Location-Based Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

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Geomarketing describes any form of marketing that incorporates location intelligence in order to improve the odds of a particular message reaching the right consumer at the right time. This can be achieved in a number of ways, but the common factor is that location data or awareness is used as part of the marketing effort — that’s the “geo” element. Geotargeting is one common form of geomarketing, which is simply defined as delivering content to users (commonly via mobile, but cross-device as well) based on where they are or on what locations they have previously visited.

How can you start using it to market your small business?

Optimize for Local SEO: As a small business, local SEO can greatly improve your probability of attracting new business. Local SEO typically refers to the organic traffic generated from your Google My Business listing for consumers searching for surrounding businesses that offer a particular good or service. You can improve your local SEO by creating location-specific content on your website, encouraging five-star reviews from your customers, and optimizing your Google My Business listing. The more organic local customers you can attract, the less you need to spend paying for customers—so be willing to see the long-term value of investing in SEO.

Geotarget with PPC: Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a powerful tool for small businesses. However, if you’re not taking advantage of the location-specific data and segmentation options with your PPC campaigns, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Geotargeting lets you filter the audience that has access to your PPC advertisements. This helps you target a specific group based on their location. Thus, helping to avoid wasted clicks from people outside your targeted area.

Use Location Tags: Social sites are known for their use of tags. Tagging posts help social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram filter their user-generated-content. One of the tags they use is known as a location tag which uses your mobile GPS to pinpoint where an image or post occurred. If you want to increase the visibility of your posts, use location tags. This will increase the probability of your post gaining organic impressions when users search for more photos based on location.

Be Active in Your Community: Technology makes it easier for you to target consumers by location, but there are plenty of location-based marketing strategies that don’t require technology like activism. If you are a small business, one of the best ways to grow your brand in a specific area is to leave a footprint through community activities and social awareness. Try hosting a fundraiser for a local nonprofit or sponsoring an event in your community. The more active your brand is in a specific location, the more aware of you that audience will become.

If you’re looking to take a more strategic approach to your marketing communications plan, then you should consider integrating location-based marketing tactics. A marketing strategy that emphasizes location data will likely yield a better return than a sweeping communications strategy. Your business doesn’t need to jump right into a full-fledged geofencing campaign—rather, try starting with collecting and analyzing the location data on your current customer base. If nothing else, this will shed some light into where you may want to invest your marketing resources. If you can’t pinpoint where your target audience is, then you’ll have a hard time getting your message in front of the right people at the right time.

AirRentalz is connecting local businesses with hosts and guests in their area. This allows AirRentalz to promote local service providers to guests who are staying local. By connecting hosts with local and other businesses we can deliver greater experiences for guests by presenting them great places to eat, visit and see. By harnessing the power of data by location, AirRentalz is taking location-based marketing to the next level for the short-term accommodation industry.