Want to implement a localized marketing strategy but don’t know where to focus your efforts? City-level data is just what you need.
This type of data can be pivotal in creating and refining your strategy, as it shows you where your efforts are the most popular and highlights consumer behavior patterns. This can be the advantage you need to realize significant regional business growth.
Understanding how customers engage with your brand at a city level can help your marketing team glean the insights it needs to optimize its strategy. Keep reading to learn how to leverage city-level in your marketing efforts.
What is city-level data?
City-level data gives you a visual snapshot of your link engagement at the local level. Let’s say you create a link and share it across your brand’s channels. With Bitly, you’ll be able to see the top city locations of the people clicking that link—whether that’s Washington, DC; San Francisco; New York; Hong Kong; London; or Topeka, Kansas!
You can collect city-level data through various sources, including surveys, bodies like the U.S. Census Bureau, and analytics platforms like Bitly. It can help you understand market trends, consumer behavior, demographic trends, and the success of your marketing efforts within a specific city.
The key difference between city-level data and broader geographical data lies in the scope of information provided.
City-level data comprises datasets from specific urban areas or cities, whereas global data encompasses data from larger geographic areas like countries and continents. If you need market visualizations from, say, Canada, Brazil, or America as a whole, geographic data is your best option.
Benefits of a localized marketing strategy with city-level datasets
Is data filtering by city worthwhile? Definitely! It allows you to develop a localized marketing strategy rooted in real-life data. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits you stand to gain.
Increased relevance and engagement
Have you ever launched a campaign expecting it to go viral, only to register less-than-average engagement levels? Chances are, your creativity isn’t the problem. Many marketers register low engagement rates simply because their content isn’t relevant to their target audiences.
With city-level data, you never have to worry about performing for the wrong crowd. It shows you what local audiences are interested in, allowing you to create content and offers that resonate with your target audience and boost your engagement rates.
Better customer insights
Wondering what your customers want? City-level data can help you narrow down what they value. It provides deep insights into local consumer behavior, preferences, and trends, allowing you to tailor your offerings more effectively.
Say you’ve done your research and found that customers value high-quality content from their brands. You then have to choose the perfect medium to deliver your message—do you offer video tutorials, blogs, or infographics?
With city-level data, you don’t have to guess and hope for the best. You can assess the numbers to identify the content that resonates with the audience in your target city.
Competitive advantages
The average business has roughly 29 competitors. While 29 doesn’t seem like very many, that number can be daunting, especially for small businesses operating in a few locations.
How do you stand out from the crowd and get your target audience’s attention? By leveraging data to identify what they like and dislike. Granular city-level data reveals specific customer trends and behaviors within a specific urban area or city.
It empowers you with the insights you need to target a particular audience effectively. This can help you stand out from competitors who take a more generic marketing approach.
Better marketing spend ROI
It’s no secret that businesses often trim marketing budgets first when dealing with market uncertainty. While this shouldn’t be the case, it’s the unfortunate reality marketers have to contend with.
City-level data can help make the most of your budget, no matter how limited, by highlighting aspects to focus on in your localized marketing campaign.
It can reveal the kind of content and offers your specific target audience is interested in, helping you make more efficient use of your budget. In time, this can result in a higher return on investment (ROI) than you’d realize with a generic strategy.
How to leverage city-level datasets for market segmentation
City-level data gives you actionable, geo-specific insights into where your brand’s communications are making an impact. With city-level data, you can:
- Double down on targeted media spending in high-performing cities.
- Make more informed decisions concerning investments in local events.
- Understand what communications and content resonate in which cities so you can more precisely target your messaging and offerings.
With Bitly, you can dive even deeper into your city-level link data by exporting a CSV file containing detailed results for up to 500 cities across the globe. Here’s how you can leverage these results for market segmentation.
Identifying demographic patterns
Think back to the last pair of shoes or shirt you purchased, impulse or otherwise. What caught your attention? Was it the color, style, store’s atmosphere, or all these factors?
If so, your chosen brand’s marketing team likely identified you as their target demographic. They researched what you like and implemented their findings in their marketing and sales efforts.
You can do the same—quite easily, in fact—using city-level data to identify demographic patterns and trends within your target urban area. This data can show you the kind of content or offers different demographics enjoy and help you find commonalities.
Then, you can create detailed customer profiles based on your findings and use this information to develop more targeted marketing campaigns.
Analyzing consumer behavior
Analyzing factors like consumer purchasing behavior, media consumption, interactions with brands on social media, and preferred shopping channels can uncover unique market segments.
To understand your market segments in a particular city, start by collecting data from sources like surveys and analytics tools. Then, analyze the data and segment your market based on your insights.
For example, if you use Bitly Campaigns, you can identify your target audience’s most preferred platforms and segment your market based on your findings.
Say you find customers in New York prefer emails while those in Dallas like social media posts. You can segment your market by “popular marketing channels” and communicate with each audience through their preferred platforms.
Segmenting by geographic boundaries
Geographical features within a city can influence consumer behavior and preferences. Take U.S. cities that tend to be divided by income level, like New York, for example. Customers in Manhattan are likely to value different things than those in the Bronx. One may prefer convenience, while the other is focused on cost savings.
You can use city-level data to further segment your market based on these preferences. Doing so can help you create more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
City-level data is suitable for this as it’s easier to analyze data from a small area than broader geographical data. It can also highlight granular details, like preferred offer types, better than broad data.
4 practical steps to implement city-level data in your marketing strategy
Now that you understand the value of city-level data, how can you implement it in your marketing strategy? Here are four practical steps to guide you.
1. Collect and analyze the dataset
The first step in implementing city-level data in your strategy is actually collecting it. You can use numerous data sources, from surveys to interviews to analytics tools.
Just be sure to collect and manage your data responsibly, regardless of the source. Prioritize data security to ensure customer information doesn’t fall into unauthorized hands. Also, only collect the information required for your marketing strategy—over-collecting data can pose privacy concerns and security threats.
When you collect your data, filter based on your needs for easier and faster analysis. For example, if you decide to use click tracking data, you can filter it by date to get the most up-to-date insights.
When you filter the data, categorize it based on commonalities to identify aspects of your marketing strategy that are the most popular with your target audience.
With Bitly, everything from data collection to data analysis is straightforward. You simply need to create your Bitly links or QR Codes, distribute them to your target market through various channels, and assess their performance to glean valuable marketing insights.
You can view Bitly data by city in two places: the Links page and the Analytics page. Simply log into your account, tap Links or Analytics, and scroll down to the locations section for a report like the one below.
An example of country-level data for individual links (To get city-level data, simply tap the Cities section)
If you want to assess additional metrics, like link clicks over time or by referrer, you can customize your reports on the Bitly Analytics dashboard for detailed visualizations.
2. Integrate the data insights into your marketing strategy
City-level data will only prove useful when you integrate its insights into your marketing strategy. So don’t just analyze it—refine your campaign based on its findings.
If your data shows that social media platforms are the most effective mediums in your chosen city, push resources into social media marketing for optimal campaign results.
3. Measure and adapt strategies
Refining your strategy may take some time, especially if you’re new to your target city. Regularly measure the effectiveness of your localized marketing strategies to identify what works and doesn’t.
When you do, adapt your plan based on what the data shows. For example, if click tracking data shows video content is popular with your audience, create more videos to improve your marketing results.
4. Use local partnerships or channels
Businesses, especially small ones, need each other to survive and thrive—even more so when navigating new markets.
Form partnerships with local establishments or leverage local media channels to enhance the reach and authenticity of localized marketing efforts. If you’re new, work with established companies in the area to build trust quickly.
Sign up for Bitly to get started with city-level data
Localized marketing helps increase customer engagement, supporting a business’s overall marketing plan. City-level data is the key to successful localized marketing strategies. It can help you connect more effectively with your target audience and remain competitive in your market.
With Bitly, you can seamlessly collect, analyze, and export city-level data for up to 500 locations globally, giving you a clear picture of the content and offers that resonate with specific demographics.
Whether you’re breaking into a new market or looking to improve your marketing strategies in cities you’re already established in, Bitly has you covered.
Sign up for Bitly today to leverage city-level data for targeted, more effective campaigns!