The physical location of the customers is a vital factor when planning a marketing campaign. Imagine sending SMS messages about discounts in your California store to a customer living in New York. The person is not travel across the country to get the store discount,right? This will lead to the customer opting out of SMS alerts from your business as they have nothing to gain from the messages.
Location-based SMS advertising is akin to local SEO, where you target the audiences from the region and send them alerts specific to the location. If you’re offering free drinks at your restaurant for couples, your target market has to be customers in the same locality.
Let’s find out how to set up location-based advertising for your SMS marketing campaigns.
How to Use Location-Based SMS Advertising?
Location-based advertising is where you track the customers’ mobile locations and send ads accordingly. However, the process is a little different with SMS advertising as you have to rely on your lists rather than the customers’ mobile phones to track their locations.
For example, an SMS message can be sent to regular mobile phones and smartphones. But you can’t track the customer’s location on a regular mobile phone. You need to segment your list based on their address/ area code/ zip code. Once you know which customers reside in a specific region, you can send only the relevant messages to them.
This will bring a greater response from the customers and increase your ROI. It will also reduce the cost of SMS advertising because you send messages only to a certain section of your contact database instead of every single number on the list.
Steps to Setup Location-Based Advertising With SMS
Location-based SMS marketing requires proper planning and implementation to amplify the returns. There are different ways to collect information to categorize the target audience based on their location.
● Gather Address Through Online Forms
Online/ web forms are commonly used by businesses to gather B2C and B2B information. You just have to include a field for region/ city/ zip code in the form so that you know where the customer lives. It is easier to use web forms for new subscribers. So what about existing customers? You can go through your contact database to check their address (if provided by the customers) and send them an email or SMS with a link to the online form.
Explain that you want to offer customized and targeted services for which you need to know their present location. Use the same form to update other customer details like their email address, phone number, postal address (if required), product/ service preferences, etc.
● Use Location-Specific Keywords
In SMS marketing, a keyword is a shortcode with alphabets and numbers. It is similar to using shortcodes to get customer consent to send text marketing messages. Create shortcodes of areas of your business operations and ask customers to text you a code corresponding with their location.
For example, if you have a bakery in Manhattan, Houston, and Boston, you can use a different shortcode for each location. Send the list of codes to the customers and ask them to reply to the message with the relevant code. The business texting software will help you categorize customers accordingly.
● Use Phone Code for Segmentation
An easy method is to use the customer’s phone code to determine their location. However, this may not always give you accurate results, especially if you have branches in nearby locations. You may end up sending messages about one location to customers in the nearby region. That said, if your branches are in major cities with distinct codes, you can use this technique.Many businesses use one or all methods to create an accurate customer list based on locations. Location-based targeting is also known as geo-targeting or geo-fencing and is a method used by social media platforms to suggest ads and customize the user experience. You need location-based advertising if you want your message to reach the right people and proportionally increase sales/ revenue for your business.
Advantages of Location-Based Advertising
⮚ Personalized customer experience
⮚ Attract the right customers to the business
⮚ Build and strengthen customer relationships
⮚ Increase engagement rates
⮚ Getter better response
⮚ Amplify return on investment
⮚ Understand your local customers
⮚ The contact database will be up to date
⮚ Save money on advertising
⮚ Integrate with other digital marketing strategies
⮚ Bring more customers to the stores (increase offline sales)
TXTImpact is a leading US-based business text marketing software and solution provider for small and medium businesses. We offer affordable and cost-effective SMS marketing services with end-to-end support services. Our clients belong to various industries like retail, eCommerce, real estate, healthcare, governmental, religious, nonprofit, and many others.
