Geomarketing (marketing geography)
Geomarketing, also known as marketing geography, is a specialized field that leverages location data to enhance marketing strategies and campaigns. By gathering and analyzing customer data, geomarketers create detailed digital maps that visualize where particular products or services are likely to succeed. This practice enables businesses to target advertising efforts more effectively, tailoring promotions to specific geographic areas or even individual consumers.
The importance of physical location is underscored in various industries beyond just retail, as factors such as neighborhood quality and access to services significantly influence consumer behavior. Modern technologies, including GPS and geographic information systems (GIS), have revolutionized how companies collect and interpret location data, allowing for more precise marketing efforts. As e-commerce and globalization continue to evolve, the role of geomarketing is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses aiming to optimize their reach and resource allocation.
Jobs in this field, primarily for marketing managers and market research analysts, are rapidly growing and typically offer competitive salaries, reflecting the demand for expertise in analyzing spatial data to drive business decisions. Overall, geomarketing stands as a significant and evolving aspect of contemporary marketing practice.
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Geomarketing (marketing geography)
Geomarketing is a field of marketing that uses data about the physical location of customers to create effective marketing strategies and campaigns. Geomarketers use computer databases to collect and store metadata about existing customers and possible future customers. Then they use software to transfer this information into digital mapping programs. The resulting maps may show large sections of the world or increasingly specific areas such as single streets or buildings. Data on these maps may show where certain goods or services are, or are likely to be, most popular. Analyzing and comparing information on these maps can provide crucial hints to marketers about where to direct new campaigns or how to formulate new marketing strategies. Geomarketing is a relatively new but highly important aspect of world economics. As techniques and technology have improved, it has continued to grow in influence and importance.
Background
Modern technologies and developments, such as e-commerce, have opened economic possibilities that previous generations could likely never have imagined. Customers may live in all corners of the world, and goods and services may be transported great distances to very specific audiences. However, despite the rise of the internet and the globalization of business and communication, physical location remains a crucial aspect of economics.
For example, real estate agents stress that location is a crucial element in making a property valuable. Buyers want to know where a property is located and what the surroundings are like. Potential sales can be made or lost based on the quality of a neighborhood, the availability of services such as stores and schools, and many other factors of physical location. Such matters are not limited to real estate; rather, they affect most companies in some way. Companies must constantly assess the location of their customer base and promising locations for new customers.
Technology has made great leaps to answer the many questions of physical location. For example, global positioning system (GPS) technology connects device users with satellites that can pinpoint a user’s location within a few feet. Many companies have used this sort of device to compile extensive information about the location of customers and potential customers. This information may also come from a variety of other sources. By plotting this data on a digital map, companies can create extremely detailed, multi-tiered interactive displays of various areas and the customers within them.
Overview
Geomarketing refers to the use of location data to inform marketing strategies and campaigns. Geomarketers gather and store information about their customers and potential future customers in large computerized databases. This information is then transferred onto digital maps of all scales, from large regions of the world to specific towns or streets, or even individual buildings. By using the data on these maps, geomarketers can determine where new products or services are most likely to be popular, effective, and successful. As digital technology, data-gathering methods, and mapping techniques improve, geomarketing is likely to be an ever-more impactful part of the world economy.
The uses of geomarketing are extensive and diverse, encompassing many kinds of companies and types of marketing campaigns. Businesses may use geomarketing to develop targeted advertisements or make offers toward people in a certain area, whether in the physical world or online via applications (apps), ads, websites, videos, or other means. Geomarketing can help growing businesses choose the best locations for new stores, branches, or billboards. It can even help companies study or manage distribution or service networks in a particular sales zone. The rise of the internet has also allowed geomarketers to target specific people, based on location, interest, or both, with digital advertisements on social media platforms or web browsers.
Almost any company may use geomarketing techniques to analyze and attempt to improve their business. The company only needs to acquire the right technology, such as geographic information software (GIS), and location data to be input into the software. In terms of the latter requirement, large companies that routinely collect personal data from their clients are at an immediate advantage. They will already have databases full of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of customers to input into their GIS. Companies that provide mobile devices and services, for example, not only have customer information for billing purposes, but may even be able to determine customer locations based on tracking on the devices themselves.
However, any company can employ geomarketing techniques. A company may input its own customer records or purchase information about potential customers from companies that collect and sell data. For this information to be useful, though, it must be continually reviewed and updated. Sales trends change rapidly and location data from only a few years ago may be completely obsolete.
Traditionally, companies have used geomarketing techniques to locate customers within a certain locality. For example, a company that is planning to open a new location may study various areas and the habits of local customers to choose the most promising spot to build. Department stores may analyze their local areas to find potential customers to whom they may send advertising or other information. Similarly, advertising companies may examine locations to find high-traffic areas where they may post billboards or other signage to the maximum effect.
In the twenty-first century, geomarketing has taken place in the digital realm. Geomarketers may gain data about potential customers through apps or alerts on mobile devices, or even by analyzing internet search engine data or internet protocol (IP) addresses (unique codes for each internet-capable device). This technique, known as "IP targeting," involves leveraging a user's internet protocol address to determine their approximate geographic location so when social media users connect with businesses online, those businesses may directly advertise to those users. Finding, analyzing, sorting, storing, and often selling online user data has become a huge industry and fuels many of the world’s marketing campaigns. Careers in this field, generally categorized as “marketing managers” and “market research analysts,” are fast-growing, highly specialized, and generally feature better-than-average salaries.
Bibliography
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