Selecting the right criteria for geographic segmentation is an important step to getting the results that you want from targeted campaigns. Often taken for granted relative to demographic, firmographic, and lifestyle segmentation, segmenting your audience geographically can contribute to optimizing return on marketing investment.
The following is a detailed overview of some of the most compelling benefits of including geographic segmentation in your targeting strategy!
Diversity of Geography
One reason that geography is sometimes overlooked is that marketers fail to recognize the depth of segmentation details it offers. In addition to the typical city, state, region, country, and ZIP Code factors, you can target prospects based on phone number area code, street number, metropolitan statistical area (MSA), and more.
Pinpoint Areas of High-Income Opportunity
Commonly referred to as “geo-demographic segmentation,” targeting specific neighborhoods in communities with direct mail campaigns allows you to eliminate waste and potentially achieve high revenue. If you sell upscale or high-priced goods and services, for instance, it makes sense to target communities and neighborhoods with above-average incomes.
Even if your market is low-to-mid income, your return on investment is much more significant by flooding the right areas with your message.
Build Local or Regional Branding
The more diverse or broad your marketplace, the more sense it makes to focus on local or regional brand building. A small business in a city, for instance, can achieve brand recognition and positive word-of-mouth among people by sending out consistent mailers, emails, and other collateral, and then delivering a quality experience.
As your message penetrates the city, state or region, your satisfied customers begin to help spread the word. Then, when prospects receive your mail pieces, they likely have heard about your brand from others in the area.
Align Content with Geographic Interests
In some cases, the interest prospects have in your product is influenced by geography. In B2B, the processes buyers use for purchasing and the expected norms for interactions can vary. Thus, by targeting your content to suit local culture, customers, and standards, you have a better chance to make inroads in each of your geographic markets. Leveraging enhanced behavioral data allows you a greater potential to really get to know the consumers and business buyers in each market in which you sell.
Find Prospects with Simple Mapping Tool
When you utilize a good prospecting solution to target people, you gain access to simple mapping tools that give a visual depiction of all geographic segmentation criteria. The Salesgenie mapping tool offers clients access to several effective ways to explore geographically-targeted prospects from a mobile device, thus enhance the efficiency of identifying new opportunities in an area.
Conclusions
Don’t overlook the power of geographic segmentation. When used as a standalone factor or in combination with demographics, firmographics, or behavioral data, geography can enhance the quality and efficiency of your campaigns!
Salesgenie offers geographic segmentation based on 11 key criteria; start your free trial!
