What Is Geographics in Marketing?

Geographic segmentation is a common strategy to divide your target audience into more specific market segments. Using this approach to deliver a focused marketing campaign makes sense when you have a general demographic audience located in a particular area.

Targeting a local town, city or metro customer base makes sense for a local small business. Newspapers and radio are common traditional media used to market to local audiences. Billboards, direct mail and local magazines are other possible media. The objective of local marketing is to present a company or product that is useful to a large group of customers within the local population.

State or regional market segments are used by companies that have businesses concentrated in a particular state or multi-state area. Many convenience store chains, for instance, have headquarters in a particular city and serve the surrounding states. Advertising to a national audience doesn't make sense because you would waste the investment on people well outside the coverage. Television and state or regional newspapers are common media used in state or regional campaigns, and some national magazines offer ad placement for regional editions.

National marketing campaigns are commonly used by national retailers that cater to general audiences in most or all states. For instance, many fast-food chains have stores in every U.S. state. By running national campaigns on television or radio networks, the companies can efficiently get their names and products in front of millions of customers. This is usually more efficient than preparing multiple message for different markets. National chains may run local or regional ads at times, to focus on new markets or struggling markets.

Global companies need to develop strategies that deliver marketing messages in each country of operations. The dilemma is whether to implement a global approach, where the same basic message is presented in each country, or tailor a message for each country or international region. A global approach is less costly and improves consistency of the brand across the world. In some instances, though, cultural context or differences in product usage force a business to change its marketing messages for each country.