The first step in the advertising campaign: position positioning

A few days ago, I rode a glass elevator in a building in a busy Chicago area. As I looked down, I found a piece of information on the sidewalk with chalk. This message is about a theatrical company that performs in the lower right-hand corner. The information even includes an arrow telling the audience how to get to the theatre. I wouldn't be surprised if the ad attracted a lot of potential customers to the theater door.

This is the power of position positioning. It can make the audience match the advertisement and generate the effective traffic. Without geo-positioning strategies, creative investment could be squandered. In general, it can also determine whether an advertising campaign is a failure or an effective return on investment.

Planning Local Activities

In the digital field, many media outlets have location-positioning functions, such as local content sites (such as online newspapers), local search, group buying sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, social media (such as Twitter and Foursquare). Recently, social media has ushered in a new era. In position positioning, these positioning activities should be independent of existing strategies, such as other search advertising and social media marketing strategies. In other words, even if you use local content sites and searches--more specifically behavioral positioning, content positioning, and relocation--to cover existing and potential customers, you should also put local ads to connect those who think your product is the most relevant and convenient to consumers.

This is very important, even if your product or service is applicable to everyone-people can buy online or offline, regardless of location. Local consumers can be said to be very valuable resources, because through close contact and preference for local flavor, they are most likely to feel the affinity of the brand. They are often the most likely buyers and become brand ambassadors, recommending your product in their own local circle.

New Trends Create new opportunities

More recently, Google has made some improvements to its AdWords platform's position-positioning function, offering more choice and flexibility to media buyers. Marketers can now locate or exclude certain ads based on the location of the consumer or the location of interest (enter the name of the Google search box). As Google explains, companies can use these new features to cater to consumers: regardless of whether the company's positioning information appears in the search box, only search users near the enterprise can see the corporate ads. Similarly, if the enterprise's products are mainly applicable to local consumers (such as furniture and other big-ticket items, not easy to field delivery), enterprises can be based on the user's geographical location, excluding and enterprises in the same location users receive corporate advertising.

And in the social arena, marketers are increasingly recognizing the benefits of using services such as Twitter: not only to attract followers, but also to aggressively track and attract targeted users-local Twitter users. For example, using Google, and the search terms that link Twitter with its location, can create a list of Twitter users in the corporate location. Once you have identified these users, you can follow them and cover them with appropriate introductions. You can also use Twitter to achieve a similar effect-tracking the ideal Twitter user with keywords that best reflect your target audience. If all goes well, and these users will follow you in turn, your posts, like AdWords ads, can be a web version of sidewalk propaganda: casual and real, and most importantly, geographically relevant.

If you are advertising on a local content site, or if you plan an ad campaign on a group purchase site, there is a common rule that applies to attracting new customers with preferential policies, but relies on customer relationship management to keep these customers. Whether you're attracting customers to your site through display ads on local news sites or Groupon deals, encouraging them to sign up for your email newsletter, reading your blog, and following your social media activities will have a further impact on local consumers, It also reduces the sense of distance between them and their brands to the national consumers who are unfamiliar with the brand.

Try putting your next campaign into a sidewalk-like chalk event. In order to show the consumer, position is only the first step, a solid positioning strategy, social media active use and good brand experience to achieve your ultimate goal.

(Original: April 21, 2011, compiled: Zeng Cui)