The internet has made the world a smaller place thanks in part to the influence of social media. After all, search engines and social-media platforms enable individuals from around the globe to connect to friends, family, entertainers, and, yes, businesses at a moment’s notice. Still, not every small business has the ability to deliver their product or service to remote locations. And rather than garnering traffic from all corners of the globe, they’d prefer to focus on consumers in specific markets. While marketers often speak about geo-targeting in regard to digital advertising, progressive professionals can apply a myriad of tactics to ensure they connect with consumers in preferred geographic locales.
Geotargeting & Digital Advertising
To be brief, geo-targeting within digital advertising platforms like Google Ads is a relatively simple process. Marketers can select which cities, counties, regions, or countries they want to target with their ads. In addition, they can also adjust the settings of a given ad to exclude searchers from outside of selected areas. For instance, a Chicago office design firm might include a few nearby suburbs like Naperville or Evanston within their ads, but exclude the rest of Illinois. In this way, businesses can keep their ad spend under budget and increase their conversion rates.
Geo-targeting & SEO
In regard to SEO, the best geo-targeting practices tend to relate to maintenance and upkeep. Optimizing meta descriptions to feature a location is one easy way to bolster the chances of location-specific search queries including your site. Lastly, though it’s a small detail, it’s crucial that all of your address information is correct on business listings.
Geo-targeted Content & Social-Media Tactics
It is possible for marketers to tailor their content marketing techniques and their social-media strategy to focus on a specific, city, state, or region. It’s just more difficult than adjusting the settings on a digital ad. However, there are a few ways you can direct your content toward targeted markets. One method is to create blog posts, videos, or podcasts that relate to a location by name. Beyond that, businesses can build pages that address an issue unique to a target market. As such, a masonry business in Seattle could launch a web page devoted to protecting brick exteriors from water damage.
In terms of social media marketing, there’s nothing wrong with using a city’s unique culture or heritage to bolster your own brand. Plus, businesses can go the extra mile and collaborate with local organizations or charities and promote those activities across their social-media accounts.
One final point: businesses with multiple locations may want to consider registering multiple accounts for their different offices (as companies like HomeGrounds do). At the very least, utilizing unique hashtags and other identifiers on social media can help you stay connected with your consumers in your target markets.
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