Geofencing Advertising

Geofencing advertising or marketing, relies on the location of the user, to advertise and market products. Geofencing relies heavily on Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) to connect with smartphone users in a specific geographic location, through mobile apps or mobile pages. Simply put, geofencing advertising is that targets the audience in a specific area. When somebody enters that virtual boundary with their smartphone, the ad is shown to that person.

HOW DOES GEOFENCING ADVERTISING WORK?

Geofencing advertising mostly relies upon on-location services to target the audience with an ad. A virtual boundary is created in an area, and when somebody with a smartphone enters this boundary, the ad gets shown, from your campaign, on their mobile device. This could be in the form of notifications, in-app ads, search or display ads.

You can create a geofence anywhere; whether it is near your location or your competitor’s. If you set up a geofence at your competitor’s location, your ad could provide a discount code, or some freebies to help attract the customer to you. Geofencing advertising is a great way to control the time when your ads are available to be viewed. If you feel there are too many people in that virtual boundary in the evening, then you can opt for that time. This helps to increase the success rate of your marketing campaign. You can even use geofencing marketing at the time of an event where more people would be able to view your ad.

To sum it up, you can add geofencing marketing to the following locations:

—Your location
—Your competitor’s location
—Events
—Households with the help of addressable geofencing
—Educational institutes
—Offices
—Malls, streets, stores

This list is just an example of where you can add geofencing marketing, but in reality, you can add it wherever you think you will get more audience.

IS GEOFENCING ADVERTISING FOR ME?

Geofencing advertising usually depends on the budget a business has allocated for its marketing. Mostly, big and well-established businesses are seen to have that much capital but if a small business can afford it, then why not? Geofencing advertising is equally good for brick-and-mortar stores and as well as online stores.

You can make use of geofencing advertising in the following ways:

1. On Social Media
Social media platforms, such as Snapchat, use geofencing to create location-based filters. You can create a special Snapchat filter for your brand to help get better visibility.

2. To Engage with Your Audience
If your business uses Snapchat, having a personal filter for your brand will encourage the users to post and share this filter picture with their finds and family. this is a way of engaging with your customers.

3. For Marketing
This is the main purpose of geofencing advertising. You can offer coupons and discounts to help encourage people to visit your store.

Many businesses have amplified their sales with geofencing advertising. A few examples of companies who have used geofencing marketing have been mentioned below:

—BMW
BMW is a luxury vehicle and motorcycle manufacturer that needs no introduction. BMW used finding out the location of your car as a selling point. They urged customers to install the BMW Trickster and BMW Trickster Advance services apps to find the location of their car. Who wouldn’t want to know the location of their car while you are away from it? If your car moves without your car keys, you will be notified immediately. Due to this security feature, almost everybody who owns a BMW is compelled to download this app. This became a successful marketing plan for BMW, just by using geofencing to their advantage.

—The North Face
The North Face is an American outdoor clothing, footwear, and other related equipment company. For all outdoor activities, such as trekking and hiking, you do need to check the weather app, before you set off for your adventure. The North Face used this to their advantage and started with weather-related apps based on geofencing. This caused the company’s sales to increase tremendously.

HOW CAN I MAKE MY GEOFENCING ADVERTISING SUCCESSFUL?

If you are spending so much money on geofencing advertising, you would want it to be as successful as possible. To make your geofencing advertising campaign the most successful one, who should consider the following steps:

1. Chose the Right For Your Virtual Boundary
To make your geofencing advertising successful, you must stick to a small size. companies usually get carried away and opt for bigger boundaries, which does not drive the same results as a smaller boundary. The rule that is applied is that the virtual boundary should be about 4 or 5-minute walking distance from your store.

2. Know Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience allows you to create ads that would interest them. Knowing your target audience would also help in finding out what they want; this would help you in developing ads that can target them well. If you are not sure about your target audience, you can interact with them on your social media accounts to try and find out which age group are you famous in.

3. Create Ads With A Call-To-Action
Instead of trying to sell your product or service, you should ask the viewers to come to try your product. This is a much better way of marketing than directly asking the viewer to purchase your product.

4. Using Various Marketing Techniques
Using other marketing techniques in conjunction with geofencing marketing will get you better results. You can show your ad to a previous customer or somebody who just visited your website. This is known as retargeting. You can even choose to show you ads on the time and days your target audience is the most active on. This is known as dayparting. Furthermore, targeting specific keywords in your ad will help to attract more customers.

5. Regular Data Analysis
Since geofencing marketing is an expensive strategy, you must review the results frequently so that you can tweak up your campaign accordingly. You would not want your money to get wasted on an ineffective geofencing marketing campaign.

HOW MUCH DOES GEOFENCING MARKETING COST?

Since geofencing advertising is so location-specific, it is expensive. On average, geofencing ads can cost around $1000 to $30,000 per month. An additional campaign management service charge varies between $250 to $1,500 per month. Geofencing marketing is not cheap and not the cup of tea for small businesses. Big, well-established businesses can afford it, rather than small-scale businesses.

BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING ADVERTISING

Geofencing advertising, although expensive, has some benefits that can be beneficial for your business. A few of the benefits have been discussed below:

1. Get Increased Sales
Geofencing advertising is considered to have increased sales for most businesses. It helps to target people in a certain area, such as people close to your store, and you can advertise the sale going on in your store. The chances of the viewer visiting your store are pretty high.

2. Better and Personal Engagement With Users
It is more of a personal engagement with the customers. This encourages the viewers to visit your store. Since your ad would mostly be seen at the busiest hour of the day, chances of the viewer visiting your store are very high.

3. Better Brand Awareness
With the help of geofencing advertising, viewers of your marketing campaign will look at your store when they pass by it. This helps to create a sense of awareness in the viewers about your brand.

4. Do Better Than Your Competitors
You can use geofencing advertising near your competitor’s office, and provide them with a coupon or discount code. This would help to attract the customer to your business.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Geofencing advertising can be a game-changer for your business, only if you use it at a time when your target audience is most active in that area. for this reason, the analytics of your geofencing marketing is extremely important, without which this campaign would be useless. This is a marketing campaign that surely requires professional help. DigAptics is the right place for you to go, where you will get results. These marketing professionals are experts in the field of marketing and will help you in achieving the results you desire within no time. The main purpose of every business is to get better visibility, create awareness about their brand among people, and eventually, get a higher Return On Investment (ROI). Contact them today to turn your goals into reality.