does let you have a more direct communication channel with your prospective customers. Location-based targeting marketing enables you to track users indoors with high precision. As a result, you can better understand customer behaviour, which ultimately leads to quality targeting.

What is an Example For Beaconing?

Sports stadiums or event organisers sometimes encourage the attendees to download a ticketing app. At the event, they set up the stadium or event location with beacons. It then detects or recognises the device with the app installed in a specific range. Hence, the attendee can quickly and conveniently access the game or event without worrying about their ticket.

Conclusion

Location-based targeting marketing offers numerous advantages to businesses across diverse verticals. Everyone from retail to real estate can make use of location-based marketing. However, it is essential to have the right tools for accomplishing your marketing objectives.

For example, real estate companies can use an advanced direct mail tool like PostGrid with a geocoding feature for marketing. With PostGrid, the realtor can quickly get the geocodes of their prospective buyers and sellers. They can even map out their prospects’ location to identify high potential neighbourhoods.

Furthermore, they can use geolocation-based marketing tools like PostGrid for sending personalised direct mail to prospects. With advanced automation, it is even easier to implement direct mail campaigns using PostGrid. Similarly, you can use different tools to access location-based marketing technology’s full potential.