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We write extensively about geographic website personalization. Whether you’re setting up a geographic redirect or you’re changing website content based on visitor location, we know how to use website personalization in the consideration phase.
With platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Ads (search, display, video), Pinterest Ads, Twitter Ads and Bing, marketers have an easier time than ever targeting users. Demographic targeting, persona targeting, interest targeting and custom intent audience targeting: the average marketer can build campaigns driving highly qualified traffic to their site in the awareness phase.
What separates the good from the great in marketing is the ability to follow the customer through each stage of the growth marketing framework: acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue. Let’s quickly review each stage. Note: this framework comes from Dave McClure of 500 Startups.
Before a company is ready to grow and spend valuable time, money and energy trying to grow, it has to make certain it has product market fit. What does that mean? Casey Winters challenges companies to ask the question: “would your customers be upset if you went away?” If the answer is definitively yes, you may have reached product market fit. Until that time, you and your team need to do things that don’t scale. Onboard new customers by handholding to make sure their application experience is elegant and seamless. Acquire new customers through hand-to-hand combat (not literally) and deliver personalized demos in ways large companies can’t compete. Ready to grow? Read on about the growth marketing framework.
The acquisition stage of marketing is getting new users to your site. How do you get people to hear about your product or service? A great book if you’re struggling in this phase is Traction. In the acquisition stage, you’re focused on things like new users, traffic, clicks, and impressions. With some marketing spend, it can be easy to acquire a lot of new website visitors fast. Search Engine Optimization, paid search, paid social, trade-shows, billboards, TV, radio: these are all channels in the acquisition stage driving potential new customers to your website. Acquisition is glamorous: increasing traffic and watching that number of new users skyrocket. In this stage of marketing, IP targeting, geofencing and geotargeting softwares all surface in different ways. We use IP targeting software to help build GeoFli so we can personalize the message once a users lands on the site. But up until that point, IP targeting and geofencing come from third party targeting platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads. We can geofence cities, regions, states and countries to display a geotargeted message. You’ll notice click-through-rates are much higher for geotargeted ads vs. non-geotargeted messages.
But what happens next? We like to use the following example to illustrate why focusing on the consideration phase can be equally as important. The activation stage is often the most neglected. Here’s an illustration showing what small improvements to UX can do to your conversion rates.Activation is what happens on your site. We’ve talked about improving form completion rates and the power of website personalization. GeoFli lives firmly in this stage: the important seconds between commitment and bouncing. GeoFli keeps users on pages longer, increases pages-per-session and significantly improves conversion rates. Simple personalization changes to images, testimonials and call-to-action buttons can have big impacts on conversion rates. Since all companies have different personas, communicating to all of them on one site can be a huge challenge. That’s why GeoFli exists. We solve the problem of the one-size-fits-nobody website. The first rule most marketers learn is that you can’t be everything to everyone. GeoFli allows marketers to segment their existing website based on user location, persona, demographic or industry.
Keeping existing customers delighted. So often, marketers sit firmly in the acquisition chair and focus on new users, new customers and new business. It’s been said that it costs 10X more money to acquire a new customer than to keep an existing one. Time and time again we see this to be true. Think of all the greatest products, software applications and services in the world. They are fueled by repeat business. Pinterest depends on users having a great experience early. This is called avoiding the cold start. They know if they can get a users to create a pin and follow three others pinners: they’ve got you hooked. Acquisition and activation support gaining new customers. Retention keeps them coming back.When we talk about geographic website personalization in the retention phase, we see successful companies showcasing regional content to existing customers. Pinterest saw an increase in retention when they showed country-cased content on the home-screen for international visitors. Returning website visitors might want to see different content than first time visitors from the same region.
Companies like Uber, AirBnB, and Shopify are experts at the art of referral. We’ve all seen them: give-to-get, refer a friend. These marketing tactics are as old as commerce but made prolific with software-as-a-service and the ease at which you can share coupon codes and referral links. Website personalization and referral based marketing work hand-in-hand. Thinking about sequences in email automation or content strategies can play a big role. Write content aimed at existing customers and clusters or segments of customers based regionally.Thanks for checking out our article on geographic website personalization and how it fits in each stage of the growth marketing framework. We hope it was helpful for you. Curious about what website personalization looks like using your existing website? Fill out the form and we’ll send a personalized version of your website with a few examples of what it could look like. Just complete the form below.
