Location-Based Advertising: How to Capture Local B2C Markets

In the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, businesses seek innovative ways to connect with their target market. 

One strategy that has gained significant traction in recent years is location-based advertising, where businesses aim their ads in the locations where audiences are most likely to take action. 

In this blog, we explore location-based advertising, the technologies it relies on, its uses, types, and required platforms.

Learn about digital media buying in this blog. 

What is Location-Based Advertising?

Location-based advertising (LBA) is a marketing strategy that utilizes geographical data to deliver targeted advertisements to consumers in specific locations. 

It uses location-based technologies such as; 

• GPS 
• IP targeting. 
• Wifi.
• Mobile Signals
• Bluetooth
• Near Field Communication (NFC).  

These technologies identify the target audiences based on their physical proximity to locations or past location history.

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Then, they are targeted with ad copies, messages, and promotions tailored to local preferences, interests, and behaviors. 

Various ad platforms assist businesses in creating ads and reaching their local B2C market via location-based advertising. 

For B2C businesses, location-based advertising targets and engages potential customers near a store or relevant contexts, like events or landmarks.

It has the potential to drive foot traffic, increase brand awareness, and ultimately boost sales.

Benefits of Location-Based Advertising (LBA)

Here is a comprehensive list of the benefits of location-based advertising (LBA) based on the provided references:

1. Enhanced Relevance and Personalization

LBA enables precise targeting based on GPS coordinates, IP addresses, or designated boundaries, ensuring ads reach the right audience.

Delivering ads based on consumers’ geographic location ensures relevance to their immediate surroundings, improving the effectiveness of their campaigns.

2. Increased Engagement and Relevance

Location-based advertising delivers highly relevant ads to consumers’ immediate surroundings, leading to higher engagement rates.

The personalized nature of LBA ensures that ads resonate with local preferences, interests, and behaviors, leading to higher engagement rates and campaign performance.

3. Higher Conversion Rates

Targeting consumers close to physical stores or businesses increases the likelihood of conversions, driving revenue.

For brick-and-mortar stores, location-based advertising increases foot traffic and prompts immediate action, such as visiting a store or attending a local event. 

Eventually, this results in increased conversions.

4. More Cost-Effective

LBA enables businesses to allocate their advertising budget more efficiently through targeted spending. 

Businesses can reduce wasted ad spend and optimize their return on investment (ROI) by focusing on specific geographic areas where the target audience is likely present.

5. Valuable Insights and Analytics

LBA offers valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences through location data analysis. 

Businesses can refine targeting strategies and make better-informed marketing decisions by understanding where their target audience spends time.

Learn about Advanced Analytics and Reporting in Digital Advertising here. 

6. Enhanced Customer Experience and Satisfaction

Personalized ads based on location create a better customer experience, as consumers receive relevant and beneficial information.

Businesses can tailor messages to local needs, preferences, and languages, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

7. Real-Time Optimization and Flexibility

LBA platforms often provide real-time analytics, allowing advertisers to adjust campaigns for optimal performance.

Ad content, offers, and targeting parameters can be quickly modified based on changing local conditions or events, maximizing effectiveness.

8. Strengthened Community Connections

LBA allows businesses to engage locally by delivering timely and relevant messages aligned with events and cultural trends, facilitating contextual marketing. 

Businesses build trust and loyalty by connecting with the local community, becoming integral parts of the local fabric. It strengthens brand recognition and affinity among local consumers, translating into repeat business and positive word-of-mouth.

Types of Location-Based Advertising (LBA)

Geo-Targeting

Geotargeting enables businesses to precisely target their B2C markets based on users’ current geographic locations. 

This approach involves delivering ads to users within specific regions, cities, ZIP codes, or custom-defined areas. 

By tailoring marketing messages to these localized areas, businesses ensure that their ads are highly relevant and compelling to the target audience. 

Geotargeting allows advertisers to specify a radius or distance from a particular location, ensuring precise targeting within desired geographic zones.

Geo-Fencing

Geo-fencing involves creating virtual perimeters around specific physical locations, such as retail stores, events, or local hotspots. 

When consumers enter or exit these predefined boundaries or fences, they receive targeted ads or notifications on their mobile devices, enabling businesses to engage with them at precise moments of proximity. 

Though very similar to geotargeting, geofencing is a hyper-targeting technique covering a much smaller area. 

Geo-conquesting

Geo-conquesting involves delivering ads to consumers when they are near or within competitors’ physical locations, such as stores, restaurants, or venues. 

It relies on geofencing and mobile signals to identify when a potential customer is in the competitor’s proximity. 

Next, compelling messages, promotions, or discounts are directed at them to sway them away from competitors precisely when they are in a position to make purchasing decisions.

Location-Based Push Notifications

Location-based push notifications deliver messages or alerts to users on their mobile devices based on their real-time location, such as near a retail store, restaurant, or event venue. 

It is an effective B2C marketing technique to connect with consumers precisely when they are most likely to act, such as making a purchase or visiting a store. 

Using relevant information or offers in the notifications can prompt immediate engagement, possibly conversions.

Proximity Marketing

Proximity marketing delivers messages via SMS, app notifications, or mobile ads when consumers are near a retail store, restaurant, or event venue. 

Technology like geofencing, Wifi, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, and near near-field communication (NFC) are used to pick the presence of customers.

Next, in an automated sequence, these businesses send personalized and relevant information to capture the B2C market. 

Proximity marketing ads include mobile push notifications or in-app messages giving information like discounts on a product near them.

Platforms Used for Location-Based Advertising

Technologies listed in the previous section only identify and sometimes send location-based ads. Businesses need ad platforms that offer location-based advertising to create these ads and choose the granular location for the B2C market. 

Google Ads

Google Ads offers a range of location-based advertising options tailored to businesses’ needs to capture the local B2C markets. 

The types of location-targeted advertising offered by Google Ads include

• Countries
• Area within a country (region, city, postal code)
• Radius targeting
• Broad geotargeting
• Multiple locations.

It allows businesses to run location-specific campaigns, bidding on keywords relevant to local searches and displaying ads to users actively searching for products or services in their vicinity.

They may set up exclusion to ensure their ads appear only in their desired regions or use the broad geotargeting option to reach audiences interested in their target location. 

Additionally, the location extensions enable businesses to display information like business address, phone number, or map marker within the ad. 

Besides enhancing the ad visibility, it gives immediate access to users to contact or visit the business.

Meta Ads

Meta Ads offers a few options to run location-based ads on Facebook and Instagram for precise and impactful local marketing. Let us briefly discuss them below. 

• Local Awareness Ads –  Meta Ads offer specialized Local Awareness Ads tailored for businesses aiming to reach users within the proximity of their physical locations.
• Location Targeting – Meta ads allow businesses to run location-based ads, with options including country, city, state, province, postcode, region, and radius. 
• Event Promotion Ad – Businesses may also benefit from the Event Ads in Meta to promote a pop-up shop, store opening, workshop, or other gathering to local audiences. 

Optimizing these ads for location keywords, selecting local languages, and using cultural references to create contextual ads are some best practices businesses could benefit from. 

While setting up meta ads, ad objectives help businesses refine their ads for local interests and behavior. 

It is also a good idea to use call-to-action buttons like “Get Directions” or “Call Now” within your meta ad to let the audiences in your B2C market immediately engage and maximize the impact of the ad.

Snapchat Ads

Snapchat offers single image or video and filters ads with location-based advertising options for the ads within the US. 

For advertisement on Snapchat, businesses can benefit from three location categories;

• Location-based – options include country, state, region, postal codes, addresses, and lat/long. 
• Radius – allows businesses to pick a location on a map and set up a radius around it.
• Location Category – lets businesses create ads for pre-selected Snapchat packages like beaches, music venues, and car dealers.

Programmatic Advertising Platforms

Programmatic advertising platforms allow advertisers to bid on ad impressions based on users’ geographic locations. 

They appear like traditional ads and leverage data to display ads to relevant audiences in specific regions or neighborhoods.

Location-Based Mobile Ads

All ads can appear on mobile devices like mobile phones and tablets. 

Location-based advertising depends massively on mobile devices since mobile signal detection in a vicinity (geolocation, geofence) triggers location-based ads. 

However, some ads, like call-only ads or in-app advertisements show only on mobile devices.

Since they use mostly the same ad platforms, mobile ads, like desktop ads, allow businesses to select specific locations to display their ads. 

Another category of networks called the specialized location-based mobile ad networks, such as Foursquare Ads, focus specifically on delivering ads to users based on their physical location.

These networks use GPS data and other location signals to target users with relevant ads when they are near specific points of interest, businesses, or events.

Conclusion

Location-Based Advertising (LBA) allows businesses to target and engage their B2C markets in specific geographical areas. 

It uses technologies like GPS, IP targeting, WiFi, mobile signals, Bluetooth, and NFC to pinpoint and reach ideal customers based on their proximity to relevant locations.

Its benefits include more relevance, personalization, cost-effectiveness, engagement, and conversion, better insights, customer experience, optimization, and community connections.

Businesses can use platforms like Google Ads, Meta Ads, Snapchat Ads, Programmatic ads, and location-based mobile ads.

These platforms allow businesses to create granular location-based personalized ads tailored to customer preference, interest, and behavior. 

Options include country, city, region, geo radius, exclusion, broad geotargeting, local event promotion, location categories, and mobile ads. 

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