There’s an underutilized report that can really help you tighten up your digital marketing efforts as well as plan for expansion. With all the talk in the digital marketing field around what channels businesses should be on and the type of content you should be producing, there’s little conversation about where you should be geographically sending your ads and how you should be methodically thinking about this for your business.
Video Series Content / Vlog
How to Use Geographic Data to Improve Your Marketing Campaigns
January 9, 2021
There are two important geographical reports:
- Website.
Your geographical report can be pulled from your Google Analytics account attached to your website and it shows where people are viewing your website from all around the world. This can be viewed all the way down to the city level.
- Customer list.
You also want to look at the geographic reports available in your CRM, POS, or wherever you store your customer lists.
Run the reports and compare the two.
You want to make sure the areas where your customers live are consistent with the areas where you’re pulling website traffic. Look at the zip codes, cities, and neighborhoods where people live who are visiting your site and where you’re running your digital ad campaigns.
You may be running ads in areas where you have a very low probability of actually pulling in a new customer. This creates a leaky ship where you’re wasting ad dollars every month. If that’s the case, here’s what you need to do:
- Change your campaigns.
Edit your campaigns so that you’re running digital ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. in the zip codes, cities, and neighborhoods where your current customers are because that means you have the highest probability of pulling in new customers from those locations.
- Use location-specific content.
You need to make sure you’re running the right content to each geographic area. Let’s take where I live for instance. I live in a town called Neptune Beach. It’s one of several small beach communities that are part of the greater Jacksonville area. If you’re running ads to all of Jacksonville, that’s a massive population, with each community having its own personality.
So, if you want to market to all of Jacksonville, should you use the same content or tailor your messages or offers to specific geographic locations?
More often than not, you should run different ads for different zip codes, communities, or neighborhoods. The beach communities here in Jacksonville will resonate with different messaging than people who live in various parts of town.
So remember – first, use geographic data to stop wasted ad spend. And second, use the geographic report to make sure you’re running the right content and ad creative to the right zip codes and neighborhoods within your target city. This can have a massive impact on your bottom line.