These days consumers are taking digital marketing cues and using social media to guide them through the process of their purchase decision-making more than ever before. So, wouldn’t it be great to have a way to show your target audience what you can offer in the moment—when they’re exactly where you need them to be? To influence purchase decisions the most? This is where geofencing comes into play.
What Is Geofencing?
Geofencing is a location-based mobile service that allows advertisers to reach customers through their smartphones when they have physically entered a geographical barrier.
How Exactly Does Geofencing Work?
Using GPS, a virtual geofence can be traced around a physical location where you’d like to target customers. This could be a competitor’s location, a mall, a sports venue, or even a specific side of a street. When the customer enters the geofenced location, they will then be targeted with your ads on their mobile device. These ads can be delivered for up to 30 days, reaching potential customers 3 to 4 times per day.
If you’ve used GPS systems such as Waze as you travel, you might recall that when you have braked, your GPS will occasionally pop up with an ad and let you know what you’re near. Usually, the ad is appropriate for travel, such as a gas station to fill up or snack up at, or tire shops. Geofencing does the same thing.
Is There a Way to Track Conversion?
There definitely is. In addition to geofencing your target area, a geofence is also traced around one or more of your locations. When a potential client sees your ads on their mobile device and then walks into one of your locations, you’ll be able to learn exactly where that customer saw the ad that triggered them to come in for a visit and which ad is responsible. How’s that for positive feedback? Not only does this allow you to reach exactly who you want to, but you are then able to track the behaviors of your customers and place a more precise return on investment (ROI) on your ad dollars.
By also knowing which ad was successful in bringing in a customer you gather valuable feedback on what type of content works and what doesn’t. From there, you can produce ads of a similar nature and make your marketing efforts even more targeted than if you were advertising blindly.
Advertising, in general, is a lot of hit or miss, but with the ability to track conversions, you can learn what your target audience is interested in and disregard attempts that aren’t fruitful in attracting people to your locations.
What Kind of Ads Work Best for Geofencing?
You want your ads to be similar in length and size to what you would do for a social media ad. That means they should be mobile-friendly and showcase your messaging in a way that’s direct and understandable. Remember, your audience won’t be looking at your ad long so keep your copy concise and clear. Use your real estate wisely when choosing graphics and images.
Successful ads are clean, memorable and contain clear information about where your business is and how to contact you. There are a lot of sizes you can choose from for your ad, but a few of the most common sizes are:
160 x 600
970 x 90
300 x 250
Geofencing technology also includes an option to do a video clip instead. Your business can choose between a 6-second video, 15-second video, 30-second video, or 60-second video. The same rules apply here for clip ads. Use your time wisely and keep your ad short, sweet, and to the point.
What Does This Mean for Businesses?
As a business owner with a brick-and-mortar location, you have the ability to get extremely creative with this technology. For example, if you’re a dentist who would like to target a new residential development, you could geofence the entire residential complex and reach every new homeowner in that area. Or perhaps you just opened a new sporting goods store and want to reach anyone who enters your local sports arenas. You could draw a virtual geofence around all stadiums and reach every single person who enters, telling them about your new store.
Before this type of technology was available, business owners had to rely on delivering paper flyers, taking out newspaper ads, and paying for radio time to announce their services to new residents in the area. Now, with geofencing, not only can you reach hundreds of potential customers at once, you can narrow it down to people interested in your services. From a marketing perspective, that’s an extremely valuable resource you can take advantage of.
How to Get Started with Geofencing
While geofencing is available for all, availability for the conversion tracking feature is limited to brick-and-mortar stores only. However, this should not deter online businesses and service-based companies from testing it out! It’s still an excellent way to target and reach potential clients with a specific message.
Setting up your own geofence campaign may be tricky. A lot of times you need a developer or administrator to set up a virtual boundary around the specific location you want to target. That may require software or location data from cell towers.
Another route is potentially using Google ads to set up your geofence campaign which utilizes Google’s location targets to your advantage. You can also choose to employ a marketing company to instigate your geofence campaign. That’s where Scorpion comes in. Our SEM experts are committed to getting your business in front of the right customers, at the right time. And, what better way to do so, than with a geofenced display advertising campaign? To find out how you can use geofencing and other online advertising strategies, contact our team today and get help with your marketing needs.
