Tourist Targeting: Essentials of Location-Based Marketing
We write a great deal about digital marketing for dispensaries here at MediaJel: About how leveraging cutting-edge tools like SMS marketing, PPC campaigns, and influencer marketing can deliver outsize results when properly executed. Display ads, by comparison, aren’t a new kind of tool. Rather, they’re a refinement of digital display ads, already one of the pillars of a well-designed multi-channel marketing approach.
Display ads—sometimes called “banner ads”—are the graphic-based advertisements that appear in apps or websites that have licensed space for such purposes. One of their “hidden powers” is that they appear in places that might not appear to directly relate to your business. The surprise of seeing a dispensary ad within, say, an interactive map for a sports complex can be remarkably effective in prompting spur-of-the-moment sales.
There are any number of ways to target when, where, and how these display ads appear. But while display ads are still a relatively new addition to the digital marketing toolkit, they’ve quickly emerged as one of the most potent. Here are some examples of the ways they can be used:
- Constraining display ads to a radius around your dispensary. Because a high percentage of dispensary sales are made by consumers on the go, targeting their mobile devices when they’re in close proximity to you increases the chance of a sale.
- Running display ads around a competitor’s dispensary. The same tactic can be flipped to target the competition. Do you have a more alluring offer or a can’t-miss promotion? Letting consumers know right when they’re ready to buy can win you the sale. (And rewarding those new customers for giving you a shot can land you a valued patron for life.)
- Reaching out to cannabis tourists. Until cannabis is legal on the federal level—a change that’s in the works but by no means imminent—”cannabis tourism” will continue to be a draw for travellers. Targeting your ads to transit hubs, rental car facilities and other areas can meet those consumers at precisely the right time.
- Landmarks advertising. Similarly, careful research can reveal the landmarks and locations your target market is likely to congregate. Find them, reach out to them with offers they can’t turn down, and watch the sales roll in.
Tourist Targeting: Maximizing Impact
Of course, simply enabling display ads isn’t the end of the story. They’re an incredibly powerful tool but like any instrument, they demand careful and targeted use. Here are some of the tactics we’ve used over the years to target, refine, and ultimately maximize our clients’ efforts.
As we hinted above, understanding your customers’ behaviors, tastes and shopping patterns is crucial. Collecting your customers’ data and organizing it into the datasets known as customer personas can give you invaluable intelligence about the locations they may be concentrated in.
On the same note, those precisely calibrated display ads won’t do you much good if they don’t entice consumers to take action. That’s why it’s vital that you craft compelling CTAs (calls to action) that actually inspire a reaction. When you write sharp and concise ad copy and include compelling CTAs, you can see your geo-targeted ads outperform your wildest expectations.
Finally, geotargeted ads can also be customized with call extensions and location extensions to better maximize their effectiveness. Location extensions display your address to prospects, while call extensions display your phone number.
Why is this important? Again, it’s all about the details. Instead of just directing potential customers to a landing page, these kinds of extensions allow them to reach you directly. By calibrating your ads to the specific actions you’d like consumers to take when they’re most likely to take them, you stand a far greater chance of delivering exactly what they’re looking for.
Want to learn more about dispensary display ad? Schedule a call today.
