What is geo-targeting

Location-based technology – namely location data, geo-targeting and geofilters – is opening up a world of possibilities for marketers. Yet it is also complicated as new capabilities and use cases seem to emerge every day. With the goal of breaking down some of the most important “geo” concepts to provide a better understanding of the basics and a jumping off point for exploring how far the power of location may take us.

What does geo-targeting mean?

Geo-targeting is the practice of delivering content to users based on their geographic locations. This can be done on the city via IP address or device ID or even through GPS signals and geo-fencing.

Marketers geotarget users on their mobile devices, making it easier to deliver relevant and engaging ad content. The idea is that the more relevant an ad or offer is, the more likely it is to drive sales up sharply for businesses.

How does geo-targeting apply?

The central idea behind geo-targeting is that understanding consumer real-time. Location helps marketers achieve an ultimate goal of delivering the right message to precisely the right people at exactly the right time.

Geo-targeting doesn’t have to be solely based on a consumer’s real-time location. Locations or businesses a customer has visited recently can maker marketers accurately predict their interests and intent and therefore adding targeting based on their location can be essential to delivering a captivating message.

For NDN Group, we have worked with McCafé – owned by Mcdonald’s – that piloted coffee delivery service in Hong Kong, exclusively available on the McCafé App. We have helped McCafé to launch a large-scale advertising campaign on social media with geo-targeting, an advertising effort combining online and offline technology based on geographic location.

We have activated seamless touch points in specific areas in Hong Kong to identify target audience in three core business districts – Central, Causeway Bay, and Quarry Bay. Seamless touch points were placed at all the McCafé branches in the above locations, plus some of the nearby commercial buildings and competitor stores, gaining more data on insightful analysis over competitors and mapping out ads campaigns. Whenever someone carrying a mobile device passes by one of the touchpoints, anonymized data of that device will be captured instantly. We’ve captured over 500,000 device ID. Then we pushed McCafé offer “Buy 4 coffee, get 2 free” via Facebook to target audience. We have also conducted A/B testing to maximize ROI and to refine our creative designs and improve user experience.

Meanwhile, we have worked with fast food franchise Subway on the promotion of Everyday Value, a combo launched to compete with fellow fast food chain’s meal set deals. With some 20 stores in Hong Kong, Subway was set for an effective online campaign that reached out to the right customers in the right place with the help of geo-targeting. 

We have activated seamless touch points at 18 of Subway stores and some of its nearby competitor brick and mortar stores, collecting anonymised data from the mobile phones of visitors every day. This system effectively identifies potential customers and classifies them into different segments, allowing us to re-target ads on Google Display Network, Facebook, Line and Weibo accordingly. 

Why geo-targeting is the key to greater ROI

Geo-targeting is key to greater ROI as it offers a personalized customer experience, delivering ads, offers and shopping information to an overwhelming number of high-potential customers. The technology monetizes online social networks and offline location data to drive brand engagement and actual sales at the same time.

Throughout geo-targeting, businesses lure consumers in a highly targeted area rather than wasting money on people outside region. Consumers generally want ads customized to their specific location.

When consumers want to know more about a business, they expect to find them on the major social networks – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. This boosts credibility and trust. Make choosing you easier by being visible and attainable.

With a location-based marketing platform, businesses have the power to build these custom audiences to achieve their goal to deliver the right message to precisely the right people at exactly the right time. A great geo-targeting campaign requires excellent creative and messaging. Without a relevant and engaging message, audience targeting may produce less impactful results.

Digital transformation is forcing enterprises to change their business strategies and adapt to the new market models. Digital technology has transformed customers’ habits. Mobile devices, chatbot, apps, machine learning, automation allow customers to get what they want almost exactly at the moment they need it. Customers expect relevant content in relation to what they’re doing and on the device of their choosing. Enterprises must embrace technology to deliver a good customer experience.

In this era of disruptive technological change, products and services that are cutting edge one day are outdated the next. In this context, the unmatched customer experience a company offers is increasingly its differentiator. Advanced digital technologies have caused a shift in customer expectations, leading to the sharp rise of new kind of modern buyers. Due to the opportunities that rise from using modern technology, consumers rank businesses based on digital customer experience. Digital first requires entrepreneurs to rethink how they better interact with their customers and offer good customer support.

Mr. Andy Ann, Founder and CEO of NDN Group, said, “It is of utmost priority for entrepreneurs and business leaders to fully understand the customers’ unique needs and enhance their customer experience through the adoption of digital marketing and technologies. Businesses have to deploy right technologies to understand and get a whole picture of why a customer made a certain decision as well as garner consumer insight.”

Leverage right technology to power up digital strategies

Having the right technology to power up digital strategies is fundamental in business world. By easily connecting SaaS applications such as customer databases, Big Data analytics, web and mobile apps, companies can digitally record all touch-points to create a holistic view of customers and deliver customer experience strategy.

At NDN Group, one such campaign we have successfully launched is for Blue, a digital insurer partnership by Aviva, Hillhouse Capital and Tencent. We have deployed 360-degree touchpoints covering social media, video production, web/mobile production, SEO/SEM, as well as innovative technologies namely cognitive ads, an AI chatbot capable of suggesting interest-based offers to engage users individually and generate sales leads. Cognitive Ad helps us understand consumers’ needs and interests by deploying the latest AI-enabled interactive advertising on websites and WeChat.

With our Cognitive Ad technology, we use massive consumer data and a powerful AI-engine to build industry specific ads that are easy to implement and customize. Our ready-to-go and pre-configured dialogues allow your campaigns to run smarter, engage customers faster and improve conversions over 300%.

Seamless omni-channel customer experience

Technology has empowered customers to get what they want, whenever they want, and how they want it. Omni-channel customer experience involves using multiple channels to engage customers. When businesses use social media, blogs, the web, videos and other channels to engage customers, they must ensure delivery of a seamless message across all touchpoints to maximize customer experience.

In fact, content types are versatile and diverse content can be specially curated to fit into different channels. Sites like YouTube will provide a better video sharing experience, Pinterest offers a brilliant experience to users interested in product photographs and other kinds of images, and you can find other website aimed at other types of contents. A blog is a very versatile tool, as it allows you to publish all kinds of contents, from text contents to embedded videos, audio images.

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It is the process of using digital technologies to create new business processes, models, culture, and customer experiences to meet ever-changing market demands.

Digital transformation is imperative for all businesses, from the startups to the giant enterprises. Thinking, planning and building digitally sets your business up to be agile, flexible, and ready to grow. What’s not clear to many enterprises is what digital transformation means.

Technology plays a crucial role in an organization’s’ ability to evolve with the market and continually increase value to customers. Organizations are in different places on the road to digital transformation. One of the hardest questions in digital transformation is how to get over the initial humps from vision to execution.

What is digital transformation?
As digital transformation will look different for every company, it can be difficult to pinpoint a definition that applies to all. Digital transformation can be defined as the integration of digital technology into all areas of business operations and delivering good customer experiences. The Agile Elephant emphasizes the ways businesses need to adjust their practices: “Digital transformation involves a change in leadership, mindset, business models, and digital assets to improve the experience of the organization’s employees, customers, suppliers, partners and stakeholders.”Andy Ann, Founder and CEO of NDN Group, said, “Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer experiences. Businesses don’t transform by choice because it is expensive and risky. Businesses go through transformation when they have to innovate and evolve. Seamless customer experience is one of the most important discriminating factors for how a business will perform and succeed.”

Why does digital transformation matter?
A business may take on digital transformation for various reasons. But by far, the most likely reason is that they have to: It’s a survival issue for many. Digital transformation does not simply mean changing how you do business or creating new types of businesses. It’s about keeping the core competence, and using faster and better ways to instantly access customer data and not trapped somewhere in an archive.

Think of customer service, whether in retail or a call centre. Digitalization changed service forever by making customer records easily and quickly retrievable via automation. Customer service has not changed, but the process of searching customer data and offering a resolution became much more efficient with automation.

For example, deploying an automated customer Chatbot will allow businesses to automate customer service live chat conversations. According to IBM, up to 80% of routine customer service questions could be answered by a simple AI Chatbot. Chatbots can be trained to respond to customer service questions and provide fast solutions, 24/7.

Enterprise leaders have largely gotten the message and are prioritizing accordingly. At NDN, we have deployed and used AI technologies including machine learning and natural language processing for a local bank (Hang Seng Bank), creating a virtual assistant that is able to simulate human-like contextual conversations and interact with the bank’s customers. The Chatbot can communicate in Chinese and English, and can also understand Cantonese as well as the mixing of English and Chinese. Through interacting with customers, the Chatbot will continuously improve their ability to address customer inquiries.

It is widely expected that worldwide spending on technologies services that enable digital transformation will reach US$1.97 trillion in 2022, per the (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Digital Transformation Spending Guide. IDC predicts that digital transformation spending will grow steadily, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate of 16.7 percent between 2017 and 2022.

IDC predicts that, by 2020, 30 percent of Global 2000 companies will have allocated capital budget equal to at least 10 percent of revenue to fuel their digital strategies. Advanced analytics is the number-one digital investment – with enterprises planning to increase related deployments by 75 percent during the next 12 to 18 months.

Organizations are at different places in the digital transformation journey. Business leaders face pressure to show that digital transformation initiatives and strategies continue to translate to increased agility and speed for the entire organization. Fostering seamless customer experience has become a crucial goal and thus a crucial part of digital transformation.

What does digital transformation framework look like?

Digital transformation changes widely based on an organization’s challenges and demands. Yet, there are a few constants and common themes among published frameworks that all business leaders should consider when initiating digital transformation.

These digital transformation elements are cited in a wide array of aspects over customer experience, operational agility, culture, leadership, workforce enablement and digital integration. Below are a few examples of digital transformation frameworks include:

· MIT Sloan: The Nine Elements of Digital Transformation

· Cognizant: A Framework for Digital Business Transformation

· Ionology: A Step-By-Step Guide to Digital Transformation

· IDEO: The Human-Centered Design Toolkit

While each guide has its own recommendations and varying considerations, leaders should look for those important themes when mapping out their own digital strategy.

Adapt business to leverage digital transformation

Digital transformations have reshaped how companies approach customer service and enhance user experience. The rise of social media has changed service much like it’s changed advertising, marketing, and even sales and customer service. Forward-thinking companies embrace technologies, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, and social media to extend their service offerings to customers on their platforms.

What happens when Digital Transformation creates Exponential Growth?

It is not that we don’t know exponential growth is coming due to digital transformation. What we misunderstand is the speed at which it comes. At Singularity University, Peter Diamandis talks about the Moore’s Law and the speed of technology accelerating our entire economy. In conclusion, we advise leaders to dive deep into the process of creating powerful tools for scaling the business and stay competitive among competitions.

At NDN Group, we are constantly experimenting with new technologies. So, when Facebook announced the launch of the “Chatbots for Messenger”, we decided to build one on own! There was just one problem, what would our bot do?

I mean, if you are a magazine… your bot can show articles. If you are an airline… your bot can help your passengers check-in. But if you are an agency… what is the bot supposed to do?

… and then it hit us!

A few days later, we would be hosting the “NDN Academy” a 4 days digital marketing Bootcamp for the top marketing professionals in Hong Kong. What if we could create a chatbot to interact with them? So, that is what we did!

As any good experience, the first part of the journey should be training the user. So we prepared our bot to show short “icebreakers”, in order to engage the user to continue.

  

In case the user couldn’t come up with anything to ask, we prepared three alternatives in the menu below: “Who are the speakers?”, “What are the 6 Mega Trend?” & “Surprise me!”.

If the user asked “Who are the speakers?”. The bot then introduced them shortly with a picture. Here is only one example of our many speakers:

 

If the user asked: “What are the 6 Mega Trend?”, the bot tricked them into being curious about the topic. The answer was never the same!

  

Cool functions, right? But those were just the fundamentals. By making use of the right infrastructure, our bot was prepared to ask question during the talks, do surveys, , collect results and even see analytics on how many people had the chatbot activate. This and many other features of chatbot building,  were only available to the administrators:

In short, it was an amazing medium to engage our audience. Of course, this is only one of many “use cases”. If you want to find out more about how chatbots can improve your organization, we are the first chatbot building company in Hong Kong!

Like this article? Read “How Bots are taking over Business!” to learn more about the chatbot benefits and uses.