Local targeting, which is also known as geo-targeting or geo-tagging, allows insurance agencies to define who sees their posts and promoted ads on social media platforms based on where their intended audience is located. These platforms rely on the IP address or the address from where the user logs in, as well as where the user has told the platform they are located, to help agencies identify who will see their content.
By using geo-targeting, agencies can get more focused with their audiences, which works well for certain types of posts and ads.
“You can get more specific with your message based on what area you’re targeting, and when you are able to get more specific with your message, your engagement rate goes up because you’re not sharing that message with people who may not care about it,” said Becky Schroeder, chief marketing officer at Insurance Technologies Corporation (ITC).
Find out more: Learn all about ITC here.
For instance, if an insurance agency has multiple locations, and they are sharing pictures from an event held at their New Mexico office, people who are not in that area would likely not engage as much with the content via comments or likes. However, if the agency geo-targeted that post to just people who are located in New Mexico, they’re going to see more engagement than they would if they blasted it out to all of their followers, explained Schroeder.
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Social media platforms allow users to geo-target in different ways. Facebook and LinkedIn allow users to geo-target an actual post and not just an ad, while Twitter only allows geo-targeting on promoted ads. Users can also search through the entire United States or go down to the state or city level when deciding on how to geo-target their content.
Nonetheless, there are also a few do-not-do’s of using geo-targeting. “I wouldn’t recommend geo-tagging every post – only the ones where [the content is] more specific to a local area and where you only want to reach that audience,” noted Schroeder. “Also, you want to be aware that Facebook uses an automated auction. That means if there are other nearby businesses targeting the same area, the cost for those ads could be higher because of the bidding competition.”
As a result, she continued, agencies want to do their homework by looking at what Facebook is recommending and showing what that bid might end up being.
On the other hand, “When you’re doing your regular organic posts, you can geo-target as much as you want,” Schroeder said, though she cautioned, “I still don’t know that it’s necessary to do it on every post, unless every post you do is related to something local.”
