As the marketing trend begins to shift dramatically from mass marketing to personal marketing, we’ve begun to see a rise in more social media platforms offering geographic targeting applications to users. We’ve even seen entire social networks that are dedicated to interactive geographic targeting such as Google Places and Foursquare.
For businesses that offer localized services or products, targeting a local customer base using geographic targeting tools could mean a drastic influx in revenue and brand awareness.
Location-Based Tweets on Twitter
The geotagging application on Twitter enables users to link their location to a tweet. For example, if you were attending a Giants football game in New York, you could tweet a play that informs followers that you are located at Giants Stadium and not just watching the game from your TV.
This engages followers who are interested in the game you’re attending and enables them to feel a deeper connection to the game, as they are getting live feed from the stadium.
How do location-based tweets benefit your business?
Businesses that use this application can link their business location to their tweets. This enables followers to instantly see where a company is located. Perhaps these followers will realize that they’re in your company’s neighborhood and stop by to check out a new product you just tweeted about.
Also, travelers could search location-based tweets to see what type of companies and activities are around the area that they’re visiting. These travelers might stumble across your company tweets while performing a location search for the area and decide to visit your business.
Facebook Geotagging
Geotagging on Facebook is the act of distributing a status update or post to a particular group of people in any city, state, or country around the world.
For example, if you post a status update mentioning that you are eating dinner at Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan, you might only want to share this update with friends who are residing in Manhattan. Your friends who don’t live in the area might not know what Sparks Steakhouse is and probably won’t care that you’re eating at a restaurant they’ve never heard of.
How does Facebook geotagging benefit your business?
Similar to the benefits of location-based tweets, Facebook users could search a particular location that they might be visiting to see what’s going in the area or to get more familiar with nearby businesses.
For example, if your company was hosting a public travel seminar event in downtown Chicago, chances are people who don’t live in Chicago aren’t going to care that you’re hosting an event that they can’t even attend. Geotagging eliminates these people from receiving this status update.
And, when you geotag your location on your Facebook page as Chicago, travelers to the area might place the keyword “Chicago” in the search field of Facebook to see if anything is going on in the area. Your status update would show up if it was properly geotagged.
Google Places
Introduced to the online scene late last year, Google Places is a Google feature that produces search results for local businesses. The creation of Google Places was inspired by a statistic that concluded that one out of every five searches on Google pertains to a specific location. Today, Google Places offers users a variety of features including streamline analytics, business information, photo, and customized code features.
How does Google Places benefit your business?
You can customize your marketing strategies based on what search terms customers are using to locate you. For example, if you own a high-end spa in upper Manhattan and you list services on your Google Places page that customers are using to search for a nearby salon, you might consider keeping those service descriptions on your Google Places page. You might also consider using those keywords in other online marketing platforms, such as the copy on your website, blog, and social media profiles.
Also, posting detailed business information to Google Places provides your customers with necessary information in one easy-to-read location. This streamline navigation feature reduces frustration on your clients and allows you to reduce the number of unproductive phone calls and inquiries that revolve around your hours of operation, directions to your business, and more.
Foursquare
Using mobile devices, foursquare users can travel around cities, looking for interesting places to eat, drink, listen to music, relax, and enhance their cultural horizons. foursquare enables your company to participate in this entertaining form of communication while reaching new markets and engaging with current customers and prospective ones.
How does foursquare benefit your business?
What’s one of the number one benefits you hear of when it comes to marketing your business using social media? It helps you build relationships with customers and prospects. Foursquare does just that, but takes customers one step closer to you: your store.
Using foursquare’s analytics, you can see when new customers come into your establishment, build relationships with your most frequent foursquare customers, and reach new markets. And when you offer specials to your foursquare users, you’re allowing customers to feel as though they are rewarded for visiting your establishment.
Conclusion
When you can begin to combine your localized marketing efforts with social media measurement and customer retention strategies, you’ll be much more likely to increase brand awareness and attract more customers to your storefront.
