Geotargeting is the practice of delivering content to a user based on his or her geographic location. This can be done on the city, zip code or address level via IP address or device ID. Or on a more granular level through GPS signals, geo-fencing, and more.

Geotargeting is an obvious choice with any internet based campaign for a local business like restaurants, realtors, doctors and anyone whose customer base is concentrated in a specific area. But it also can be a better way for larger, national brand to achieve higher results by recognizing regional strengths, key cities, key accounts and differences in target users.

Who is doing geotargeting and making a difference? Here are 11 goetargeting case studies that prove location is everything.

1. AT&T: Offered consumers ShopAlerts, which consisted of messages, offers, rewards or coupons sent to their mobile phones when they were near a store or brand. The pilot included eight major marketers, four of which—Del Monte, Kmart, MilkPEP (the Milk Processor Education Program) and SC Johnson. With a nearly 100% open rate on the alerts, 50% of consumers who opted in to receive messages from the brands wanted more information. In some cases there was a 22% to 25% purchase conversion on some of the offers.
2. ASHEVILLE, N.C.: A river city that sits near the western border of North Carolina, wanted to determine which ad vendors and platforms perform best for inspiring people to visit. Asheville looked at how quickly ad vendors and partners motivate travel to the city. When Asheville aimed ads to residents of nearby Raleigh, N.C., between January and September 2016, the percentage who arrived within seven days was 16.8% higher than the average of all other markets during the same period.
3. BROWN FORMAN: Maker of Herradura, partnered with Foursquare for geotargeting to let premium spirits drinkers know where the boutique tequila brand is available. During the holiday season, Foursquare used Brown-Forman’s list of “accounts” where the brand is sold to target programmatic mobile and desktop display and video ads for Herradura to people whose mobile devices were found near those shops, bars or restaurants, or had been seen there in the past. Foursquare ads resulted in 23% incremental lift in visits to places selling Herradura among people who were exposed.
4. FIVE GUYS: Monitored a variety of different hashtags on social media through Hootsuite to react quickly to negative experiences and to reach out to those individuals who are either trying Five Guys for the first time saying they enjoy the food. They respond to messages and improve customer service and sales.
5. HYUNDAI: Had a sales problem. The brand was falling out of consideration when people went to car dealerships because, the company believed, consumers thought its cars were “staid” and “cheap.” A campaign code-named “Dealer Stealer” was created. The geotargeting process digitally mapped 115 Mazda, 282 Toyota, and 152 Hyundai dealerships. Those who came into proximity of its rival’s stores had their “unique and anonymous” device IDs collected, allowing the display of Hyundai advertising deals on the smartphones of people who were in the market for a Mazda or Toyota. The campaign attracted 815,000 unique eyeballs viewing the ad, according to the case study, with 41,000 people “reconsidering Hyundai as an option.”
6. LEXUS: 1 in 3 shoppers use their smartphones to search for information when in the market to purchase a new vehicle. The Regional Lexus Dealer Associations set out to target affluent in-market car consumers in the African American and Hispanic communities across four different cities in the US. They executed a mobile-to-store campaign with Walton Isaacson and S4M and was able to boost foot traffic into dealerships by 3.8 times.
7. PERNOD RICHARD: Which boasts brands including Absolut, Chivas Regal, Jacob’s Creek, and Jameson – had the aim of reaching consumers in transit at airports and driving them to the duty free store. A mobile campaign geo-targeted international terminals and provided travelers with a map and directions to their nearest duty-free store on a customized landing page. Over the month-long period of the campaign, 306 visits into duty-free stores were measured – with 126 incremental visits attributed from the campaign. Monday was the most effective day, generating 20 per cent of visits.
8. STX ENTERTAINMENT: Aimed to measure the impact of digital ads on ticket sales for “Bad Moms,” a summer comedy featuring Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Christina Applegate. STX targeted ads mainly to women aged 18 and over. Women who were exposed to the ads were 22% more likely to have gone to see “Bad Moms” in the theater, and STX saw incremental ticket sales of over 428,000 more tickets for “Bad Moms.” In addition, the campaign turned every $1 spent on digital advertising into $2.31 in incremental ticket sales.
9. TIMBERLAND: Had the goal to change perceptions of a “boots-only” brand and increase sales of their new boat shoes. Audience Targeting was used to reach young urban fashionistas seeking real adventures, and to drive awareness of the new SensorFlex boat shoe range among this key group. Location Targeting was used to identify those in the market for footwear and those in close proximity to key stores. The campaign generated +25% increase in store visits and won Best Use of Location Services at the Drum MOMA Awards.
10. URBAN OUTFITTERS: Used dynamic audience filters to deliver messages based on shoppers’ real-world locations. For example, the company sent push notifications promoting party dresses to females who had recently visited bars and nightclubs. The targeted campaign resulted in a 75% increase in conversions and a 146% lift in revenue.
11. WHOLE FOODS: Placed geo-fences around a number of store locations. Shoppers who entered these geo-fenced areas saw special offers on their smartphones. Whole Foods also took part in a practice called geo-conquesting by targeting ads to consumers visiting nearby supermarkets and encouraging them to come to Whole Foods in exchange for better deals. Together, the campaigns resulted in a 4.69% post-click conversion rate, which is more than 3x the industry average.

Do these case studies show you how effective geotargeting can be? Does your business need help with geotargeting?

Here are the 6 essential steps of the data mining process.

Do these 6 steps help you understand the data mining process? What is your organization’s readiness for date mining?

Influencer is someone who helps other people buy from you. How do they do this? Influencers have a combination of three assets: Reach, contextual credibility and salesmanship.

• 86% of marketers are unsure how influencers calculate their fees
• 75% of marketers claim to have allocated money for influencers in their marketing
• 59% of marketers intent to increase their influencer marketing budget in the next year
• 38% of marketers say they are unable to tell whether influencers activity actually drives sales

How to determine if influencers are going to deliver a return on investment for your business?

Here’s how 10 experts calculate the ROI of influencers.

1. UNIQUE CODE: If you sell products online and want to measure ROI of your influencer campaign by direct sales, give influencers a unique code to give to their audience that they can use at checkout for a percentage off their purchase. A good amount is 15%-20% off.  Calculate the amount of sales you earned from your influencer’s unique discount code and divide it by the dollars you spent on the campaign. – Kristen Matthews, Social Media Examin
2. INFLUENCER LANDING PAGE: You must tie your influencer campaign into a branded landing page in order to measure the ROI of that influencer. The influencers can have as much free reign as you’ll permit, as long as they drive their audience where you want them to go. Once on the landing page, you, as the brand, can incentivize the users and capture their lead info for measurement data and future communication. – Kenny Eicher, The CSI Group
3. SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE ANALYTICS: One of the easiest metrics to track when using an influencer is social engagement. Track your social accounts for changes in total followers as well as new unfollows. Monitor your website traffic for an increase or decline in website visits from the social network. Are there spikes that align with the influencer’s activity? Do you see an increase in sales (or inquiries) directly following their activity? – Korena Keys, KeyMedia Solutions
4. HASHTAG CAMPAIGN: You could tailor your social media campaign to use a specific hashtag encourage influencers to use your hashtag with their followers. You can then tally uses of the hashtag, considering its use to be part of your influencer marketing campaign. – Influencer Marketing Hub
5. KPI DEFINITION AND TRACKING:  Establish metrics for measuring the performance of your campaign. This means identifying your campaign objectives and metrics (KPIs) for tracking these objectives. The following KPIs are the most common for gauging influencer campaign success: 1) Engagement, 2) Reach/Impressions, 3) Follower growth and 4) Traffic. – Magda Houalla, Revfluence
6. PIXEL TRACKING: TapInfluence partnered with a Fortune 500 Food Brand and Nielsen Catalina Solutions to complete the first ever Influencer Marketing Sales Effects Study. Special NCS tracking pixelautomatically inserted by software into blog content for every post. 1000 people viewing influencer contentgenerated $285 of incremental sales over the control group. Influencer Marketing delivered 11X ROI over all other forms of digital media. – Bill Carmody, CEO, Trepoint 
7. CONVERSIONS: One of the simplest ways to do this on Instagram is to track direct conversions through the “comment to buy” feature. This allows consumers to comment directly on an influencer’s post expressing their interest in purchasing the product or products featured in the post. Consumers then receive a personalized link via email. Tracking “comment to buy” not only provides revenue information for the campaign, it’s also an excellent source of brand demographic information. – Andrew Higgins, Product Marketing and Product Management, Pixlee
8. COMPARE VS OTHER INVESTMENTS: Be sure to track wherever possible: custom links, landing pages, influencer promo codes, giveaways, anything you can. Consider an influencer marketing campaign’s performance against your other marketing strategies. How much would you have to pay on Google PPC to gain the same exposure? Keep things in perspective and consider lifetime value. – Bernard May, National Positions
9. ENGAGEMENT: If your campaign focuses on social media exposure with influencers, look at engagement on your social channels after the influencer initiative. Do you have an increase in engagement on your channels? New followers are important, but it’s key to have the right followers. If your engagement increases, you know you reached your target audience who actually wants to engage with your content. – Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource
10. LIVE EVENT: A live experience is the ultimate influencer ecosystem. Getting like-minded people together who have a passion for a particular subject matter creates an environment for influencing, whether it be comics, cars or causes. Once at a live event, the social amplification through influencers is exponential and can be measured in real time through social posts, brand activation and word of mouth. – Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman

Does the advice of these experts help you in calculating the ROI of influencers? Are you looking for help in how to effectively use influencers for your company?

How are you using screens in your workplace? Discover the top KPI dashboards, and which one fits your business

Measures, metrics, KPIs – It’s all about data, data and more data. We have never had more data in our hands. Understanding and making productive use of it is essential to your business.

How many people have opened your email? How many sales did your team bring in? And most importantly, how much time do you spend creating spreadsheets and getting buried in reports? Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to display your data so that you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times?

What is a dashboard?

The go-to solution you are looking for is dashboards. A tool that cuts through data clutter and helps you get down to what really matters. But more concretely, what is a dashboard?

Founder of Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few describes dashboards as a visual display of your business’ data that is essential to achieve your goals. This data is consolidated and showcased on a single screen so that it can be tracked and monitored at a glance. Truly helpful is the fact that the data is automatically updating itself without any assistance from the user. With the right dashboard, you can experience the satisfaction of leading your business to success.

I know what you’re thinking: so, how do I spot the right dashboard?

As the Partnerships Manager at Airtame, I’ve spent months researching dashboards that work with Airtame.

Provided that these executive dashboard templates have a shareable public link, you can copy-paste it into your Airtame’s settings, and your dashboard will display on the screen. Once your dashboard is up on a large screen, it becomes a wallboard, a term you might have heard before but never really knew what it was. The main benefit of wallboards is that they are highly visible and easy to understand for everyone around them.

Here I found not one but 26 executive dashboard template, that will easily help you showcase your company’s indispensable data on any office screen. To make your life easier, I’ve split them into Executive Dashboards and Social Walls, according to their focus.

Executive Dashboard Templates

If what you’re looking for is the classic KPI dashboard that helps you keep track of your business performance, then Executive Dashboards are for you. This includes your accounting software data, your CRM, website analytics, or email system data for a broader perspective. Here are some recommendations:

Klipfolio

Used by more than 4,500 companies, and integrating data from Dropbox, Marketo, Moz, and so forth, our partner, Klipfolio makes sure that your web analytics, sales and finances, and project management goals are transparent throughout your company. I personally have a screen dedicated to Klipfolio dashboards in front of my desk and it really makes my life easier.

Cyfe

An all-in-one business dashboard app, Cyfe’s goal is to help you make better business decisions by bringing all of your business performance data under one roof. However, to benefit from its full potential, you would have to sign up for a Premium account.

Curious to hear more? Check their tutorial.

Plecto

With varied integrations, such as Zendesk, Pipedrive, Podio, leaderboards and custom recognition features, Plecto will drive your team’s motivation sky high. If sales are your main focus, Plecto is what you’re looking for. Also, I must say the pricing plan is quite eye-catching.

Want to check all of their features? Click here.

Datapine

Small, medium, large companies – it doesn’t matter. Datapine can provide you with accurate KPIs in the most professional way, be it management, finance, sales or marketing related. Plus, I really enjoyed their customer support. For example, booking a demo and understanding their product took no time at all.

Click here for a tutorial teaser of how it works.

Axosoft

Monitor your workflow, connect to an ever-growing list of tools and services, and make sure that all relevant stakeholders in your projects get the essential details with Axosoft. I would also add that these dashboards load very fast, so you won’t have to worry about delays in your content.

Click here for a sneak peak.

Tableau Public

By connecting and visualizing your data in a matter of minutes, Tableau Public is one of those executive dashboard templates that can make you forget about the old-school spreadsheets and reports that used to clutter your life.

I like the fact that Tableau has a broad service offering. Also, they are pretty active in terms of social events. So if you have any doubts, you can always check if they’re holding an event in your neighborhood.

Want more insights on how to use it? Click here for some guidelines.

Cervinoboard

Integrating Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics and Adwords and many more, Cervinoboard focuses on online marketing agencies. They deliver smart services that save a lot of time for agencies that wish to deploy and maintain large amounts of dashboards. A few newer services are still in beta, but this is a young startup to watch.

Dundas

A business solution that is able to monitor data from a wide range of industries. From banking and finance, education, government to pharmaceutical transport and logistics, retail, and so on. With more than 20 years of experience on the market, Dundas has dedicated over 7 of them to their dashboard project development.

However, if you want to explore their service offering, you should definitely consider signing up for a Premium account. If this sounds like a deal, get started with a free trial!

Zoho

Boosting your sales, managing daily activities or stepping up your productivity game – Zoho has helped business professionals take care of all these for more than a decade. If I were looking for a very complex software provider, I would most likely choose Zoho.

Want to get a better sense of your data? Watch this video!

DashThis

Be it SEO, SEM, PPC or social media, DashThis has got your back. It automatically gathers all your client data into one dashboard report.

If you are a digital agency, DashThis dashboards might be just what you’re looking for. But feel free to check their demo video here and read more about their features.

Leftronic

Lets you easily combine the data your team needs and has customizable dashboards. What else is there? Oh, yes, the fact that it can be tailored to nearly every market from digital agencies to server admins and sales teams. Quite a tool for startups, I’d say.

Start with a free trial to get better sense of these dashboards.

Plotly

Incredibly user-friendly features and very intuitive executive dashboard templates. Not to mention the sharp design of their live graphs. Sometimes, it can take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The pricing plan: really appealing.

Learn more on how to use Plotly by clicking here.

PowerBI

This is a very useful Business Intelligence tool for Microsoft users. It’s connected with Excel and Microsoft Office 365 and has a publish to web function that can be used with Airtame.

SimpleKPI

The name says it all, because SimpleKPI is just that – simple. And when it comes to monitoring your business reports, that’s what you want from executive dashboard templates. The visuals are nicely put together and easy to understand.

Databox

Databox has a clever drag-and-drop editor that makes data visualization a breeze. It has a ton of integration options so you can connect all data sources, no matter where you want your information to come from.

Dasheroo

A great thing with Dasheroo is that you can have several different executive dashboard templates to suit different needs or even different people. Organize data and set up dashboards for you SoMe presence, your sales team, your support… Everything your heart desires. Oh, and it’s free!

Grow

Many services can’t offer a swift implementation but take months to get your solution up and running. Grow claims they implement 8x faster than competitors, meaning you don’t have to wait to get started with analyzing data. You can create role-specific KPI dashboards for an unlimited amount of team members, which is also a nice feature.

Geckoboard

Sometimes, one dashboard just isn’t enough. That’s why Geckoboards lets you display several different dashboards on the same screen. You can even add your own logo for a customized look and feel that matches your brand.

Target Dashboard

You can automatically merge data with this service. That makes it easy for you to get an overview of all metrics, goals and KPIs without having to worry about the time spent trying to do it yourself. Target Dashboard includes support in their pricing plan, and that’s something we applaud. Bills can pile up when problems arise if support isn’t included, so that’s definitely something to look for when choosing a dashboard service.

Octoboard

With Octoboard, you can create public dashboards for easy sharing with other teams or clients. Octoboard also offers activity monitoring for brands and bloggers on social platforms. For those out there that want to glance at competitors while simultaneously looking at their own engagement, this is superb. That’s why I’ve put it as the last in the executive dashboard section, because it would fit just as well in the next section; social walls.

Social Walls

Presumably, you want to track your social media lifespan, or organize a kick-ass event. Social walls can help you stay on the pulse of your social media community. These are some suggestions that caught my eye.

Strea.ma

Want to keep track of your social media activity for a certain event or conference? With so many platforms out there, why not bring all of them into one easy-to-use display so that everyone can see your tailored stream of content unfolding in real time? Start with a free trial and then you can decide among Plus, Premium or customized plans.

Juicer

Meet Juicer, a social media aggregator that sets your filters up, moderates your posts, and analyzes your social media engagement. What’s more, Juicer has 18 integrations and a modest pricing plan.

Worth giving a try!

Walls.io

Unleashing your hashtags and building your social wall with data integrated from over 15 platforms is a no-brainer if you go with Walls.io. Keep your audience updated with Walls.io’s customizable next-generation social wall and your next event is sure to be a success.

Basic no-frills executive dashboard templates

Suppose you are only looking to create and share your slide decks. Or maybe you want to focus on showcasing your data through charts. Here are some no-frills options that work great:

Slides

Slides allows you to create and share great complex presentations online, in your very own browser without the need to download anything. See for yourself by clicking here.

Project Manager

On the hunt for real-time executive dashboard templates for your business? With Project Manager, you can combine powerful project planning and scheduling features with collaboration tools for teams, plan waterfall projects, and adjust due dates. Project Manager takes project planning to a whole new level, I must say.

Datawrapper

Into maps & charts? Then Datawrapper is one of the optimum executive dashboard templates for you. Back up your presentation with this great visualization tool and you might just get some applause by the end of it.

What’s your favorite dashboard? Who should I look into next on my hunt for great dashboards you can use with Airtame? Let us know in the comments!

Best data visualization tools drive better decision making. As Peter Drucker says, “what’s measured improves.” And the data backs up business leaders believe it.

• 91% of marketing leaders believe successful brands use customer data to drive business decisions.
• 87% of marketers agree capturing and sharing the right data is important to effectively measuring ROI in their own company

A simple pie chart you can one-click using Microsoft Excel is a best data visualization tool if it accomplishes this task. As technology has evolved, new kinds of data visualizations have emerged. Not only pie, line and bar charts but timelines, maps, heat maps and gauges using a whole host of new technologies and tools.

If you’re looking to really exploit best data visualization tools, you should be careful before making a buying decision. The costs of these tools vary widely. You could spend a lot of money before you know if you’re getting what you really need.

To use data to improve decision making without spending any money, here are the 10 best data visualization tools for free in 2018

1. TABLEAU PUBLIC: This is the same platform as the paid version of Tableau Desktop with only one caveat: Everything you create with it is public, which means you’ll automatically be making it available on the web via Tableau’s visualization gallery. The company chose not to make its free version feature-poor. And Tableau Gallery is a great resource, not only for business people but also for researchers, students, and journalists looking for ways not just to flesh out and beautify their Other folks have done tremendous work on some truly impressive data visualizations and Tableau has curated that content and made it available for download.

2. CHARTBLOCKS: Chartblocks, like many of these free programs, basically does the same thing that made Windows so successful: replace the code with a visual interface so anyone can use it. In Chartblocks’ case, that visual interface is their chart designer, which guides you through the process. With its free version, you can make up to 30 charts, export the charts as PNG files (no vector graphics in this version), and get up to 5,000 monthly views.

3. CHARTBUILDER: This best visualization tool has one of the cleanest user interfaces among all the charting tools I’ve seen. It’s extremely easy to use as well. All you have to do is upload a CSV file, or a Google Sheets link, and it’ll generate the chart for you. Moreover, it refreshes your chart every 30 minutes, so your chart’s data source remains fairly up-to-date. The Charted service is free, and its source code is also freely available if you would like to run it on your own web server.

4. DATAWRAPPER: This is one of the extremely easy-to-use best data visualization tools for plotting interactive charts. All you need to do is upload your data via a CSV file, choose the chart you want to plot, and that’s basically it, you’re good to go! It’s a very popular tool among journalists, often using Datawrapper to embed live charts into their news articles. The fact that it’s a tool of choice for most of the non-techie people out there tells you how easy Datawrapper is to use. Read this tutorial to get started with Datawrapper.

5. HIGHCHARTS: Highcharts, another big name in the data visualization domain, offers you a wide selection of charts and maps. They offer many plugins that allow you to experience all of its powerful features without needing to deal with JavaScript. Highcharts is free for non-commercial purposes.

6. GOOGLE CHARTS: Google Charts is user-friendly and compatible with all browsers and platforms. It covers a wide range of data visualization types — from simple line and bar graphs to complex hierarchical tree maps — making Google charts suitable for almost any project. Check out the gallery that showcases the various charts and visualizations that Google Charts offers.

7. MYHEATMAPS: If you want your visualization to provide immediate recognition, a heat map is a good way to go. Heat maps’ use of color makes them intuitive. MyHeatMap has the same easy user experience as a lot of other free software: drag, drop, (et voilà!) map. Be sure that at least two of the rows are for latitude and longitude, and that these values are included for all the data points you want to map. The one downside is a lack of privacy. MyHeatMap’s free version only offers public maps, and those free maps only get 20 data points for each.

8. OPENHEATMAPS: Creating a map is simple. You upload a CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets file to owner Pete Warden’s heat map website, click a button and get a map. It’ll live on his site, but you can link to it. This is all to say that Openheatmap is about as simple as sending an email with an attachment.

9. TIMELINE: Timelines are to history what directions are on maps: they show how one thing led to another. Timelines can also be a great way to enliven reports, especially when a tool like Timeline allows you to design and embed them for free. If you’ve got a Google Drive account, just make a Google Spreadsheet using a template Timeline provides, embed it on your website.

10. RAW: Raw bridges the gap between spreadsheets and vector graphics. It’s built on the D3.js platform. If you’re not a programmer, Raw could be the perfect data visualization tool for you. Raw provides a selection of 16 ready-to-use chart types. Customization is one of the biggest positive aspects of Raw, for it allows you to use your own custom layouts.

Do these best data visualization tools give you an idea of one for your business? Are you glad these best data visualization tools are free? Does your business need help with data visualization?