In this digital area, we all know how technology has made the whole process of reaching customers at the right time and at the right location simpler. Now we’re going to look at one such technology, i.e., geofencing marketing helps businesses target audiences, even when they’re shopping with their competitors or their audience is browsing their offline or online store and even when they’re preparing to use their services.
Yes, these things that were unimaginable decades ago are now a reality for businesses throughout the world, all because of Geofencing marketing technology.
Geofencing marketing makes it possible for companies to reach their audience more effectively in new ways that can boost their revenue to record levels. Geofence marketing helps companies advertise to users based on their geographical location which can be as specific as 1000 square feet.
Now, we’re going to learn more about this powerful geofencing marketing tool.
Geofencing Marketing
Geofence marketing is a kind of location-based marketing technique in which a certain geographic area, such as a store, is placed around a point of interest. Whenever smartphone users come into that area, geofence marketing allows you to connect them through advertisements through mobile apps or webpages.
Being a location-based process, geofencing marketing depends on several such as Wi-fi, radio-frequency identification (RFID), GPS, and Bluetooth.
How does geofencing marketing work?
While geofencing marketing might sound like a complex technology, it’s quite simple in practice, especially today when there are many geofencing marketing service providers available in the market with years of experience.
Generally, Geofencing marketing consists of the following steps:
- Locate a geographical radius around a real-world location and set up a geofence(Virtual barrier) around that designated area.
- When users step into that Geofence designated area, they will get added to your advertising audience.
- Once this happens, your company begins sending the created ads to those users, whether via notifications, search or display ads, or in-app ads.
Let’s understand this by an example:
Let’s suppose a person named Jack has an automobile showroom that also provides car rental services to users. Within a few blocks of Jack’s showroom, there are lots of competitors doing business. Now Jack wants to go ahead with them, and here, he can take the help of geofencing marketing.
Geofencing marketing allows Jack to set up a virtual boundary around any geographical area he thinks is best; in this case, the area around his competitors might be a good choice for him. Now, whenever people with smartphones enter into that fence’s perimeter or leave that perimeter, they will get automatically added to the jack audience and become eligible to receive jack’s created ads for up to 30 days.
One of the advantages of using geofencing marketing is that one person can set up his fence almost around any place. In this case, the automobile showroom’s owner Jack had the option of creating one around his business as well as around his competitors’ area. He can also set up a geofence around those companies that usually refer clients to him so that he can connect to those clients without paying any commission.
While promoting your brands and services through geofencing marketing, there are many things you can do to attract the audience, such as offering a discount on the booking rates or invitations for free testing of services to your location.
With geofencing marketing, You can connect to the audience through your mobile search/display ads or mobile apps, which means if a person using your mobile app enters that designated area, geofencing will trigger app notifications.
One interesting thing about Geofencing marketing is that it offers you the option to choose when you want your ads to appear. For instance, if you think the duration of the afternoon on weekends would be more beneficial in terms of traffic, you set your ads to display during that specific time frame on mobile pages and apps to achieve the best results and utilization of your ad spend.
To get a fair idea of the locations you can target with geofencing marketing; below, we’ve mentioned Six major ideas:
- Nearby streets and stores
- Your location
- Your Competitor locations
- Households via addressable geofencing
- Educational institutes such as colleges and schools
- Events or trade shows
Of course, you can target far more locations than these specific ones; this list helps you explore more ideas or geographical sites for your business to target.
In geofencing marketing, several types of alerts can be alerted when a person enters your geofencing designated area. Major ones of these alerts are:
- In-app notifications
- Ads on social media platforms
- Text messages
By sending out these alerts to those audiences who enter your geofencing area, you will be able to connect with them. Generally, social media ads or in-app notifications are widely used by companies to reach people.
Advantages of using geofencing marketing for your business
Now that you understand what geofencing marketing is and how it works, it’s time to take a look at the advantages of using geofencing marketing for your business. It makes it easier for you to connect with customers.
As we’ve already mentioned, geofencing marketing is one such technology that enables you to connect with customers at the right time and at the right location. Geofencing runs on a digital system, which makes it possible for you to reach customers the very instant they enter the designated area. It means, geofencing marketing by delivering instant ads to people who are already close to your business can push them to become potential customers for you.
Today people spend a lot of time on their mobile devices, and you can take advantage of this situation by including geofencing in your marketing strategies. With geofencing marketing, you’ll be able to put promotions for your products and services directly in your customers’ hands by reaching them right on their mobile devices.
1. Enhance local sales
Most customers prefer buying from local businesses over outsiders. Therefore, it’s important to have a strong local presence. It can lead to more conversions and growth for your business, and geofencing marketing can help you build a better local marketing campaign.
For instance, let’s say you’re offering huge discounts on your products for a certain period. What you can do for promotion is to create a geofence and notify people about it through apps’ notifications or search/display ads when entering your Geofence designated area.
This way, you can attract more people to check out your sales and purchase your products.
2. Improve user engagement
Many marketing agencies have observed that when companies send offers to their audience directly, this generates customers’ interest in their products and services, meaning they’re more willing to engage with your company and look at what you’re offering.
Remember one thing people are inclined to those things that are relevant to their interests and beneficial to them; therefore, when you send them your offers at the right time, it increases the possibility that customers will show interest in your brand and visit your store.
3. Helps in personalizing customers’ experience
As we’ve already mentioned, people show interest when they’re offered something that caters to their needs; therefore, personalizing your customers’ experience can be a game-changer for your business. Every company is trying to attract customers hence spending a lot on advertising; now you need to think about how you can make your offers for the audience memorable and interesting ones; the answer is personalization.
Geofencing makes it easier for you to understand what your audience wants so that you can create better offers and ads that can be more appealing to them. Geofencing marketing helps you in gathering data on your customers, such as demographics.
By observing which of your offers produces better results in terms of user engagement and attention, you will be able to target your audience better.
4. Boost brand awareness
Geofencing marketing can help you in increasing the awareness of your brand among the audience for your business. With geofencing marketing, you will be able to put your brand in front of your audience, which ultimately gonna push them to consider it while making a purchase.
Strategies For A Successful Geofencing Marketing Campaign
To get full advantage of geofencing marketing, you must know how to make it a successful campaign first. Now, we’re going to discuss some major strategies that you should keep in mind while strategizing your geofencing marketing campaign.
1. Create your Geofence of the correct size
Excitement about something is healthy for business, but at the same time, excessive one can lead to negative results. The same thing applies to geofencing marketing too. Sometimes people get too excited about geofencing marketing initially and, without observing much, set up oversized geofences that ultimately lead to bad results and waste of resources.
For instance, If a person sets up geofencing (Virtual barriers) for marketing nearby his competitor’s store, which is around a 30-min drive away from him, there are very fewer chances that customers will make a trip to your store on the same day.
Therefore for better utilization of resources, you should set up your geofencing perimeters as small and compact. Generally, marketing experts recommend the four-five walking distance from your store for the fenced-in area so that customers can easily reach you.
For the eCommerce industry, targeting tradeshows is a great option with geofencing marketing. In this case, your goal will be to encourage users to visit your website versus a physical location.
2. First Understand Your Target Audience
Having a proper understanding of the customers’ behavior is very important for businesses to achieve better results. By analyzing what consists of your audience, what they demand, and what interests them, you can locate those areas that’ll drive results for your geofencing marketing campaigns. Besides, this understanding will also help you create ads that can engage the audience and attract them to make a purchase.
One of the best ways to understand what consists of your target audience is to analyze the available data you already have. With the help of online platforms, you should try to interact with the audience as much as you can so that you can know what their thoughts are regarding your business, services, or products.
3. Create Actionable Ads For Your Marketing Campaign
In this busy world, people are very impatient with those Ad notifications that are vague and difficult to understand. Therefore, make sure that your ads are much more specific and to the point so that customers can easily understand them and click on a call-to-action (CTA).
Assess Your Data From Time To Time
Assessment of your data from time to time is very crucial for the optimization of the performance of your geofencing marketing campaign. Otherwise, it will become very difficult for you to know how your campaigns are performing.
There are many tools out there in the market that can help you analyze your data in a very easy way; therefore, if you’re not many experts in this area, you can consider using them in your business.
In geofencing marketing, setting up the right time duration for targeting is a must requirement if you don’t want to waste your resources by targeting the audience with ads around the clock.
For instance, if you have a daytime business, then you can’t expect that late-night ad targeting will generate good results for you as most people sleep during that time. Similarly, for businesses such as bars and clubs, daytime targeting won’t give good results. The best time to show your ads is when your business is open.
Conclusion
Geofencing marketing is one such technology that any company can use irrespective of its size and specialties. Widely used tools for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations, Geofencing marketing also gives great results for companies that run online. There are innumerable examples of companies that showed us what successful geofencing marketing campaigns could achieve, such as North Face, BMW, Taco Bell, History Channel, and American Eagle.
We wish you all good luck with your Geofencing marketing campaign.
