ePOWER TIP: (full story)
Targeting Your Market like Never Before ...
By now, we all know about the importance of targeting
when it comes to your website. After all, the needs and
desires of someone moving across town are very different
than those of one moving across country. So how can you
speak to both local and relocating prospects? Use the
power of automatic GeoTargeting.
What Is GeoTargeting?
GeoTargeting is a way to dynamically deliver
content based off of a visitor’s location. Say,
for instance, you are sitting at your computer in
.
GeoTargeting “knows” your location and therefore
can display graphics and text that are relevant
to
.
So how does this work in the real world? One
example would be to offer truly unique
compelling offers such as a “Moving From
Kit” instead of a generic relocation guide.
Stop Trying to Sell Ice to an Eskimo
GeoLocation gives you the ability to only
display information that is important to your
site visitor. After all, someone halfway across
the country has about as much need for your
local moving van as an Eskimo for more ice. With
this in mind, you could actually set up two home
pages on your site. Visitors from your local
area would see a home page with specific local
information while out-of-town visitors would see
a separate home page specific for relocating.
You don’t even have to give out different links;
your server would automatically recognize the
visitor’s location and serve up the appropriate
home page.
How It Works
(Warning: Geek Speak)
ISPs (Internet Service Providers) assign
computers an IP Address (think of this like a
phone number). ISPs track these IP addresses to
their nearest host. So in reality, it doesn’t
know the actual computer’s location but rather
the host location. Luckily, most people live
near their hosts, so this form of targeting
works quite well.
It’s Not Perfect
While GeoTargeting is fairly accurate, it’s
not perfect. Because of this, I would keep your
content based on areas instead of specific
cities. For example, my GeoTargeting code thinks
that you are in or around
This means that 98% of you see the correct
Country; 86% see the correct region (State or
Province); and 80% see the correct city.
Getting Started with GeoTargeting
There are many sites that offer both free and
paid IP Address Databases (this is what makes
GeoTargeting work). You will probably need to
solicit the help of your web developer to
implement the code and database. Don’t worry; a
good programmer should not have trouble doing
this for you. After the programming is in place
the possibilities to target your market are
endless!
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