What is Geofencing and How SMBs Can Effectively Use It
Maybe you are new to geofencing, or perhaps you have heard about it but want to know more.
Either way, you are in the right place!
Geofencing is a great way to engage customers and create more effective marketing campaigns, as it allows you to send personalized messages based on their location (and other variables).
For example, if someone is walking by your store, geofencing triggers an offer via email, text message, or push notification for a discount or promotion that day only.
How do you use geofencing for digital marketing? Here is a guide on how to get started.
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is a technology that creates virtual boundaries around real-world locations.
It uses GPS and other location technologies to create digital "fences" tied to physical areas and in turn, it allows an application or other software to trigger pre-programmed actions when mobile devices enter and leave these virtual boundaries.
For marketing purposes, geofencing is a location-data service that creates a zone around the specified geographic region. These areas can be as small as your store, restaurant, or office building, or as big as your city.
Geofences have been growing at an accelerated rate owing to consumer demand for discounts and customization, and marketers' efforts to reach smartphone users with their brands.
So how would you use geofencing?
If you're a business looking to make your marketing more engaging, creative, and targeted (don't forget about the increased ROI!), geofencing is an excellent way of doing so.
This exciting technology can trigger coupons, notifications, or other actions when customers enter certain areas—which helps drive urgency and, thus, sales.
There has been significant growth within geofencing in recent years, mainly due to consumers seeking discounts or the desire to know what your business offers before making a purchase.
This technology helps marketers effectively target their interested market through location-based advertising.
Geofencing is an excellent way to provide convenience and savings to consumers.
At the same time, businesses save time and money because geofencing is more efficient than the traditional method of outbound advertising, throwing out advertisements on TV or billboards, and hoping they will reach the right consumers.
How Exactly Does Geofencing Work?
Geofences are tracked through GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or cellular data. They can be configured with different types of notifications that are sent out depending on your needs, industry, promotion, or products.
These might include push notifications for business owners who want updates about inventory levels at certain times during the day (or week), targeted advertisements delivered via social media, or determining consumer behavior with your competitors.
With geofencing, you can build a fence around locations where your target customer would spend time.
An outdoor gear store might want to reach hikers and campers by advertising in a campground or walking trails to meet the needs of campers or hikers who need new shoes, warmer clothes, rain gear, and more.
Think of a contractor wanting to target potential clients living in specific neighborhoods with high-value properties or hardware stores to catch DIYers who are likely looking to renovate their current homes.
Geofencing around these areas can be effective in finding new clients who need a contractor—a need you can meet. Hyper-targeting like this will also bring awareness to your business and interest in your products or services.
This technology allows more potential customers to see your brand when they need it most.
Focused marketing will actually connect relevant ads to those who want to purchase those products or use those services.
How Can SMBs Use Geofencing Location-Based Marketing?
Geofencing has been rapidly growing in popularity, particularly among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) which see it as a more cost-effective way to advertise than traditional methods because of the precise targeting and adaptability that geofencing allows.
Geofencing has many benefits that SMBs should look into, including marketing campaigns and providing information about specific areas:
Target Users' Location Habits
The location of a group of mobile devices is valuable to marketers. Knowing that one specific device passes by your store every day can help design an ad campaign, increase engagement and customer loyalty for your company's products or services in this area, and promote current deals to users near the business location.
Knowing that dozens of people walk by or in your door every day can help you track what store sales or promotions bring more traffic and use this information to run additional specials. This increases customer engagement and helps increase revenue generation.
There are other benefits to geofencing, too. It provides valuable information about specific areas, such as public safety alerts in specific geographic regions like weather warnings or public safety emergencies.
Analyzing Data from Your Ideal Customer
Geofencing takes the guesswork out of marketing. You will know many people were exposed to or influenced by your advertisement.
Geofencing also enables digital marketers like Facebook to use an analytics platform that tracks its users' browsing history across multiple sites to find out where they went after seeing ads on its platform.
Geofencing lets you know precisely which demographics liked what types of content and gives you an idea of why this person might not have bought anything today.
Providing Precise Location Content
Geofencing is an excellent way for companies to identify the behaviors of someone who has walked into their store and where they live.
Advertisers can use this information so that tailored offers or other content will reach particular consumers on mobile devices when those people have an opportunity to take action and make a purchase.
With geolocation data, businesses like stores learn how far away potential customers live and can use this information to decide about continuing advertising strategies in that area.
Once advertisers have designed a campaign, they can use geofences to deliver personalized offers or other content to devices in the best position. By leveraging location data and analysis, companies identify common behaviors for mobile users.
Using Geofencing for Your Marketing Strategy
Businesses are using geo-fencing technology to encourage consumers in an area with incentives.
For example, if a business owner sets up their geofence around another competitor and offers specials for shoppers that shop there instead of visiting other stores nearby or online at certain times of day when they're more likely to buy something!
The data is more accurate as well. After seeing analytics with geofencing, you may learn how many individuals in your geofences noticed your advertisements or notifications and entered your business. The following metrics are available to business owners for further analysis:
Impressions
Clicks
CPM
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
You may utilize all of this information to figure out what is producing traffic, leads, and messages or phone calls for your business.
Conversion zones effectively keep track of consumers who viewed your internet advertisements, prompting offline traffic to your business.
You can now actually assess the influence your advertising has on people who have seen your commercials and gone to your conversion zone.
The best part? Most mobile apps require that you have enabled location services; about 90% of mobile users have location services turned on.
As a result, most users have this feature enabled, which means geofencing marketing has a greater likelihood of reaching customers who entered the geofence than other types of marketing and advertising do.
Spend Efficiency for Your Business Marketing Plan
Geofencing is a revolutionary way to maximize your marketing budget.
With this technology, you can engage with the right audiences at just the right time and place, which is when they are most likely to take action!
Is it possible to get more reach in your budget than straightforward targeting methods like zip code targeting with geofencing?
When you geofence effectively, you'll obtain greater reach in your ad spend, which will benefit your bottom line.
You can see that geofencing advertising may be the most effective kind of marketing you can do to your list of tactics. Geofencing is a revolutionary technology that SMBs can use in many different ways to get their customers' attention and drive more sales.
Consider setting geofences around competitors or other stores nearby; you could offer discounts for shoppers at certain times of day when they're most likely to buy something!
Geofence marketing also allows businesses to target consumers at events and more—all from their mobile devices. With this new technology, we know it's possible to engage with precisely who we want, just where we need them, so they will notice our brand and meet their needs.
Kyber Digital
343 Harbor View
Forked River, NJ
08731
(215) 305-8769
