Imagine you’ve just moved to a new city and need to stock your refrigerator. Not knowing the grocers in the area, you’d probably whip out your cell phone and search for “grocery stores near me.” A list of stores pops up. The retailers that appear at the top understand how to increase food retail sales by using geotags and location targeting.
Guess what. You can do that too!
Geotagging is a powerful marketing strategy for local businesses. Learning to use geotags may be overwhelming at first. However, once you figure out the basics, you’ll soon rise through the search results ranks. Foot traffic into your store will increase and sales will soar.
Are you ready to harness the power of geotags to increase your food retail sales? Here’s everything you need to know.
What Is a Geotag & How Do I Add One to a Photo?
In general, geotagging is the process of adding location-specific data to photos, videos, and other forms of media. In our everyday lives, we usually see geotagging being used on social media. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all have features that allow you to share where you took a photo or video. Those features are made possible by geotags.
Additionally, many cell phones — and even some GPS-enabled cameras — will geotag photos the moment they’re taken. In fact, iPhones even feature an interactive map that shows you exactly where you took each photo.
If a photo doesn’t already have location data, it’s fairly simple to add a geotag. There are several easy-to-use tools that enable anyone to add geotags to their photos for free.
How to Geotag & Increase Food Retail Sales
Let’s say there’s a small grocer located in Concord, North Carolina. Naturally, this grocer wants to drive local consumers to her store in order to boost food sales. Unfortunately, a good chunk of her website traffic is coming from Concord, California, and Concord, New Hampshire.
This North Carolina grocer has no interest in finding customers in other states. Although it’s nice that someone in New Hampshire found her website, they probably won’t become a customer any time soon.
Geotagging solves this problem by associating businesses with their local communities. It allows grocers to show up near the top of the list when nearby customers search for things like “local grocery stores” or “food retailers near me.”
Geotagging Your Website
For businesses wondering how to increase food retail sales, using geotagged photos on your website is a must. Having location-specific photos on multiple pages of your website will ensure search engines identify your business as a relevant local food retailer.
In particular, try to include geotagged photos on these pages:
- The homepage where people first land on your website.
- Blog posts that draw in new potential customers.
- The products page where customers look for specific items close to home.
- The contact page where people can get in touch with your business.
Including geotagged photos on these pages will maximize your local search results. However, your website isn’t the only place to use geotags.
Geotags on Social Media
Geotagging your business — and encouraging others to do so — on social media can significantly increase your brand’s visibility. This visibility boost benefits any business learning how to increase food retail sales.
For instance, Facebook’s “Check-in” feature is perfect for this. When someone posts a status update and checks in at your business, you essentially get free advertising to all of their Facebook friends.
Posts can easily be geotagged on Instagram as well. When someone clicks on the tagged location, the app shows them an assortment of both recent and popular posts from that location. Including geotags on your business’s Instagram posts ensures that its location tag is filled with brilliant, eye-catching pictures for customers to enjoy.
With Snapchat, users can send pictures and videos that include fun stickers, location tags, and filters. As a business owner, you can create a clever custom “geofilter” that Snapchat users can add to their posts. Few businesses use geofilters, so adding one will set you apart from the competition and excite some very enthusiastic Snapchatters.
Geotagging Your Way to Business Success
Local businesses are constantly looking for ways to increase visibility and drive traffic to their stores. Geotagging is one of the most effective ways to do this within the local community.
Once you understand how geotags work, you can build them into your website and social media strategy with ease. Consistently working with geotags will eventually increase brand awareness as well as foot traffic.
To learn more about how we can help your business with its unique commercial refrigeration needs, contact us!
