Geo-enabled promotions can be extremely efficient ways of reaching a specific group of potential customers through both traditional and digital marketing. However, you need to identify first where these potential customers live and work. That’s where data-gathering, whether by old or new methods, comes to its own.

Census Data

With 56 questions per household, the census gathers a great deal of data that can be broken down by council ward. This includes demographics, education, occupations and transport activity. While the data is publicly available, third-party specialist analytics services can help drill down the data more efficiently. There is a caveat here:the census data is from 2011 and it’s not yet confirmed if or when the next census will take place).

QR Codes

QR codes can be useful for discovering customer location. Using different codes for different posters, signs or other location-specific promotion tools makes it easy to run a test campaign and see which locations triggered the most interest. One drawback is that this increases marketing material production costs as you can’t simply reproduce materials in bulk. Another drawback is that QR codes are only suited to customer familiar with them and happy to use them.

Location Based Social Media

Social media sites such as Facebook have made their fortune by selling ultra-targeted marketing; a would-be Facebook advertiser can set different combinations of user demographics and interests and immediately see how many potential Facebook users a relevant message would reach, in other words how many match a ‘chosen buyer persona’. With no need to actually book an ad, it’s easy to find out whether, for example, Facebook has more professional females in their 30s with a university degree and living in Leeds than in Manchester.

The days of firms having to struggle with insufficient data on potential customers are long gone. The trick now is finding the right way to analyse the widely available data in an efficient manner.