Utilizing Geotagging for Brick-and-Mortar Stores

By Tracy Tran

For brick-and-mortar stores, business competition can be tough in the modern era. In today’s landscape of consumers, there’s often a lot more competition online. Having only a physical presence as a store isn’t enough. The online landscape allows for even further reach to broader audiences and different consumer bases, and will enable businesses to be convenient for the consumer. Being discoverable can become a path to major success. Visibility means more customers at your doorstep. And this is where geotagging for brick-and-mortar can become your secret weapon. 

Marketing Choices can help you grow your business’s online presence. We can help you understand geotagging and implement it in your marketing plan.

Why Use Geotagging?

Geotagging, or strategically using location data in your online content, can help consumers find your posts. More exposure to the consumer means familiarity, and exposure turns into long-lasting customers. It can help your posts, stories, and ads be presented to consumers in your local area and attract new customers to your door. This means increased local visibility, customer engagement, and tangible business growth with geotagging, helping you reach your larger consumer base. Geotagging combined with SEO and UGC can help drive local sales up. 

What is Geotagging?

Location tagging on social media platforms is when you attach geographical information to your photos, videos, or other posts. Using location features on visual-based platforms often allows your coordinates to be tagged with your posts. This will enable users to see the location in comparison to their location, increasing visibility to those who plan to come to your area or already live in your area. Using geotagging will also help the algorithms on social media platforms associate your posts with other local businesses and local consumers, furthering your visibility. 

How to Use Geotags Across Platforms

If you’re wondering how to use geotags for your business, Marketing Choices is here to help you. One of the ways that you can increase your map discoverability is to combine improving your SEO with geotagging. Consistent local SEO geotagging and geotagging strategies for retail stores, or other small businesses, can help boost your visibility. 

Some other actionable ideas would be creating customer geotags for events or creating consistent events at your business to encourage consistent geotagging. This encourages customer check-ins and can increase familiarity with consistent events related to your business. This also allows you to leverage geofencing for your targeted ads. 

Using location features on visual-based platforms, such as encouraging your customers to take photos or videos, can help geotag your store. Motivating customers to use your geotags will create map visibility and increase your consumer base. In the modern age, authentic user-generated content can be a great marketing strategy and is particularly effective with younger generations. Millennials and Gen Z make up a large portion of the users on social media sites in the 2020s. With Gen Z’s individualism, authentic UGC and social proof of your store will increase your store’s visibility. 

Promoting geotags in-store with different sales tactics can also help increase your visibility. Think about promoting geotags or related hashtags in-store. For example, some restaurants may offer a small discount if consumers post a review. Retail stores may host events and promote geotags and hashtags by offering to repost pictures. Hosting local events at your business can become a profitable business partnership with other local businesses. This exposure to both customers and other businesses can also increase visibility.

Additionally, engaging directly with your consumer base may be an avenue to help maximize your engagement with geotagged customer content. Consistently interacting with User-Generated Content that geotags or hashtags your posts will help customers find your official account. Promotion can become a two-way street between business and consumer. Local customers geotagging means your in-store marketing will spread the word of your brick-and-mortar business to consumers!

Want to Try Geotagging for Brick-and-Mortars?

Digital marketing is now a necessity for all businesses, even if your location is a brick-and-mortar one. Online exposure can add map visibility, increase foot traffic in local businesses, and reach a wider audience. It’s a necessary tool for all businesses, allowing your target audiences to grow.

If you are interested in growing your online presence and seeking information on how to create a marketing plan for geotagging, contact us. From developing a marketing strategy to managing campaigns, Marketing Choices can handle your content marketing and online advertising needs. We are a team of innovative, social, and creative people who deliver colorful solutions for our clients’ marketing plans. Email us here to contact Marketing Choices and learn more about our services. We look forward to helping you through your journey!