GEOFENCING AND MARKETING: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

When a hungry person looks for somewhere to eat, you can bet they’d choose the nearest place in their vicinity. They won’t drive 30 minutes or an hour out to a great place they know if there is somewhere nearer that can meet their needs and temporarily provide them satisfaction. That goes the same way for any kind of product or service. More often than not, consumers want to find a product or service provider within their vicinity. The nearer and the faster their wants and needs are met, the better. That’s why location-based marketing has become such an important part of marketing strategies for most brands. 

Location-based marketing gives marketers and advertisers a unique opportunity to reach customers in specific locations which are especially helpful for brands with physical stores. Instead of basing it on likes and follows on social media, marketers reach new potential customers based on real-world visits. This ensures that they reach the right audience with a relevant message at the right time. 

With geofencing, marketers and advertisers can target audiences with customized targeting shapes that have remarkable precision. While this is not a new concept, its popularity in the marketing world has continued to grow in the previous years. Here’s everything you need to know about it. 

What Is Geofencing?

Geofencing is a location-based targeting option that allows you to create a virtual boundary around a certain location to reach potential customers. 

Think of it in three steps. First, you create the bubble or the virtual perimeter. The diameter can be as small as the size of a corner store or several miles wide like an industrial operation. Then, a customer enters that area. Afterward, an app or software would use Wi-Fi, GPS, cellular data, or radio frequency identification (RFID) to send some form of marketing option to the customer’s mobile device like a social media advertisement, text, app notification, or email. 

A simple example is when a woman passes by a Zara shop at the mall and receives an app notification or a social media ad saying “Today only! 30% to 50% off on select items!”

While it is mostly used for instant location-based advertising, geofencing can also be used to identify and build your audience over time and it can even help in attribution, retargeting, and other location-based insights. 

Mobile Social Geofencing

Geofencing has completely taken mobile and social marketing to the next level. From interactive shopping lists and limited-time offers for your favorite restaurant to suggestions for new restaurants or shops you haven’t tried before, geofencing offers a whole new world to discover for mobile users. 

Geofencing Statistics

If you’re looking to get into more hyper-targeted, location-based marketing, geofencing can produce incredible results for you. Just take a look at these statistics:

• Most consumers spend an average of 5 hours each day on their phones.
• 71% of consumers prefer personalized ads
• 53% of shoppers visited a business after receiving a location-based message
• 3 out of 4 consumers completed an action after receiving a location-based message
• Geofencing influenced mobile ads have double the click-through rate

Using Geofencing To Its Fullest Potential

As effective geofencing as it is on its own, there is more it can do for your overall marketing campaign when used properly and in partnership with other marketing strategies and tools. One of those strategies is using behavioral targeting specifically focused on mobile advertising to segment consumers based on the data of their actions and geographic movements gathered from geofencing. With this, you can further narrow down your target mobile customers based on things like the number of visits they made to a retail store, where they spend most of their time, their downloads, and the like. 

Another means you can use alongside geofencing to increase the efficiency of your data gathering for your marketing is conversion zones. These are customizable geofences that are placed around a set area often in the vicinity of the advertiser’s locations that count how many customers have received someone’s ads. These customers can then be physically tracked to determine if they visited the business or not. With this, you can determine how effective your geofencing targeted ads are. Aside from these, there are plenty more aspects of your marketing that can be boosted with geofencing. It simply takes a bit more innovation and creativity. 

How To Implement Geofencing Into Your Marketing Strategy

One of the biggest benefits of incorporating geofencing into your marketing efforts is that it allows you to level up your local marketing efforts. With geofencing, you can target more local customers and send promotions or push notifications that can change each day or have limited-time offers that can help increase sales. It also allows you to collect data to personalize your offers. And last but not least, it helps you to track and measure your local sales. 

Incorporating geofencing into your marketing strategy doesn’t take much. All you need are GPS coordinates, an app, and a proactive approach. Here are some tips to help you get started.

Understand Your Customer Demographics

Before anything, it is important that you understand who your local customers actually are and their demographics. This makes sure that you are talking to the right people and that you will get the results you want. 

Keep It Close

You don’t want your geofence to be spread out too thin. The general rule is to keep it at a four to five minute maximum travel radius. This means that if they’re driving, it’s a four to five minute transport distance and if they’re walking, it’s a four to five minute walk time. 

Be Transparent

Respecting your customer’s privacy is a top priority. Make sure you inform them upfront that you have access to their information especially when they’re using an app and earn their trust. Make them feel comfortable and give them the confidence to use the app and return in the future. 

Add Other Targeting Techniques

Geofencing works much better when partnered with other targeting techniques. Options like content targeting, retargeting, context targeting, and day parting help you target various specific audience groups. 

Optimize Your Campaigns

There are plenty of optimizing tools that can help you fine-tune your geofencing efforts as well as your campaigns. In addition to those, you should always present a clear, strong, and immediate call to action. Remember, your goal is to catch people at the right moment and advertise to get them into your location immediately.

If you would like to implement a Geo Marketing Campaign for your business, get in touch with us for a chat!