I feel in some ways that I am beating the same drum in recent weeks, and in other ways I am defining my opinions through layers and layers of related realizations. The message that comes bubbling to the surface time and time again is: Regardless of how slick or sophisticated your ad campaign is, no matter how SEOed your site, no matter how high your CPM keyword bid, or contagious your viral video, if you do not have value for your target market waiting at the next click, then you are wasting your time and (perhaps worse) your money.
And so geo-targeting enters the scene to make your marketing efforts even more efficient, and, if you have a good value proposition, effective. Geo-targeting, according to AdWords who offer it as part of their search engine marketing service “lets you target your ads to specific locations and languages. For each campaign, you can select the countries or regions and the language(s) for your ad. That campaign’s ads will appear only to users located in those areas and who have selected one of those languages as their preference”. Most major search engines offer geo-targeting as an option when designing your SEM campaign. Yahoo, for example offers targeting via postal-code. Facebook is also offering geo-targeting combined with other demographic and sociographic filters. One can easily imagine the benefits of this type of targeting, especially for small businesses with a limited ad budget.
How exactly does geo-targeting work? Watch this video by marketing guru Bob Nicholson for a complete explanation:
For a moment, let`s examine geo-targeting from a consumer or net user`s point of view. On the one side I can really appreciate the reduction in clutter. When I search for peanut sauce recipes, I really do not care to see ads for Thai restaurants in Minesota. This product offer has no value to me. I likely would not click on the ad and even if I did, it is highly unlikely that I would follow through and patronize the business. On the other hand, as a consumer with privacy and free-access to web content concerns, the idea of my search results being filtered based on my geographic location is disconcerting. As marketers it is important to be mindful of consumer privacy concerns whenever we are launching new campaigns or taking advantage of new technologies. (Not to is folly as Facebook learned.)
Putting on the marketers hat once again, the value of geo-targeting extends beyond simple not bothering those who have little or no interest in our value-proposition. As Bob Nicholson points out in the video, geo-targeting prevents marketers from having to pay for clicks from customers that cannot access their products or service anyways. This in turn will increase the ROI on ad campaigns as it decreases dead end hits.
Geo-targeting is but another tool for getting your message to the right people, and taking the first step in building lasting customer-relationships. Of course, as with any tool, it will only be effective when used as part of a larger plan that promises and delivers value at the end. Because really, it does not matter how fancy your hammer is, if you drew your blueprints on the back of a napkin.
