An overview of differentiating regional analysis and geo-targeting

Excerpts from a whitepaper on Regional Marketing. To download the full study click here. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download free by clicking on this badge >

A Strategic Geographic Approach

Segmentation and targeting are two key elements of marketing that should take place prior to any promotional effort. Given the expense of modern advertising and promotion, some percentage of the marketing budget should be devoted to these marketing planning exercises to help optimize marketing spend.

For instance, the law of diminishing returns is well known in marketing circles, but seldom applied. Unfortunately at many companies marketing budgets are often evenly distributed across geographies with disregard for local market conditions (such as growth saturation). A better approach would be to invest the time and effort to understand which local or regional markets have the greatest opportunities to grow market share or to expand category size and then to execute accordingly...

Analysis

Geo-centric Quadrants

In developing a geo-targeting strategy, consideration should be given to a) how the brand is performing locally and b) how per capita usage compares up to national averages.

Brand analysis is typically done by comparing the performance of the brand against a particular target in relation to the category's performance against the same target elsewhere...