White paper: Precision planning – how to build high-intent location-based campaigns

This white paper is your blueprint for building smarter, sharper location-based campaigns that reach the right person, in the right place, at the moment they’re most likely to act.

1. Identifying high-intent zones

High-intent zones are not just areas with heavy foot traffic. They are behaviour-rich environments where physical movement and digital engagement intersect with user intent.

These are the locations where consumers are most likely to consider, interact with, or act on your brand's message, whether online, in-store, or both.

Key approaches:

1. Start by heat-mapping past campaign performance (see our global first analytics a bit later in the paper) across suburbs, shopping districts, and commercial corridors. This reveals key patterns such as:

   • Peak engagement periods,
     
   • Areas that drive both online and in-store activity,
     
   • Zones with high visibility but low conversion, highlighting where strategic intervention is needed.

2. Next, overlay competitor locations to evaluate brand saturation. This helps identify areas where competitive presence may be suppressing performance, particularly in highly saturated zones.

3. Add depth by incorporating audience indicators like LSM distribution and gender breakdowns to understand exactly who is engaging and where.

4. Then, bring in Google reviews, yours and your competitors, to layer in sentiment. Locations with low engagement and negative reviews, especially where competitors show stronger ratings, may signal a need for:

   • Reputation management,
     
   • Service upgrades,
     
   • Hyperlocal creative adjustments.

5. To align your strategy with real-time consumer behaviour, overlay in-market interest such as local page views, search trends, and engagement metrics. This identifies:

   • Where user interest is translating into measurable demand,

   • What products or services consumers are actively exploring in each area.

Together, these insights show you not just where to focus and who to target, but also whether additional media investment is justified, particularly in high-saturation zones where poor sentiment may be limiting returns.

Vicinity Media tip: Use your own campaign data alongside Vicinity’s three billion+ location-based data points to identify high-performing hyperlocal zones and intent-driven micro-markets across sectors.

2. Choosing the right platform based on your objective

In location-based marketing, success isn’t just about reaching people in the right places, it’s also about reaching them on the right screen, at the right time. Whether you're looking to drive instant footfall, build sustained brand presence, or convert online interest into real-world action, choosing the right platform mix is key.

1. Mobile is a powerful channel for engaging high-intent users throughout their journey, from awareness to action. With precise location targeting and dynamic creative, it’s ideal for:

   • reinforcing brand presence during daily key actions like commuting, or browsing – ensuring your brand stays top of mind for when users are ready to act,
     
   • delivering personalised messaging based on a user’s location, in-market behaviour, and past interactions – all of which Vicinity overlays to create sharper, more relevant audience profiles,
     
   • nudging users toward action, whether that’s a store visit, product search, or online engagement.

   Vicinity Media tip: On mobile, Vicinity’s Dynamic Distance Window (DDW) displays real-time proximity, showing users exactly how far they are (in km) from the nearest store. This adds immediacy and intent, turning awareness into measurable action.

2. DOOH: Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) allows brands to dominate key retail, transit, and high-traffic zones with large-format creative. While traditionally seen as an awareness or brand-building tool, Vicinity Media has transformed DOOH into an action-oriented channel, where high visibility meets measurable impact. It’s particularly powerful in:

   • breaking through clutter in areas crowded with competitor ads by using frequency and Vicinity Media's Dynamic Distance Window (DDW), especially in high-impact environments like transit hubs and shopping precincts. Our DDW adds a layer of immediacy by showing passersby exactly how close they are to your store, making your ad the last thing they see before they act.
     
   • defending market share in highly saturated zones by maintaining brand visibility alongside, or directly competing with, category rivals.
     
   • activating context-aware creative using dynamic data triggers like weather conditions, time of day, or even live sports scores, ensuring your message is timely and relevant.

   While mobile and DOOH each have their own distinct strengths, their real power lies in how they work together. DOOH is no longer just an awareness driver, with Vicinity Media’s Dynamic Distance Window, and real-time data triggers, it has become a tool for relevance and action. Mobile complements this by delivering personalised, proximity-based messaging that nudges users in-store.

   What sets Vicinity Media apart is that these platforms don’t operate in silos. In-market data is shared across both: we can serve DOOH in areas where users are actively searching for a product, and retarget those same users on mobile with ads tailored to their behaviour and location. We can even trigger mobile ads when a user enters the geofence of a DOOH site, reinforcing the message across screens and key intent windows.

   By harnessing the true power of omnichannel – delivering one message across any relevant screen – we create a connected experience where awareness leads to engagement, and engagement drives action. With Vicinity Media, every impression is part of a bigger, smarter system.

3. Aligning creative to context

After pinpointing the right locations and platform mix, the next step is to align your messaging with local behaviour’s, environments, and audience intent.

Best practices:

• Contextual relevance: Tailor messaging to match the user’s physical environment or the time of day. For example, promote coffee near commuter routes in the morning and showcase dinner deals near high-traffic suburban centres during peak evening hours.

• Use real-time triggers such as weather conditions, local events, or time of day to dynamically adapt creative- ensuring each ad is tailored to the user’s immediate environment and mindset.

• Localised messaging: Incorporate familiar landmarks, language, or store references to make your creative feel personal.

Vicinity Media tip: Test creative variants by location. Areas with similar demographics may still respond differently based on local context. Let performance data guide ongoing creative optimisation.

4. Measuring what matters

Clicks and impressions don’t tell the whole story, and neither does any single metric. Location-based campaigns are designed to drive real-world outcomes, both online and offline. That’s why measurement must go beyond surface-level indicators and capture a full spectrum of impact, from digital engagement to physical store visits. Only a multi-metric approach can reveal the true effectiveness of your campaign.

Vicinity Media has revolutionised campaign metrics with our global-first analytics and measurement tools, enabling brands to gain deeper insights into their audiences’ online and offline behaviour – going beyond clicks and impressions to drive smarter decisions and more effective future campaigns.

Core metrics to track:

• Store visit uplift: To quantify the incremental impact driven by media exposure, compare foot traffic during the campaign period against a pre-campaign baseline. Vicinity Media’s store visit attribution data showcases this by identifying how many users potentially exposed to a specific DOOH or mobile ad later visited a specific store, drawing a direct line between exposure and real-world outcomes.

• Website uplift by location: Measure increases in product or store page views within targeted areas to evaluate how media exposure, across DOOH and mobile, drives engagement, intent, and consideration.

• Local search uplift: Monitor searches, store locator usage, direction requests, and other call-to-actions that reflect a clear intent to visit or purchase, offering deeper insight into where and how interest is turning into action.
  Vicinity Media tip: Use a multi-metric approach that combines engagement, web uplift, and visit uplift. Together, these metrics not only show how intent is being captured and converted across platforms, but also help uncover potential relationships – for example, whether high engagement consistently translates into store visits, or if strong website uplift is a leading indicator of future foot traffic.

Conclusion: Move from reach to relevance

Precision planning isn’t just about reaching people, it’s about reaching them when and where it matters most, with messaging that moves them to act. By identifying high-intent zones, aligning creative with context, choosing the right platform mix, and measuring what truly drives outcomes, brands can shift from generic impressions to measurable impact.

At Vicinity Media, we don’t just help brands show up – we help them show up smarter, turning movement into meaning and intent into action.