Retail stores are an essential part of a person’s shopping. Your store will naturally be in demand. You must ensure you have enough people coming into your store. The easiest way you can do that is through marketing. Marketing has exponentially grown with time.
One of the most effective ways of marketing today is location-based marketing. You can now personalize ads for the audience. That gives them more of a human touch compared to the other generic forms of marketing. Targeting a specific audience also increases the effectiveness of ads, as you can create more personalized ads for them. Doing this makes the ads more relevant as there is more conversion in foot traffic. Also, location-based marketing is effective now because it suits retail stores well. We will now go through the most effective location-based marketing ways you can use to increase your audience and awareness.
Geotargeting
The first strategy you can use is geo-targeting. It is when you target people based on their location. You can choose a perimeter in which your ads will target people inside that perimeter. That is useful for a retail store as this allows you to target people near you because these are the people who are more likely to visit your store. That is done through the IP address and GPS of the device if they have enabled it. Demographics and the criteria you choose decide who to target people in geo-targeting.
This type of marketing has determined its audience in advance. That lets you customize your marketing, keeping them in mind. We can also notice this form of marketing on Google, as when you search for a retail store on Google, it shows you the places nearest to you first. The stores nearest are more convenient for the user. Another example is when you use a food delivery service, they show you the restaurants nearest to you. Similarly, services like Uber also show you the vehicles nearest to you. All this lies under geotargeting.
Geofencing
Geo-fencing is quite like geo-targeting because it also revolves around a specific location. You can set up a perimeter on the map and target the area from where people are more likely to visit your store. Whenever someone enters the boundary you have defined, geofencing marketing will target them. You target a specific place in geo-fencing, for example, a shopping mall or a local market. Everyone who visits there will be informed about your promotions.
While geo-targeting and geo-fencing may seem very similar, there is a slight difference between the two. We focus geo-fencing on the location and the perimeter setup, while geo-targeting also includes demographics and interests to target people. Geo-fencing uses GPS technology to target people in a defined area. This method allows you to target a place that is popular and busy. For example, retail stores can notify you about their deals when you are at a shopping mall as you will be more likely to visit them when you are already in a shopping mall.
Location-based online advertising
Marketing nowadays is not complete without being part of social media in this digital age. One helpful feature in online social media marketing is the ability to target a location of your choice for your advertisement. Now you can have location-based online advertising on popular platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. You can even choose the interests and demographics of your target audience to get your advertisements as personalized as possible.
You don’t need to worry If creating online ads isn’t your piece of cake. Creating online ads is now easy as you can find a great variety of ever-increasing online ad templates from PosterMyWall. Creating online ads through PosterMyWall is easy to use for everyone. You can easily customize high-quality templates to your liking through this platform. It also has an easy-to-learn drag-and-drop editor on the website to make the design process super straightforward. The best part is that you get to save the expense of working with an expensive graphic designer for this very purpose.
Distributing customized flyers
Flyers are one of the more traditional ways of marketing, but they are still quite effective in getting the message across and raising awareness of your store. They are simple and light, and you can conveniently distribute and place them throughout the neighborhood where your retail store is at. Just as we mentioned for online ads, you can make flyers through the easy-to-use free online flyer maker. Doing this through PosterMyWall is simple, time efficient, and it is entirely free while they guarantee you high-quality results. It’s a win-win situation for you!
Geo-Conquesting
This strategy focuses on taking away customers from your competitors. You target people in your competitor’s boundary in this strategy. Whenever people enter that boundary, they will get promotions and incentives to visit your store instead. You are diverting your competitor’s customers to your store. The main benefit you get from this strategy is that you can win over your competitor’s customers to increase your market share and improve your store’s foot traffic.
You can set up geo-conquesting through Google Adwords and Facebook.
Beaconing
Beacons are devices that use wireless networks within their range to send push notifications or alerts to devices. Beacons mainly connect through Wifi or Bluetooth. You can let customers near your shop know about your latest deals and promos through this method.
You can place your beacon in a shopping mall or a store where your products are available as well. McDonald used this method of marketing by letting customers near them know about the latest offers. They were successful as they reported greater engagement and conversion rates.
Conclusion
We have discussed the different location-based marketing strategies you can use to increase your retail store’s awareness and foot traffic. The benefits it gives you and the privacy concerns you should be aware of so that you are well informed of all the different aspects of this way of marketing before you get into it. Here is hoping you find this article helpful and can now use location-based marketing strategies for your retail store to make it a tremendous success. Best of luck!
Written by: Raahim Jamshed
