Have you ever received an app notification informing some attractive promotional offer of a store a few steps away from you? The urge to visit the store just multiplies, right? This is surely mobile marketing but is a new concept under the name Geofencing.

Geofencing is a location-based marketing strategy quite popular among digital marketers these days due to its high effectiveness. As a digital marketer, you may find such a form of marketing quite favorable for your concerned business.

Now, the question is, how is it a highly effective strategy? The answer is simple. It targets the highest potential leads. Not satisfied by the one-liner? Then, let us know about Geofencing in detail.

Here you will learn the exact explanation of how Geofencing works, where it is commonly used, the benefits of using it, and how you can integrate it into your marketing strategy.

 

What is Meant by Geofencing?

Technically, Geofencing is a location-based technology that literally creates a  virtual ‘fence’ or boundary around a specific geographic area. This virtual fence is created through an app or other software program used by a customer.

The app uses GPS (Global Positioning System), RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification), Wi-Fi, or cellular data to create the virtual fence and connect with the customers physically present within the fence.

That way, the system targets only customers having the highest potential for lead conversion. The marketing technology allows your business to send messages or trigger actions through an app whenever the mobile device steps into the defined geographical zone.

 

Benefits of Geofencing

Wondering what is so exciting about using geofencing as a marketing strategy? Well, there are literally various reasons to adopt it as your next marketing strategy.

Let us explore some of these here.

 

1. Improved Targeting

Geofencing is immensely powerful in hyper-targeting your prospects. With the help of such a strategy, you can not only reach your customers at the correct time and place but also you will be able to retain them through relevant and timely messaging.

You’re significantly more likely to contact prospects if you target people in a specific geographic region and filter that area based on precise targeting parameters.

 

2. Optimized Spending

Geofencing helps you to spend your advertising money more efficiently by targeting particular regions where your audience is most likely to convert. This decreases ad expenditure wasted on those who are unlikely to be interested in your products or services.

 

3. Better Data Collection

A very prominent feature of Geofencing is that it gives significant data on client behavior, such as foot traffic patterns, visit duration, and conversion rates. You can use this data to design marketing strategies that allow data-driven decisions.

 

4. Customized Customer Service

Geofencing allows you to tailor your customer experience. If you’re marketing your service to a certain location, you may examine the demographics of that population and customize your advertisements accordingly.

 

5. Gaining a Competitive Advantage

You would not want to miss the marketing strategy that has proved to be highly successful for many established brands. The success of geofencing can be mostly accounted for by its ability to attract high prospects away from the competition.

 

Integrating Geofencing into your Marketing Strategy

Integrating geofencing into your marketing campaign might be a highly focused and location-specific technique to reach out to potential clients. Here are the ways you can design a powerful marketing strategy with geofencing.

 

1. Understand Your Audience

It is important to confirm that you are targeting the right kind of audience. Just like any other digital or traditional marketing campaign, you must first understand your target audience.

Gathering some know-how on your customers such as their age or occupation, and understanding their shopping preferences will help you enhance your location-based marketing strategies.

 

2. Determine the Best Size for Your Geofence

You must know that expenses for larger Geofencing are higher and thus choosing large geofences may not be that profitable for your business. Often, it has been observed that geofenced ad promotions work best for customers within 5 minutes of walking distance from the store.

Irrespective of the size of your business, in most cases, your customers are not going to walk into your store if he is a mile away.

 

3. Create Geofences

The next step is to use geofencing software or tools and define the virtual borders around your desired location. The size of these geofences might range from a few meters around the location to enormous regions surrounding event locations.

To avoid sending communications to undesired receivers, make sure your geofences are accurate.

 

4. Create a Compelling Campaign

Create appealing offers, promotions, or messaging with a strong CTA to pique the interest of those within your geofence. Your audience should find the material useful and relevant.

 

5. Make Use of a Variety of Targeting Options

There are a variety of techniques you can employ for your geofencing ads. Some of these are dayparting, behavioral targeting, context targeting, and retargeting.

Day parting is when you target your audiences at a certain time of the day, behavioral targeting is based on user behavior, context targeting is about the type of websites visited, and retargeting is sending ads to your previous customers.

 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, geofencing is an evolving technology and can be said that have limitless potential. More than just technology, it is a powerful way to enhance your customer experiences and is a highly effective marketing strategy. It boosts your store’s foot traffic and contributes exceedingly to sales.

As you can see, it is a wonderful amalgamation of digital and physical worlds, you will find that there is an opportunity waiting to be discovered in every physical location of your business, and a world of possibilities in the digital marketing sphere.