IP geolocation segmentation is a crucial aspect of marketing in today’s online world. With e-commerce generating billions of dollars in sales, segmenting IP addresses based on location is a vital strategy for understanding the market better. Furthermore, the future is set to see a huge increase in the number of online buyers with over 2.1 billion people set to shop online by 2021, online businesses need to have a concrete idea of who their customers are. It's especially important because an online business can have shoppers from anywhere in the world, and they need to know where their customers are based. Hence, IP geolocation segmentation and targeting can go hand-in-hand.
What do we mean by ‘targeting’ in marketing
Before diving into IP geolocation segmentation, it is important to understand the way targeting works. Targeting is a marketing strategy that breaks down a huge market into smaller segments and places buyers into specific groups. It helps define a segment of customers based on their unique characteristics. The intention behind targeting is to divide the larger customer base into smaller, more specific segments based on factors like age, income, purchasing habits and any other factor deemed relevant to the company.
Targeting allows companies to get more specific in their marketing by discovering the unique characteristics of each particular segment. Targeting is an essential marketing strategy because it helps companies understand their customers better, attract high-quality leads, build customer loyalty, improve products and even differentiate brands from competitors. Targeting starts with the right data. Businesses need to compile information on demographics, professional roles, values/goals, challenges, and buying decisions. All this information allows them to get a better understanding of their customer base.
Can IP geolocation segmentation help with targeting?
IP geolocation segmentation and targeting can go hand-in-hand because companies can use the geolocation data to generate information on their customers. Location data is especially important for businesses where a good chunk of their sales take place online. IP geolocation segmentation is essentially the process of dividing IP addresses based on city, country and state. Furthermore, private companies can use other technologies, collectively known as IP intelligence, to build on the information found through IP databases. IP intelligence tools, like web spidering, can be used triangulate not just the location, but the connection speed and other characteristics associated with IP address.
IP location segmentation is one of the least intrusive methods of collecting location-based data. While there are other methods of collecting data, none of them prove to be as reliable or as customer friendly. Data collection options like Cookies and HTML 5 interrupt the customer service and prove to be inconvenience visitors rather than empower them. They also play a huge role in the mobile space. Targeting mobile customers separately is important for businesses because more and more purchasing visitors are using mobile to browse through their store. It's important to mention that mobile users require a completely different experience compared to their desktop counterparts - businesses, therefore, have a clear interest in understanding how many of their customers are using mobile phones. This is where IP geolocation segmentation becomes vital. The tracking technology can track the IP address of a mobile device as they shift between internet traffic and is wired differently across different mediums like Wi-Fi and cell towers.
However, identifying customers is just the first step in targeting. Businesses need to cater to region-specific customers with geo-based content, i.e. different content based on the visitor's location. In this regard, IP geolocation segmentation is the perfect tool for targeting because it allows businesses to cater to different segments of the market with certainty. Without geolocation services, it will be difficult to reliably cater to different regional markets.
The importance of geolocation in target marketing
IP geolocation segmentation is a key technique for any business targeting different markets. Due to the volume of competition online, businesses need to devise ways to communicate with their customers via methods that truly resonate with them. One of the best ways to target audiences is with local content. However, it is impossible to automatically track and detect a customer’s location without geo-based technology. IP geolocation segmentation goes hand-in-hand with targeting because it streamlines the process and makes geo-based targeting accessible to businesses of all sizes.
