5 Unexpected Benefits of Geo-Targeting

‘No-Brainer’

Geo-targeting ads is a ‘no-brainer’ for search marketers. It makes sense to tailor your ad copy, offer, and landing page for the user’s location. The ability to see how your marketing partners and search competitors behave by zip code, city, country, and even language give incredible insights into what is happening in the market, and the ability to adapt your strategy accordingly. But geo-targeting has other, often-overlooked applications in the world of search marketing.

Unexpected Benefits

Not only does it make your offer more compelling to the customer, but also conveys the feeling that this company understands me and the things I care about. Seeing a localized ad that ties in with local knowledge and cultural aspects I care about, means I am more likely to have a feel-good factor about the brand and their willingness to connect with me. This ‘customer-centric’ approach to marketing is not new, it’s been utilized in marketing for a long time, but in modern, scalable digital marketing has sometimes been lost in the day-to-day grind for more clicks and conversions. So not only can Geo-targeting your products and offers help secure more customers, it can also give additional softer marketing benefits that cannot be overlooked.

Since launching Geo -Targeting capabilities over 13 years ago, The Search Monitor  has continued to enhance its functionality, and expand its coverage. What started with 17 countries and 6 languages, now monitors 160 countries down to the city, state and zipcode level, and 12 unique search engines. Global digital marketing executed in a local way is now at the Search Marketers fingertips.

5 Key Geo Benefits to consider

Over the years, we have learned a lot while helping clients to discover “local” competitors and protect their brand in the cities and regions that matter most to their businesses. Here are 5 additional benefits The Search Monitor clients have seen.

1. ALMOST EVERY INDUSTRY CAN BENEFIT FROM GEO-TARGETING, SUCH AS:

• Retail (physical stores, local offers, etc.)
• Automotive (car dealerships, regional marketing groups, etc.)
• Education (online colleges, physical colleges, etc.)
• Travel & Tourism (Attractions, entertainment, flights, hotel offers etc.)
• Finance & Insurance (branches for banks, insurance agents, special rates etc.)
• Telecom (cable and Internet companies love to change offers by city)

2. GEO-TARGETING BOOSTS BRAND PROTECTION EFFORTS.

You (hopefully) already monitor your brand as it appears in paid search on a national level. But, it’s vital to perform your brand protection searches on a city-by-city basis to see where advertisers might be piggybacking off your brand and stealing your clicks.

3. MONITORING BY LOCATION CAN HELP CATCH THE SNEAKIEST AFFILIATES.

Make sure your affiliates are obeying your program rules in each of your top 20 or so geographies. Affiliates have been known to break the rules in certain areas, or to only obey the rules where your office is, so it pays to have eyes everywhere!

4. GEO-TARGETING ENABLES REALLY AGILE MARKETING.

Your ability to execute city-level messaging off the back of that World Series Win, or marketing special offers on surfing equipment in unseasonably warm weather in another zip-code mean you are able to adapt quickly to local change and present a fresher ‘in tune’ brand experience.

5. YOU SIMPLY EMPOWER YOUR STAFF TO ACHIEVE GREATER RESULTS!

Now you can see where those marginal gains can be made, that, when added together, push the brand to greater success and better ROI for the whole business. 

If you are interested in discovering “local” competitors and protecting your brand in the cities and regions that matter most to your business, The Search Monitor’s platform allows for incredible customization of your monitoring data:

• Keywords examined include custom terms developed for you and industry historical data from Lighthouse.
• Locations (ZIP, city, state, region, country)
• Search Engines
• Devices (mobile & desktop)
• Languages
• Day parts including hours and days of the week
• Daily Crawl Frequency

Learn more about geo-targeting and other Search Monitor features by visiting: https://www.thesearchmonitor.com/products/ or by talking to the team directly, at sales@thesearchmonitor.com