Geographical Targeting - suggestions, please!

[Margot Lawrence]

My main business is Avon. Although it is a global organisation, it operates as separate companies in all the different countries. As I'm in the UK, I can only sell to customers in the UK and I can only recruit downline team members in the UK.

 

I've tried Google, Facebook & Bing, but the geographical targeting doesn't seem to work very well on any of those - I've had potential customers & potential representatives from all over the world contact me. If I'm getting people from other countries contacting me, it means that much of my advertising budget is being wasted because people in the wrong countries are seeing my ads. I can't tell how much money is being wasted, because I have no idea how many people in the wrong countries are seeing my ads and NOT contacting me!

 

I hate wasting money. And I hate paying money to big corporations who promise that my ads will only be shown to people in the UK and then show my ads in Lebanon, Sweden, South Africa and Pakistan (the four most recent non-UK applications from ads supposedly shown only in the UK).

 

So, can any of you recommend any advertising companies who do ACCURATE geographical targeting?

[Darren Olander]

Some of them have confusing targeting options, so you have to be more familiar with what those options mean.

Here is an example with Bing

 

If you have people in targeted locations checked it means they have to physically be in that location.

If you have people searching for or viewing pages about your targeted locations then this opens up a whole ton of possibilities for people all over the world to see your ad. Maybe they are viewing some travel blog that mentions the UK but they live somewhere else. Or someone mentions they are from the UK and they use this product on a blog - then all of their visitors are eligible to see your ad because it is a page about your targeted location! So for Bing you definitely want this one unchecked.

[Guest mrclean0325]

Another nuance is knowing how the ad provider is determining the location of who they are showing the ad to. Do they use what someone puts in their profile (may or may not be correct)? Do they use IP location (again may or may not be correct if the person is using any kind of VPN, proxie, or something similar and this technology does have its flaws)? Do they use a more sophisticated location service?

 

One way to combat this is to have somewhere in your ad, "If you live in the UK..." or "This offer only available to those in the UK..." or "UK residents..." may decrease the number of wrong clicks. I am not aware of any way to completely eliminate this type issue to not waste your dollars by ads being shown to the wrong people. Putting the location descriptor for the people you want to reach in the ad itself has been an effective way to get local leads though. This way even people who live in the UK but aren't there at the moment they see the ad will know they can respond to it. Sometimes you have to outsmart the "smart" technology.

[market101]

I did not start this category, but it's a good one. I'm surprised that there are so few responses .This is a very important subject. Especially the part about paying someone to target your ads for you.  I have wasted money over the years paying others to do this.  There are a lot of knowledgeable people in this forum (I do not consider myself one of them) and I would love to see more responses.

[Jasond188]

Adf.ly and Linkbucks are 2 trusted sources to get geo targeted traffic and both of them are very affordable. You could try that....