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We all know that marketing is a big competition and one of the deciding factors for customers who are choosing between two brands. The right digital marketing campaign that reaches the right people can go a long way, so it’s important to create a marketing strategy for growth.
That’s where IP addresses come in. With IP targeting, you can create personalized, cookie-based marketing campaigns that always reach the right leads. You can get IP address from Javascript, but make sure to follow a set of certain steps that will help you complete the process correctly and effectively.
This article explains IP targeting and why you should use it in your marketing campaign.
What is IP targeting?
IP targeting is a digital marketing method that involves using people’s IP addresses to create the perfect online advertising campaigns for them. Since every computer that is connected to the internet has an IP address, this type of marketing can be done for any customer.
You can target businesses if you use their IP address or individual customers that live in an area you’re interested in.
The beauty of IP targeting is that it provides a level of personalization and specificity that you could never get with traditional marketing. With traditional marketing, you could only target one region or cluster. But with modern developments and the introduction of IP targeting, tracking is no longer so limited.
If you have the IP address of one person, you can gather a plethora of personal information which can later be used to create an ad just for them. And if you know the IP address of a business, you will be able to start crafting messages to engage all the B2B prospects.
Why you should use IP targeting
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As we already established, IP targeting allows for high levels of personalization which is very important in the world of business. Customers want to see you know them and care about them. In fact, not having personalized content generates 83% lower response rates in an average marketing campaign.
With IP targeting, you can:
- Advertise a local event. You want to draw people to an event that’s only going to be accessible to the residents of the town the event is taking place in. You can easily use IP targeting to send ads only to the people in that location. This will result in reduced ad spend and increased ticket sales.
- Reach a certain demographic. If your target audience is, for example, college students, you can easily craft your marketing campaign to reach only them. Simply send your ads to IP addresses that are connected to a college-wide Wi-Fi network.
- Increase visits to a local business’ website. Just like with the first example, you can create hyper-local ads through IP targeting that will only be shown to people who live in the locality you’re interested in.
Is IP targeting ethical?
Even though there are a lot of benefits to IP targeting, some people are concerned about the ethics of this type of advertisement.
And even though there’s no denying that while the system is far from perfect, IP targeting is one of the best and most precise strategies digital marketers ever used. Since our lives are so connected to the internet, IP targeting is ethical because we already voluntarily share that information online.
Is IP targeting legal?
Because of the high specificity that IP targeting offers, many people wonder if IP targeting breaks data protection regulations. For example, if you break a regulation such as the GDPR, you could expect a hefty fine, as there have already been over €359 million in major GDPR fines.
IP addresses fall into a gray area when it comes to personal information. Even though they can show us a lot of personal information of the owner of that specific IP address, they still need to be public so they could work. This is because they are created to interact with public sources.
IP targeting is legal, but if you want to be sure that you won’t break any laws or regulations, make sure to research all of the regulations that surround data targeting in strict areas of the world.
Final thoughts
We live in a digital world and you can find out a lot about a person just based on their IP address. Even though it may seem unethical to some, marketers have always used various strategies to get the right information and make their campaigns successful, so this isn’t any different.
As long as you present the right ad to the right person, you know you’re doing a great job as a marketer.