Geo-Conquesting: Take market share away from competitors
Updated: Feb 18
Geo-conquesting is the marketing strategy of attracting a competitor's customers through location-based ads. Alluring customers where they shop, dine, or attend specific events with physical and digital media can be a compelling way to convince someone.
Whether the competitor is direct or indirect, you want to win over their customer base. For examples:
A new coffee shop in town wants to let the regulars at a coffee chain down the street know it's now open for business.
An amusement park wants to send special offers to families who frequent the zoo, children's museums, and other family-fun attractions in the region.
An auto repair shop is competing for market share against similar auto repair shops in the area.
A burger restaurant wants to take up burger wars with its direct competitors.
A retailer that launches a new line of products wants to compete with retailers typically known for that product category.
Craft your Marketing message
First, you must have your marketing messaging down. In this case, your competitor's customers, understanding your audience is essential. Personalize the campaign by highlighting a value proposition your brand offers – but your competitor doesn't. Give the audience why your brand is relevant to their daily lives. Offering a discount or a new customer reward may motivate a buyer to give your brand a try.
Once you have your message aligned with the competitor's audience, you can consider geo-conquesting tactics to aim that message at your target audience.
Use Out of Home Marketing Strategy
Use place-specific out-of-home media formats to reach the audience when they're close to the competitor's location. Mobile billboards, for example, can drive very near the competitor's site. Out-of-home media provides an opportunity for a significant physical presence, using striking imagery and meaningful headlines. We spend approximately 70% of our time away from home, so out-of-home marketing effectively gains reach with media that can't be skipped or blocked.
Use Display Ads
Integrating your out-of-home campaign with digital marketing is an intelligent approach. Mobile display advertising can hone in on your target audience and reinforce the message in another channel. Display ads with clear calls-to-action can offer tap-to-map, click-to-call, or mobile coupons. The display ad campaign often performs much better when integrated with other media.
Geofencing your competitor locations allows you to serve display ads to mobile devices while someone is at the competitor store. If I'm searching for tips on which vitamins to buy while I'm at the pharmacy and served a coupon for a competitor store, I may click through and opt to purchase my vitamins there for less.
Use Historical Targeting
What's a stronger appeal, however, is using historical location targeting. You can curate an audience based on past location visits to your competitor. Want to reach someone who's visited a specific store in the past 30, 60, or 90 days? With location data, you can. Regardless of where they are now, you can reach them based on past locations they visited. Gone are the days when you have to wait for a customer to walk into your business again to market to them.
Build Geofence
Another digital marketing method for geo-conquesting is through Facebook's Drop Pin option when scheduling your social ads. You can find this tool under the audiences section in locations. Zoom in on the map and click 'drop a pin' at the place you want to target. Or you can bulk upload several custom locations to your Facebook campaign at once.
No matter how granular you target digitally, don't forget that adding out-of-home media formats is critical in driving a successful geo-conquesting campaign.
To discuss an integrated geo-conquesting campaign for your brand or business, you can talk to us about how we help businesses gain the attention of your competitor's customers and grow their market share.