Most visits to brick-and-mortar stores or service locations originate from within the trade area. Placer.ai’s True Trade Area provides a highly-accurate representation of precisely where visitors are coming from – based on visitors’ home or work locations and actual visitation data. Keeping the majority of advertising within the trade area is the most efficient way of making the most out of ad dollars. Keep advertising where the majority of customers come from, and be efficient with spend so that you can message frequently enough to improve brand awareness and recall.

After reading this article, you will understand five data driven, local advertising strategies that are designed to drive more foot traffic to your locations:

1. Keep the majority of advertising within each store’s unique trade area
2. For specific stores with smaller trade areas, spend a portion of your ad budget growing the size of the trade area
3. Be a data ninja and identify areas within your trade area where you have lost foot traffic year over year.  Reclaim these areas by understanding the impact of competition, and executing a marketing message that addresses the competition or matches the dominant psychographic
4. Go after the competition by identifying specific areas within your trade area where the competition is the most fierce
5. Capitalize on pockets within your trade area that are growing, and identify more areas like that

Even though these are sophisticated, data driven marketing strategies, Placer has packaged these insights into simple reports that plug and play directly into ad platforms like Facebook and Google and are easy to execute.

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Step 1: Open the Geo-Targeting Planner XTRA report

Once you open the Geo-Targeting Planner XTRA Report, hit the "Download" button in the upper right hand corner.

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Trade Area Health Tab

• The first set of zip code data represents the number of zip codes responsible for 100% of visits to each store over the past year.  This data isn’t used for targeting, but it’s a good snapshot of how wide a geography your store draws traffic from, and also helps gauge the tourism aspect.  
• The second set of zip code data represents each store’s unique True Trade Area.  This data represents the zip codes where 70% of the visits to your store come from.  This is where you want to focus a majority of your advertising dollars since this is where so much of your business lives.  
• The third set of zip code data represents the best opportunities to grow your trade area.  There are some stores with small trade areas that are highly susceptible to competitive threats, and you want to spend some advertising dollars to grow the size of those trade areas.  This set of data identifies where the next 10% of your traffic is coming from (where 71% to 80% of traffic comes from).  
• The Trade Area data plus the Growth Area data covers 80% of all the visits to your store.   

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True Trade Area

• This tab represents the unique trade area of every store.  
• The data are the zip codes that generate 70% of your business
• Copy and paste the zip codes in column B directly into your ad buying platform to keep the advertising within your trade area (e.g., Facebook or Google) 

Placer recommendation:  Allocate between 50% and 75% of your budget to trade area advertising

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True Trade Area Growth

• This tab represents the best opportunity to increase the size of a store’s unique trade area
• The data are the zip codes that represent that next 10% of traffic, outside of your trade area.  
• If you combine the zip codes on the Growth Essentials tab with the zip codes in the Trade Area Essentials tab, these are the areas that are responsible for 80% of your business
• Select the specific stores where you want to grow the size of your trade area, and copy and paste the relevant zip codes from column B directly into your ad buying platform to keep the advertising within your trade area (e.g., Facebook or Google) 

‍Placer recommendation:  Allocation between 5% - 15% of budget to increase the size of trade areas for specific stores with smaller trade areas

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Reclaim YoY Area Loss

This tab represents a Year over Year (YoY) comparison of every zip code within the prior year’s trade area.  In other words, it compares the foot traffic from every zip code in your trade area two years ago, compared to the foot traffic from that zip code from the last year

Use the data on this tab in two ways:

• Identify the zip codes where you have lost business over the last year

• Identify the zip codes where you have gained business over the last year

For zip codes where you have lost business:

• Use the data in the Audience Essential tab to understand the dominant psychographic that lives in the zip code so that you can match the right creative message to the right zip code.  The reason you lost business might be because of shifting demographics in the zip code
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• Use the Visit Share data in the Geo-Targeting Planner XTRA report to understand your competitive visit share for each zip code.  The reason you lost business might be due to a new competitor coming in and stealing market share.  

For zip codes where you have won business:

• Use the data in the Audience Essential tab to see what psychographics you are winning, and use that data to target more zip codes that have the same dominant psychographic

• As always, in order to execute the strategy and buy media, simply copy and paste the relevant zip codes from column B directly into your ad buying platform to keep the advertising within your trade area (e.g., Facebook or Google)

Placer recommendation:  Allocate between 10% and 20% of budget to specifically reclaim areas where you have lost traffic, and use the Audience Essentials and Geo-Targeting Planner XTRA data to determine the best marketing creative to reclaim that business. 

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Competitive Areas

Use the Competitive Areas tab to identify zip codes where you have a specific percentage of visit share compared to a competitor.  Battleground zip codes might be zip codes where you have between 10% and 40% of visit share.

Targeted Audience

If you added an Audience Demographic when you configured the Geo-Targeting Planner report during the setup, the zip codes that met all of your conditions are presented here.  If you wish to remove the "AND" condition, go to the "Target Audience" section in the UI to remove the AND statement.

Placer recommendation: Allocate between 10% and 20% of budget to specifically target zip codes based on competitive or demographic strategies. Use creative messaging to specifically call out differences between you and competition, or strike an emotional bond with a certain demographic

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‍Step 2: Upload target zip codes to your preferred digital buying platform

Use the exported top zips list to precisely geotarget your digital media campaigns. Many digital and programmatic buying platforms allow you to copy and paste zip codes for targeting.  Below are a few examples.

In DV360: Use the “regional targeting” feature. Click the “+” sign to paste in a list of line-separated zip codes. For more information, visit this DV360 support link.

In Google Ads: Open Google Ads Manager and create or select a campaign. Within your "Campaign settings", expand "Locations" and select "Enter another location". Then click on "Advanced Search". Check "Add locations in bulk", and paste in your list of target zip codes.

In Meta Ads Manager: Open Meta Ads Manager and select a campaign objective for your ad set. Go to Audience and select your source audience. Then go to Locations and follow the prompts. For more information, visit these Meta support links: Use Location Targeting and Bulk Upload Formats for Location Targeting

The following video walks through the process of geotargeting campaigns in Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager:

Step 3: Refresh your data quarterly (or at least semi-annually)

Be sure to refresh the zip codes at least every three months to make sure you account for any changes in your trade area.

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Simple to Use

Placer’s Local Advertising program is simple to use.  Once you have selected your data strategies, simply copy and paste the relevant zip codes directly into your ad buying platform to keep the advertising within your trade area (e.g., Facebook or Google).  Nearly all platforms where you run advertising campaigns have a “Location” button where you can copy and paste zip codes directly into.  

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Budget Allocations

As a general rule, $500 per store per month buys 5K ads in your trade area per day (assumes a $3 CPM).  Placer has several data driven strategies on how to best allocate that budget so that you are nurturing your overall trade area, but also have budget left over for more tactical strategies.  

A default budget recommendation is as follows.  How you ultimately decide to allocate your budget depends on factors such as how much time you have to allocate to different strategies and how many different creatives you have.  The less time you have, the more you will want to keep it simple and make sure you nurture and own your trade area (or trade area + growth area)

• Nurture your trade area:  50% to 75% of your budget
• Grow your trade area for specific stores:  5% to 15% of your budget
• Reclaim parts of your trade area where you have lost budget:  10% to 20%
• Specifically go after the competition in battleground zip codes:  10% to 20%
• Replicate success of zip codes where you have gained recent momentum: 10% to 20%

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Creative Diversity

Advertising is about creating an emotional connection to audiences that may be interested in your product, and putting that message in front of them enough times that they remember your brand (many studies show you need anywhere between 3 - 7 impressions before a consumer will remember your brand).  

To this end, it is important to have a couple different creatives so that you can personalize a message to a specific audience.  A very simple example is to have a creative that caters to different life stages:  

• Young professionals and singles
• Families with young children in the house
• Empty nesters or retirees 

There are other dimensions like HHI or competitive differentiation that may guide your different creative messages, but life stage is a simple way of starting.

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