If you ever found yourself asking “What is Geolocation used for?”, forget the hype. Here are the basics: you don’t want to show the same content to every visitor, regardless of where they come from.
There’s a little thing for personalization and it’s important that visitors don’t feel alienated from your brand just because the content seems specific to visitors from a certain location.
Seeing your prices in dollars might be fine (actually, it’s not and there are Geolocation Plugins for eCommerce too). Seeing that all of the content was only written for locals in the United States or Canada is certainly not (unless you are a hyper-local business).
Show local content To locals (Make everyone feel home)
As long as your website (and your business model) makes sense for Geolocation, you’d want to make your visitors feel home.
By changing parts of your content (or your website blocks) by using Geolocation, you can customize the content that’s displayed to visitors from specific geographic regions.
Note: Kinsta has IP Geolocation enabled. Do check it out and see how smart your WordPress site gets.
It’s just smart marketing. It pays. It makes everyone feel home.
You could drill down and go as deep as showing variations in spellings for common words used, swap out names and locations, or do a lot more.
My country, my content. Ok?
Display Local Prices for eCommerce (Dollars & Pounds are Scary)
If visitors come shopping to your eCommerce site (happens to be WordPress eCommerce and uses WooCommerce), and they see prices in Dollars (USD or $) or Pounds Sterling (GBP or £), there’s going to be friction.
It’s easier to relate to local currencies when they go shopping. Users in Malaysia, want to see prices in MYR. If I am in Singapore, I want to see SGD. If I am from India, I want to see INR.
The news is this: there’s nothing natural about showing prices in a single $ currency for the entire world.
Note: While we are at it, here’s the best possible eCommerce solution on WordPress including World Class WordPress hosting, security, easy migration (existing eCommerce stores), easier workflows, and more.
Use Geolocation To Build Hyper-targeted audiences
From a marketing standpoint, Geolocation helps you build hyper-targeted audiences — those with physical proximity to your business, or groups of visitors from a specific location (city, country). Besides, imagine how targeted your marketing campaigns could be.
You could collect and maintain audiences, based on Geolocation.
When you are ready to launch campaigns, you’ll be able to mix and match your audiences. Fine tune your campaigns by choosing the exact, geographical audience you want to target.
Plus, you’d have everything you need for geolocation-driven retargeting campaigns too.
Reward loyal customers With Geolocation
Be nice to those who are nice to you.
In business? Be extra nice to those who are nice and loyal to you (also includes repeat visitors who just browse through your site without doing anything).
Social media technology can actually increase sales and promote loyalty.
Track the frequency of your visitors’ visits, provide incentives such as discounts, and give preferential treatment to regulars.
Recognize and reward, if you can.
Read more:
How to hyper-target your visitors by using Smart Tags by OptinMonster.
Use GeoIP technology (where you can)
If you are using WordPress, you are in luck. Several managed WordPress hosting solutions provide you with access to Geolocation, GeoIP, geofencing, Beacons, and even data centers that are located close to the location you are interested in.
Kinsta, for instance, allows you to choose a data center location that matters to you (in an available location). With Kinsta, use GeoIP and boost the performance of your site by enabling the Nginx module for WordPress.
WPEngine has WPEngine GeoIP which enables you to use a site visitor’s location to serve them relevant, targeted content based on their country, state, city, and even zip code. Also, show site visitors pricing in their national currency, sites in their language, and share content that is most relevant based on geography.
Cool, right?
With OptinMonster, you can set your pop-ups, gamification wheels, floating bars, exit-intent pop-ups, lead generation opt-in forms, and slide-ins to show up based on Geolocation.
Using Unbounce? You have a way to change text depending on the location your visitors are from by using Dynamic Text replacement.
Read More:
How to Use GeoIP With Your WordPress Site at Kinsta
Unbounce’s Dynamic Text Replacement Feature
OptinMonster’s Geolocation Targeting
Attract new customers With Geolocation
In the era of the Internet, globalization, and “every town is in the neighborhood”, businesses available only to those in the U.S or Canada (unless they are local shops or businesses) is irritating.
Especially if you have a SaaS business, sell software, or sell anything else that the world could have access to.
The best geolocation marketing benefit is the ability to land & target potential new customers. Worldwide.
Geolocation-driven meaningful results
Once you start using Geolocation, everything you measure also starts to get compartmentalized.
You don’t just look at countries your visitors are from anymore. You’d also look at specific results such as
- Sales & revenue, sorted geographically.
- Month-on-month increase in sales or revenue from top 5 countries your visitors are from.
- ROAS, sorted by country.
Note: Need a great way to use metrics for your business? See the various connectors and tools available with SuperMetrics for eCommerce
Furthermore, businesses can effectively track check-ins and gain tangible results on customer traffic and sales with geolocation. You’ll know — and be able to track — things like footfalls, high-traffic days of the week, and more.
It’s another thing that you get to boost your search engine rankings by taking advantage of geographically based review sites, Google My Business Reviews, Yelp, and more.
Read:
eCommerce Analytics 101: A Marketer’s Guide to eCommerce Analytics
Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce: how to make data-driven decisions
Are you using Geolocation at all? If yes, what are you using it for? What specific geolocation tools or technology do you use?
Tell me all about it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or my LinkedIn Brand page.
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