How to Use Geolocation in Social Media Advertising

Using geolocation in social media advertising has become more than just a temporary craze. An
increasing number of companies are employing location-based advertising to improve the
effectiveness of their campaigns. And they are not going to get disappointed as a study revealed
that 8 out of 10 marketers found that location-based advertising and marketing led to growth in
their customer base. They also saw significant improvements in other metrics such as response
rate, customer engagement, and return on investment (ROI).

Furthermore, using geolocation-based data also enabled these companies to learn more about their
customers. As a result, they can better adapt to customer needs and interests.

Source: Factual’s 2018 Location-Based Marketing Report

Turning geolocation data into fuel for an advertising campaign is indeed a lucrative strategy,
which is made possible by using tools such as IP Geolocation API.

With all the benefits of geolocation data in mind, imagine what you can achieve if you use it in
social media advertising. Social media is unquestionably the place to be for advertisers, as
Facebook alone has over 2 billion monthly active users. In addition, Instagram has over 1
billion monthly active users, while Twitter has 330 million.

Several other social media platforms are also worth looking into, depending on your brand and
your regional marketing efforts. These include WeChat, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and
Pinterest.

In short, tapping social media platforms’ user bases can prove remunerative, especially when
coupled with geolocation data. In this post, we examined some ways you can use geolocation in
your social media advertising activities.

Incorporating Geolocation in Social Media Advertising

For those who may not be aware, advertisers can use geolocation data gleaned from tools such as
IP Geolocation API to augment their social media advertising strategies. IP Geolocation API can
be integrated into any application or system to discover the physical location of any user. The
tool looks at the user’s IP address to extract the following:

Below are some geolocation-powered advertising tactics that you can use IP Geolocation API data
for.

1. Geotargeting to Define the Most Relevant Areas

Using geolocation data, advertisers can restrict their ad audience to people within a specific
location. That works great, especially for businesses that operate brick-and-mortar stores
because they can target customers near their establishments. Advertisers can search for their
target audiences by country, city, or postal code, all of which are obtainable from IP
Geolocation API along with the time zone and the location’s latitude and longitude
coordinates.

Digital businesses can also use geolocation data. Let’s take the case of a digital marketing firm
that wants to build an online presence in the state of New York. It can use IP Geolocation API
to find out where its existing clients, subscribers, and website visitors are. After segmenting
its market base by area, it can then see that it already has a client base in Albany, New York,
and Mount Vernon. But it may remain virtually unknown in other major cities such as Buffalo and
Rochester. The company can then craft different advertising campaigns for each city where it
doesn’t have much presence in. This is geotargeting in a nutshell.

Facebook and Instagram have made geotargeting more accessible. Advertisers can create different
sets of audiences and customize their ad campaigns, depending on the targets’ locations. Our
sample digital marketing company, for instance, can specifically target Buffalo, with the option
to include places within a 1-to-50-mile radius.

The company will then find out that it has the potential to reach 610,000 people. The audience
size can be broadened or narrowed down by changing the radius and age bracket, or adding other
demographics such as interests and behaviors.

After determining the target audience, the advertiser can create customized social media
advertising campaigns for each city to establish its presence.

2. Geo-Exclusion to Avoid Irrelevant Buyers

If geotargeting’s primary goal is to display ads to people within a specific location,
geo-exclusion does the opposite. It prevents advertising campaigns from reaching people in a
particular area. There are several reasons why companies do this, which include:

Geolocation intelligence is crucial when implementing geo-exclusion as you might end up excluding
potential paying customers. In this tactic, IP Geolocation API can first be used to determine
where most of the brand’s customers come from as excluding them from geolocation-based social
media advertising can cause a negative dent on companies’ revenues.

3. Geo-Conquesting Customers from Rival Brands

Geo-conquesting is the process of enticing customers away from competitors by showing them
location-based ads. When a customer is within the location of a competitor’s physical store,
advertisers can display ads with promo deals on the customer’s phone, so he or she would go to
their brand’s store instead. The fact that they are already within a competitor’s vicinity means
they have the intent to buy, and this makes geo-conquesting very lucrative.

This location-based advertising tactic requires the use of geofencing, where you set up a virtual
parameter around a competitor’s physical store. When a customer steps into that virtual
parameter, your ad is triggered. The ad can come in the form of notification on the brand’s
mobile app or a social media app.

Using geolocation data from tools like IP Geolocation API and behavioral patterns have proven
effective in executing geo-conquesting. Retail shops, restaurants, automobile manufacturers, and
financial service providers are among the top users of geo-conquesting today.

Social media and geolocation data are both powerful advertising and marketing tools. When used
together and correctly, these two could very well pave the way for a company’s success in terms
of brand recognition and sales growth. Using geolocation data taken from IP Geolocation API in
social media advertising in particular, and advertising in general can ultimately help companies
improve their bottom line.