It’s a pretty great feature, I think, to be able to control which visitors to your site see what, based on where they are. Really, it gives you, dear site owner, quite a lot of power to craft your message. I love that.
The conversations we have had around the office make it clear, however, that a bit of clarification may be needed about the name and function of these features, so here goes:
- Both of them do awesome things.
- Both of these features allow you to insert GeoPosty’s awesome location-aware content into your posts or pages.
- Both of these features allow you to limit which visitors see that content, based on where they are.
Radius-based display settings let you set the display area as distance from a location.
Your hotel is running a special, one specifically targeting the staycation crowd. You’re trying to reach out to people nearby, who maybe wouldn’t leave town for a vacation, but might be interested in a hotel special that wouldn’t require a travel expense. In this case, you really don’t care what the actual zip code, area code, state or city name they happen to live in–you only care that they are near your hotel.
This is what radius-based display settings are for. First, you pick the center of the circle–in this case, the location of your hotel. Second, you pick the distance from the center where you want to display your message. In this case, probably 100 or 250 miles would be best–anywhere driving distance from your hotel should do the trick.
And there you have it! No matter what your visitor’s area code, zip code, city or state, if they are nearby, they see your special!
Location-based display settings require you to specifically name the display areas.
Your non-profit organization is running a campaign to raise awareness about tax rebates given to individuals with wind farms on their property. There are specific states that you are targeting with this campaign–ones with space, land ownership, and of course, lots of wind.
This, not surprisingly, is exactly what location-based settings are for. All you have to do is pick the level of geographic specificity, for example telephone area code, city, or in this case state, and then name which of those you want to target with this message.
In this case, you can choose to show a special message only to visitors from Montana, Wyoming, North and South Carolina, and you know that your campaign will have the right audience.
