'Being in the right place at the right time' is a fundamental principle in digital and export marketing. Do you know how many of your potential customers will be actual customers and how much your website conversion rate will increase if you deliver your content and ads based on your customers' geographical location? Do you know how much profit and sales you will make if you do this? Each product or service has a niche market that is geographically different from the other. To ensure that your services reach the targeted niche correctly and at the right time, it is imperative to use Geo-targeting in your marketing strategy. So, what is the meaning of Geo-targeting? It is a form of online marketing that delivers your content, services, and advertising based on your potential customers' geographic location. It means converting leads into actual customers, which will increase the conversion rate; finally, more sales and profitability. Join us in this article to see how you can reach your business's pinnacle with the right geotargeting strategy and a Canadian government grant to cover some of your expenses to do so.
How well do you know About Geo-targeting?
One of the most important things to consider when you launch your E-commerce internationally is where your target audience visits your website. When you work internationally, your leads are not the same and live in various locations, with different languages, currencies, and cultures. To present your brand and services to all the world's people, you must also apply geographical targeting in your international marketing strategy. In other words, you should optimize your website contents and ads to match your customers' geographical location. For example, when a user from Japan opens your website, see ads and services in Japanese, and another in Spain, see Spanish. Each user's device has an IP address that indicates their specific location. The commercial use of geographic information extracted from users' IPs is geotargeting.
You may ask, what is the difference between geotargeting and localization? Localization is one of the international and export marketing strategies in which companies change their products according to the target region's culture, wishes, and needs. For instance, if Toyota wants to sell products to Canada, it designs cars that automatically turn on their headlights when the vehicle is switched on. It localizes its services in the target country according to the existing conditions. If you want to read more about localization, click here. On the other hand, as we said, in geotargeting, the goal is to show services, content, and advertising tailored to customers' needs in a specific geographical area.
What Are the Benefits of Geo-targeting?
All companies, particularly SMEs, need geotargeting to communicate more with their customers and generate more sales. Sharing with your audience in their language and showing them their favorite content is one of the keys to your business success. According to research by MarTech Series, 83% of marketers believe that their campaigns are more successful when using geotargeted marketing. Significant advantages of this strategy are:
1- More Consumer Engagement
In the highly competitive world of online commerce, geotargeting services make it easier for you to reach your target customers. Geotargeting advertising and personalized content are focused on meeting your audience's needs and desires, which improves customer engagement. According to marketers, this makes marketing campaigns 80% more effective.
2- Improved User Experience
Geotargeting plays an essential role in improving the user experience. For example, we translate the website's language to the geographic area of the target market or tailor personalized content to fit our potential customers' geographic location. Another example, when a user from Hong Kong opens Samsung.com, it is automatically redirected to the smasung.com/hk directory. The language of the website is displayed according to the language and currency of that country. It is an excellent enhancement to customer satisfaction and sales of the company.
3- Increasing advertising returns
One of the crucial advantages of geotargeting: you can tailor your ads to a particular geographical area. For example, the American company Warrior Sports, which sells sports equipment, has driven 77% of total online store visits during the campaign using adjusted geotargeted advertising. They also gained strong engagement showing an average click-through rate of 0.28%. It is also prevalent today to use social media for geotargeted marketing. Facebook and Twitter geotargeting are two of the most reputable social media campaigns. To run advertising campaigns on these two platforms, you only need to get help from an expert and move in the right direction. You can get help from Deljoosoft digital marketing experts to run online geotargeted campaigns.
4- Effective Marketing Budgets
Geotargeted marketing is beneficial for companies that are represented in a specific geographical area. Suppose you optimize the content and advertising of your products for a particular geographic region. In that case, you can allocate your marketing budget more effectively. For instance, winter coat ads for North Dakota are likely to turn impressions into conversions and sales, but the same ads in Florida are a waste of advertising dollars. As a result, with geotargeting ads and content, higher Quality Scores and lower costs are achieved when your keywords, landing pages, and call to action align.
5- Market Development
Digital geotargeting in a small geographic area is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to test your market and products before a larger launch. Previously, the company did this with TV commercials and billboards, which had a low success rate. But by using geotargeting strategies, you can have more precise location-based tests and the potential to extend your business's scope to specific areas slowly.
These geotargeting examples and advantages that we have discussed would lead to more customer loyalty, higher conversion rates, and, eventually, more sales. By creating a geotargeted website/e-commerce, advertising, and content, your potential customers won't get confused when visiting your website and will likely become your actual clients. So now, let's see what needs to do to create an excellent geotargeting strategy.
What needs to do for Geo-targeting?
To deliver your website's advertising and content to target customers in a particular geographical area, you need to perform several essential tasks to have effective geotargeting. We have written some of them for you here:
1- Geo IP based redirection
IP redirection is a process by which a visitor's website is automatically redirected to a customized page according to their geolocation (country, state, or city). People use unique IPs from which users' locations are identified and then redirected to the customize page by matching it with the IPs and locations database. To do this, you need to make a series of setups on your Apache server. An excellent example of Geo IP-based redirection is for the Samsung website, which we also mentioned above. If you visit the company's website with any IP, you will see content, products, and ads in your language and preferences.
2- Geo-Target Subdomains/subfolders
This method of geotargeting is one of the most costly and time-consuming ways in international SEO. Geo-Target subdomains/subfolders means creating separate sites for each TLD (.com, .org, etc.), like Fr.example.com, or creating subfolders like example.com/Fr/ for France/French. It is beneficial for international and local SEO, but it requires much experience and the ability to take all the required setups. Another example, Play preferred building different sites for each target market, which was a very costly and time-consuming task. Play.com targets the UK, but Playusa.com targets the USA.
On the other hand, Apple created separate subfolders for each target country based on its geographic location. If you search apple.com/fr, you will see completely different content and ads than on apple.com/es. Geotarget subdomain or geotarget subfolder? There is no definite opinion on this yet, and it depends on the market's scale and the brand's reputation.
3- Geo-Target PPC Campaigns
A geotargeted pay-per-click campaign can be a powerful option in your digital marketing strategy, easy to create but a little expensive. Advertising of your products does not need to be shown in every corner of the world, because it is somewhat impossible. But with geotarget PPC campaigns, you can put your message in front of the right people. Google AdWords Location Targeting, now called Google Ads, is the most popular. Google Ads gives you a series of options according to which you can create your advertising campaign. You can target settings according to Countries, Areas within countries, Multiple locations, and Radius of place. All of these are AdWords geotargeting best practices that help you improve your ad's quality score. 40% of brands want to boost their PPC spending, reflecting the high profits and revenue they make with geotargeted PPCs.
4- Geotarget Content
GeoTarget content means showing the target audience personalized content based on their country, state, and city. It will increase your website traffic and customer engagement so that you can deliver your products to the right target community.
In general, implementing geotargeting methods as an international SEO strategy should be personalized and relevant to your business. And you need the help of an international marketing team to create a geotargeting campaign. In this regard, you can trust the specialists of the DeljooSoft Department. By presenting unique online campaigns, they can make your business successful in the global market and lead you to your goals. By offering unique marketing strategies, they can geotarget your e-commerce and get you to your global market goals. Other services of this department include creating PPC campaigns and different international SEO strategies. Click here for more information.
Geo-Targeting Challenges
Starting any business and marketing techniques, SEO, geotargeting, and even global branding always face different challenges. One of the challenges business owners have ever encountered is having a unique marketing strategy. Since every business is unique, it must have a unique approach not to waste money and capital. To have such a plan, you need to get help from experts and consult with them. Well, ExportGrants' experts provide a range of consulting and grant writing services to help clients achieve their export goals. We can offer unique strategies to Digital export marketing, E-commerce, Global branding, International SEO, and international marketing methods like geotargeting.
Another obstacle for business owners who want to adopt a geotargeting approach is the cost issue. For example, PPC, one way to implement geotargeting, is costly, and you have to spend so much money on it. Do you have enough budget to do this? Do not worry; Can Export will help you in this regard. Canexport financing program run by Global Affairs Canada provides direct financial assistance to Canadian SMEs to implement their international export and digital marketing strategies. This grant is up to about $75,000 to cover a significant portion of the costs. That's great! To get this grant, you have to be eligible. In other words, you must meet a set of criteria made by the Authorities of Canada. It is better to leave this mission to our experts and consultants. Our consultants and grant writers will assess your projects' eligibility and propose practical ideas to strengthen the case for funding. Usually, all projects reviewed by the ExportGrant team have received the grant's approval. One of our successful projects was secure financing for our client in the railway industry. If you are a Canadian business and looking for international sales, some grant money is waiting for you. To check your business's eligibility, contact us.