Geofencing

Looking for innovative ways to connect with your target audience? Consider geofencing.

Geofencing is the use of technology to create a virtual perimeter. In other words, Geofences are virtual boundaries that can send notifications or messages to people who enter or exit them. It’s used in marketing to identify and connect with potential customers based on their proximity to a particular location.

What Is Geofencing Marketing?

Geofencing marketing is a location-based marketing technique that involves defining virtual boundaries or “geofences” around physical locations like stores. When someone with a mobile device enters these boundaries, that serves as a trigger. And with the right strategy, setup, and implementation, your business can send personalized ads or notifications in form of messages to them.

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How Geofencing Works

Using geofencing for marketing centres on a combination of technologies, including the global positioning system (GPS), mobile networks, and Wi-Fi. You can use geofencing to market to your target audience while they’re shopping with your competitor, browsing your offline or online store, or even as they’re preparing to use your service.

A geofencing advertising strategy works by setting up virtual boundaries around a specific location, like the location of your business. Then, this boundary will track whenever someone with a mobile device enters it. As soon as someone enters the virtual boundary around your business, your geofencing advertising campaign will send a notification or mobile ad to that person’s phone that advertises your local store, service, or product.

Benefits of Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing marketing offers a number of distinct advantages:

• Boost local foot traffic and sales: Geofencing can help you improve your local search engine optimization (SEO) strategy by giving your company more opportunities to show up in local searches when your audience is looking for your products or services in their area.

• More precise targeting: Geofencing allows you to get more niche with your advertising targeting, ensuring your messages reach customers who are in close proximity to your business
• Personalization: Geofencing lets you customize messages, offers, and recommendations based on users’ locations and behaviors, enhancing the user experience and increasing the likelihood of them becoming customers
• Customer loyalty: You can use geofencing marketing to share personalized offers to mobile users to encourage loyalty

Geofencing Marketing Tactics

Ways that you can use geofencing to achieve your business goals.

Location-Based Offers

Location-based offers are discounts and other promotions sent to prospects who are near your location. To entice them to make a purchase. Discounted pricing, new products, and giveaways are great for location-based offers.

Competitor Conquesting

Competitor conquesting involves setting a geofence around a competitor’s location to turn their prospects into your customers instead. The messaging here should highlight what sets your business apart and subtly hint at your competitor’s weaknesses. Maybe you’re a cheaper option, you have more inventory in stock, or your reviews and customer service ratings are higher.

Audience Nurturing 

For large companies with widely used apps, geofencing can also be used to ensure customers remain long-term, loyal followers. By setting up a geofencing campaign around their store locations to encourage reward program sign-ups, social follows, and more. Customers who just visited or are near the business will be more likely to take the next step to connect. Providing more opportunities to market to them no matter where they are.

How to implement geofencing into your marketing strategy

Wondering how to implement geofencing into your marketing strategy? We’ve got you covered! All you need to get started with geofencing is an app and GPS coordinates.

Then, you can follow these simple steps for incorporating geofencing into your marketing strategy:

1. Research your target audience
2. Keep your geofence boundary small
3. Make your call to action (CTA) actionable and clear
4. Use all your targeting techniques

Types of geofencing marketing

Marketers use geofencing in various ways to enhance their efforts. Whenever someone enters a specific geofence, such as a retail store, event venue, or neighbourhood, you could serve up the following types of marketing:

• Push notification: When users enter the geofenced area, the campaign pushes out a message that appears on their smartphone screens via the app. A florist, for example, might tell users of a deal on roses.
• Text message: When you have customers’ phone numbers, you can automatically text them within your virtual boundary. For example, a restaurant might remind the user it’s time for lunch when they’re just a block away.
• PPC ads in a web browser: With pay-per-click (PPC) ads, you pay a platform like Google Ads to show your PPC ads in a user’s web browser if they are searching for your product or service within your vicinity. A nail salon, for example, could use this type of location targeting to target people searching “manicure near me.”

Use-cases of Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing marketing is done using the technologies such as beacons, GPS, or even IP addresses to build a fence.

Some use cases for geofencing marketing include:

• Drive visitors to your locations by adding geofences in POIs (Points of Interest) like airports, hotels, or touristic locations and send them engaging notifications. It will serve the need and create urgency to visit your nearby store.
• Customers help you improve your strategies by giving feedback. Know their in-store experiences. In return, provide rewards, offers, and better deals to purchase from your store. This will spread your goodwill in the local market.
• Use location trends and treat customer behavior as the point of target marketing. Using this tactic, you can also know what segment of your customers frequent your competitors’ businesses.