When you invest your advertising and marketing dollars, it’s important to focus on specificity. You want to make those dollars go as far as they can. That means looking for innovative ways to streamline and spread your message with a targeted group of individuals whom you know need the products or services you’re offering. One way to do that is through geofencing. Geofencing is a creative, geospatial marketing strategy; it takes advantage of new technologies to get your message in front of the right people.
In this post, we’ll examine what geofencing is and all the ways it can help you take your digital marketing to the next level.
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is the use of global positioning or radio frequency identification to identify a virtual, geographic area. Once you have identified this area, you can establish a system that sends notifications when a mobile device enters or leaves the area inside that defined boundary.
Forget Marketing to “Everyone.” Market to People at a Specific Location
Geofencing allows you to target a specific area. This level of specificity helps you streamline your message to the right audience.
From a marketing perspective, geofencing allows you to drill down to target people who are in your defined geographic location. Rather than marketing to “everyone,” you’re now marketing to people who have literally come to you. They’ll find your message useful and are therefore much likely to accept any call to action because of that.
One-Up Your Competition
Imagine a technology that allows you to speak directly to the customers of your competitor. Think about being able to highlight your product’s features, benefits, and advantages over your competition. To take it a step further, imagine highlighting all these great advantages of doing business with you while the user is in your competitor’s building.
With geofencing, you can make this a reality. Geofencing enables you to target your competition’s customers, sending a direct comparison to their mobile devices about how superior your product and services are.
Rather than run general ads talking about how you have an edge over the “leading brand,” you can attack your competition’s base on their home turf. You can speak directly to people who need your services; give them a reason to switch to a better brand – namely, yours.
Geofencing Helps You Retarget
Spreading your message to the mobile devices of anyone who walks through your building is a powerful capability. It gives you the ability to share your pitch with people who you know will be interested in your services. It’s not necessarily comprehensive, however. While you can attract lots of customers this way, you won’t necessarily get all of them on the first round. Some customers may leave without a sale.
Geofencing gives you the ability to retarget these customers. You can establish a preselected time frame – say, for example, 30 days – and retarget potential customers who walked through your doors with additional messages.
This reinforces your initial value proposition. You give your prospect time to consider your offer and follow up with an additional offer which solidifies the value you can provide the customer with.
Retargeting users allows you to cast a wide net and ensure that no potential customer falls through the cracks. It gives the ability to send a second wave of marketing materials towards customers you know are interested in your product or services.
Geofencing Gives You Access to Additional Data and Apps
Individuals walking through your predefined location may be in possession of numerous apps on their device with loads of data. If they enter your fence, you can use this to your advantage.
Geofencing lets you explore additional data you may have access to on a customer’s devices. You can use probabilistic or deterministic technologies to gain access to additional apps the user has. This could potentially give you access to more of the user’s data, depending on the device in question.
Target Multiple Devices
Geofencing allows you to target multiple devices your intended audience may be using within the boundary. Smart phones, laptops, tablets and any other type of mobile device can all assist.
As one device enters your boundary, you’ll now have the ability to access the user’s other devices to serve ads. This creates redundancies that increase the likelihood the user will see and process your ad’s message.
Conclusion
Geofencing is a versatile tool in your digital marketing toolbox. It allows you to spread your message far and wide with individual users over multiple devices and apps. It also helps you gain a substantial leg-up on your competition, allowing you to speak to their customer base directly.
Bash Foo is a digital marketing agency that builds the online reputations of small business in affordable and inspiring ways. We use cutting-edge technology to offer innovative solutions. For more on how we can help you revolutionize the way you do digital marketing, contact us today!
