When considering your business’ target audience, location can be a major factor. Cultural nuances and norms can differ subtly or greatly from one region to another, and content that doesn’t fit the audience’s expectations will have a very difficult time garnering trust and engagement. On an international level, these differences are magnified significantly. Geo-based redirects allow you to create multiple versions of the same page that are individually tailored to users in their current location, and automatically send visitors to the most relevant content.
Essential to helping customers through their journey and reach them in the most efficient way is to understand the distance between your customers and your products and services. The use of geolocation data, such as geocoordinates which are the latitude and longitude points for every location in the world, with a real-time address and postcode validation solution is the starting point to tackle some of these challenges. Going beyond a given street address and applying geolocation data at the point when customers provide their address on your website or at point of sale will arm you with the information you need.
How Does Geolocation Work?
Geolocation data can be accessed through various different sources. Traditionally on websites, it would be determined by a visitor’s IP address. It would then hook up to a WHOIS service and retrieve the visitor’s physical address from their whois information. Recently though, a more popular and accurate way to access this information has become common; using a device’s built in GPS chip. These are found in most smart phones and tablets and are responsible for the rise in popularity of location aware services that we might use. Think of Foursquare or any other app that you might ‘check in’ to.
Once you have a location aware site or app, you are able to provide more accurate and appropriate content for your visitors. Let’s take a look at how geolocation can come in handy:
- Customer targeting and segmentation
- Targeted services and offers
- Business planning
- Delivery fulfilment
- Risk assessments
- Service eligibility
and more…
When to use geolocation
- Find where the user is closest to a specific physical location to tailor the user experience.
- Tailor information (such as news) to the user’s location.
- Show the position of a user on a map.
- Tag data created inside your application with the user’s location (that is, geo-tag a picture).
Who benefits from geolocation?
It’s not just marketers who can benefit from geolocation services, but creative types have also leveraged it (probably without even realizing). People have used it to gain access to large numbers of people, all of whom are situated in the same area and have the same goal of “making something happen”. This can range from flash mobs, to large scale dance routines, to creating community groups for people who share similar interests.
When adopting a data-driven strategy to define a target market, marketing teams are often solely reliant on the customer data obtained from direct customer interactions across various touchpoints. While useful, it can only take you so far. With precise location information for customers and prospects, marketers can undertake regional analysis and targeting relative to a physical location. This supports personalized messaging and regional-specific offers for higher conversion rates as well as reduced marketing spend by excluding ineligible consumers based outside the target area.
How to add geo data to a WordPress website
Geo Controller allows you to attach geographic information to WordPress websites by user IP address. This plugin allow you to create geo-based banners and switch contents based on user geo-location. With Geo Controller you also can build any geomarketing landing page, user statistics, redirections based on the geolocation and many more.
Click to Download latest Geo Controller version 8.7.6
NOTE
Do not forget that Geo Controller uses very sensitive information and you must indicate it in your privacy policy because of European GDPR law, but in fact, Geo Controller is fully valid for use and does not violate any legal acts by itself.
