DefinitionGeomarketing is the practice of making marketing and location decisions on the basis of geographic data: where customers are, where they are not, and what distinguishes one area from the next.
What it is used for
- Site selection for stores, branches and venues.
- Territory planning, so that each sales area holds comparable potential.
- Regional media allocation according to where demand concentrates.
- Out-of-home planning where the relevant audience passes.
- Expansion sequencing: which regions or cities to enter, and in which order.
- Direct mail and local distribution by postal code instead of nationally.
The data layers
- Population and demographics from official statistics: reliable, slow to change.
- Purchasing power and household indicators, usually modelled at postal-code level.
- Infrastructure: roads, transit, drive times.
- Competition: who is already present.
- Demand signals: the layer that has changed most, because observed behaviour can now be resolved to the same spatial units.
Where classical data runs short
The established layers describe how an area is structured: who lives there, what they earn, what the roads look like. They describe capability, not interest. Two postal codes with identical demographics and purchasing power can differ clearly in demand for a specific brand or category, and nothing in the structural layers shows it. Many siting mistakes come from having only the first kind of data.
Common mistakes
- Purchasing power as a proxy for interest. It shows who could buy, not who wants to.
- Radius instead of travel time. See catchment area.
- Population maps. Without correcting for population, every map shows the big cities.
How Rascasse uses it
Rascasse adds the demand layer rather than replacing the structural ones: audience concentration for 50,000+ brands and for clubs, artists, events and media, by region and city and down to postal code where available, in 200+ countries.
Related use cases: Location Planning, Local Targeting & OOH, International Expansion.
Related terms
Postal code targetingPostal code targeting selects an audience at postal-code level rather than by city, region or country.Catchment areaA catchment area is the geographic zone from which a location, such as a store, venue, stadium or branch, actually draws its visitors.Regional affinityRegional affinity shows where inside a country an audience is concentrated, measured against each region’s share of the population.