With mobile phone usage climbing nearly every day, mobile marketing offers many new scenarios where marketers can target consumers in real-time throughout the buyer’s journey.
Marketers continue to take full advantage of this capability with geofencing, an incredibly powerful tool that harnesses the power of location-based marketing.
While using geolocation for advertising is not a new concept, nor is it limited to mobile users, its popularity has grown along with the massive rise of smartphone users.
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How does geofencing marketing work?
What is geofencing marketing?
Geofencing is a targeting strategy and tool that marketers use to create highly specific geolocations. By targeting locations, you are allowed to reach consumers based on where they are in the world in real time. You are essentially drawing a radius around real world location(s) and targeting mobile device users when they come within a set proximity.
How does geofencing marketing work?
Setting a geofence means digitally marking addresses or coordinates to find users that are inside of the fence. Using location as a parameter, an app or other software uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or cellular data to trigger marketing campaigns whenever a tag enters the set boundaries.
Before you can start utilizing a geofence you’ll need to have some addresses and locations you want to look at. The more addresses the merrier. FourSquare needs at least 50k devices at the location in order to build the geofence.
Once a user is in the geofenced location they will be served an ad through in-app inventory via mobile devices. When you are creating your creative assets make sure the specs are compatible with mobile devices, because users will be on their mobile devices while in a geofence.
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Benefits of geofencing marketing
There are a variety of use cases for targeted marketing when using a geofence. This allows marketers to be really specific and aware of their customer’s actions. A lot of marketing campaigns aim to create some sort of conversion in the offline world. So why not wait to target your customers until you have them exactly where you want them to be?
A super effective geofencing implementation tactic is targeting the campaign around live in-person events. This allows marketers to anticipate specific information about the participants demographics, and the topics being brought to top of mind while at the event, making for highly motivated consumers.
Geofencing can also be used for seasonal marketing strategies. Let’s say your product is a mobile dry-cleaning service, try geofencing high-end hotels that host parties throughout the holiday season.
What if you wanted to influence customers but they are at a competitor’s brick and mortar store? You can do that with geofencing too. By finding consumers interested in a competitor of yours, it’s easy to know they are at least interested in a similar product.
Or what if you wanted to find customers who are just nearby? Geofencing can utilize the radius setting in FourSquare, and you’re able to set a geofence around your store to target consumers who are nearby. Maybe they didn’t even realize your product or service was so close and readily available!
How is it different from geoframing?
Geoframing creates an audience based on mobile devices collected within a specific location. This is for marketers who want to target individuals from events or locations after they have left that geolocation. You are able to target those users wherever they are on the internet, unlike geofencing which is in-app inventory on mobile devices only.
Overall, geofencing is a fresh new way to target consumers in real-time. It is a great mid-funnel tactic to find users who are interested in brands similar to yours based on their location.
Ready to give geofencing a try?
Chat with us today to get started.
Geofencing is part of Choozle’s Supported Solutions and can be implemented with the help of our Client Experience team.
