What is Geofencing Marketing?

Geofencing is a method of marketing that targets specific areas based on ads. This allows marketing professionals to target advertising and content more precisely based on their targeted area. A “geofence” refers to the physical boundaries of a targeted location. This could be a specific location, a zip code or a county. It can also indicate a range of mileage around a store. Multiple geofenced marketing channels can be set up for businesses with multiple locations. Geofencing allows marketers to connect more strongly with people who live in these locations.

A geofencing marketing strategy uses 

The marketing team creates ads and content that are tailored to the geofence’s consumers. It is likely that content that appeals to both rural Kansas and New York City residents would be futile.

Geofencing works by targeting internet-capable devices in the geofenced area. Customers who travel to these areas may be notified about current offers and limited-time promotions from your brand, as well as events that allow them to interact with your brand.

Geofence technology creates a virtual border that targets consumers who cross it into the geofenced area. Geofencing marketing allows marketing teams to communicate their brand’s message to the right customers at exactly the right time.

Today’s market is aware that businesses need to increase their digital presence in order to keep up with the competition. However, if you don’t be careful, it can backfire. Geofencing is one way to make sure your net is exactly where it should be.

Geofencing refers to the idea of focusing your marketing efforts on a specific area. Although most businesses sell online to reach a broad range of customers from different places, many local consumers are still important to their success. Geofencing marketing is a great option if you are looking to develop a multichannel strategy for marketing your brand.

If you are looking to attract more local customers, geofencing is a great strategy. This marketing strategy focuses on one location and not trying to reach a larger audience online.

Geofencing Marketing & Geotargeting: Are They Synonymous?

Let’s first understand the differences between geofencing & geotargeting before we move on. This will help you understand why, how, and when the targeting is done.

Geotargeting is the delivery of ads to consumers who live within a specified radius. It’s based on specific targeting criteria. Geotargeting is different to geofencing, which simply creates a virtual barrier at a specific location and continues to deliver ads.

Geotargeting deals that offer larger ads will not be shown to all geofence members. They must also meet specific targeting criteria.

Is geofencing a marketing or advertising flaw?

Geofencing technology, despite its popularity, is not always a good match. A device could end up registering an existing geofence, even though there isn’t one. It’s also possible for a geofence to be created around a shop, making it difficult to measure the surrounding area.

Geofencing is a great tool for advertising and marketing. However, recordings must be accurate in order to show the most relevant ads to your customers. It will not be possible to target a wider audience that isn’t interested in your products.

Geofencing is a targeted technology that focuses on a specific audience and may be difficult to scale. It may not be as successful for smaller campaigns, even though it is a great technology for large chains like Walmart.

Examples for Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing marketing comes in many forms:

• A brick-and-mortar retail store could set up a geofence around its physical location. A business owner might set a geofence within 25 miles of the store so that they can target potential customers.

• A business owner might set up a geofence to attract potential customers from a competitor’s area.

• To increase brand awareness and build brand awareness for companies that are traveling to industry conferences or marketing events, geofences could be erected around future stops.

• Service-oriented businesses such as law companies or healthcare providers have the ability to geofence their advertising efforts towards specific service areas.

These are just some of the many potential uses for geofencing marketing. They can be extremely successful. As with any other Miami digital marketing campaign, it is important to do the right research to find the best geofence locations and understand the potential return on investment.

What is the cost of geofencing?

Geofencing does not require any hardware infrastructure, unlike WiFi, NFC, and beacons. You only need a mobile device to geofence, which will keep your initial costs low. Geofencing is often included in the price of the marketing platform.

Keep in mind that bid prices may be higher than you would spend on blanket location targeting. The cost of geofencing can also be affected by the competition and other targeting options close to points of interest. Pricing for geofencing is determined by cost per thousand impressions, CPM or event costs per conversion. It all depends on the campaign goals.

Geofencing marketing costs an average of USD 4-USD 14 CPM (cpm=cost per thousand impressions). For 20 000 square feet of targeted advertising, you will need to pay USD 5, if you are using Snapchat or another ad platform like Adwords. Pricing depends on many factors such as:

1. The size and number of geofences that you choose can have a significant impact on the cost of your campaign. It is simple: setting up 20 geofences at one location will cost you more than one geofence for all of it. The CPM for larger geofences is higher because there is more inventory and volume.

2. What data layering are you looking for? The higher the price, the more data you will need. A campaign that might have cost you several thousand dollars can easily double or triple depending upon the extra features you choose. Talk to your agency to discuss your requirements and to negotiate a plan that will work for you while keeping costs down.

3. What type of reporting do you need? Not all geofencing reports will be the same. While some reports will give you a detailed breakdown of impressions by location, others may only provide an overview of the campaign. Budget should include targeting and reporting options.

7 Advantages of Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing marketing is a popular option for business owners. A wider audience would offer greater return on marketing investment, as it could appeal to more customers. Multichannel marketing is flawed. It’s important to put quality before quantity, just like with any other worthwhile activity. A strong brand presence in one location is more important than a weaker presence in another.

Geofencing marketing can bring tangible benefits to your business that will allow you to grow.

1. A smaller geofence means that you can target your marketing more effectively. Connecting with local audiences on a personal level will inherently improve your brand’s image among potential customers. If your brand connects with local communities and the topics that are relevant to them, it creates a stronger impression which increases the likelihood of the customer coming back to you.
2. It is easier to create targeted, high-quality content. This content will continue to be the best way to increase your marketing success. If you have a wide geographic reach for your content publication, it will be less likely to connect with people from different locations. Geofencing marketing encourages the creation of more targeted content that is aimed at specific consumers. This helps to build a stronger brand image within your target area.
3. Connecting with customers is a way for your brand to connect with them. Many companies sell online and your brand might rely on orders placed from locations far away from your physical location. Your brand’s strength lies in the relationships you have with the people who live near you. Geofencing can help you develop a strong local following. You can also expand your reach over time by creating additional geofences for retail locations.    
4. Geofencing allows for timely content delivery. A geofencing campaign can make it easier to reach the customers who are most likely to benefit from limited-time deals at your brick-and-mortar store.
5. Geofencing is a cost-effective and efficient way to market your business. Your marketing team already uses the Google AdWords platform. Google offers businesses the ability to specify location-based parameters in their paid ads and business listing. This functionality is free. Your paid ads can be set to appear in international areas, within the US or Canada, within a particular region, or within a defined distance radius.
6. Geofencing is a great way to increase data collection. Customers respond to your digital marketing in Las Vegas campaigns more closely than you would with a wider campaign. You can collect data on customer visits to your store as a result of a geofenced advertisement. This includes their spending habits, visit durations, messaging effectiveness, and more.
7. Geofencing can allow your brand to offer more customized experiences to customers. Your marketing team can use the data from a geofencing campaign to create content and promotions that are more in line with customers’ needs, preferences, and goals.

In the end, any brand that has a physical store and a digital presence need to understand geofencing marketing and the benefits it offers. Geofencing can help build brand credibility and local followers. Business leaders can also expand their businesses digitally and physically with the help of detailed geofencing campaigns.

How to integrate geofencing into your marketing strategy

These are some tips that will help you incorporate geofencing into your marketing strategy.

Know your target audience

It is important to understand your audience and their preferences.

Are you unsure of the demographics of your audience’s target market? Use the data that you have. If you have social media accounts, connect with your customers to find out what their opinions are about your products and services. Your geofencing campaign will be the greatest beneficiary if you remember that your target audience is also the ultimate beneficiary. You must learn more about your target audience to understand their expectations and who they are.

Only by having the right information can you design a campaign that produces results. It will help you to create ads that engage shoppers and push them to buy.

Choose the right size for your geofence

A large geofence can cause more damage than good. It is important to decide upfront how large your geofence should be. If your competitors are within a 15-minute driving distance of your store, chances are that customers will also visit your store that day.

You should target small and compact areas — your goal audience must be able to find your store within four to six minutes of walking distance. Geofencing campaigns can also be done within a four- to five-minute drive. However, anything beyond that could cause inconvenience to your users.

Keep an ear on your data

Regular data review is essential to ensure that your geofence campaign stays on track. This will allow you to see what is working and what needs improvement. You could end up investing too much and not getting the expected returns. Partner up with a geofencing or digital marketing company in Phoenix if analytics scares you.

Choose the right moment to reach

Geofencing marketing campaigns that reach the right audience are often unsuccessful because they do not reach them at the right time. It is important to find the best time to reach your customers and to engage with them. Your geofencing campaign will not succeed if you bother them while they get ready for school/work or when they are asleep.

9 Brands Increased Recognition by Geofencing

Marketers have learned that consumers want more personal interactions with authentic brands over the last few years. Marketing strategies have changed. The accepted best practices of ten years ago are no longer relevant. Marketers must be precise in how they target their campaigns. Many marketers rely on data gathering tools in order to learn as much about potential customers as possible. However, some have come to realize that precise targeting must also include geographic location. Geofencing is a method of targeting specific geographical areas with marketing materials.

Geofencing is becoming more popular every year. It is most well-known in retail. However, many industries such as banking and finance and restaurants and hotels use geofencing to increase their brand recognition and attract new business. It’s time for you to reevaluate your marketing strategy and see what geofencing can do for your brand. A few companies have used geofencing to great effect. It can be a good starting point for your own strategy.

1. Whole Foods: A Aggressive Approach To Geofencing

Geofencing is essentially about using potential customers’ location data to your advantage. However, it can be hard to convince customers to share their data. Many loyalty rewards apps require that users share their location data in order to use them. Signing up to receive special offers via SMS requires you to share your location data.

Whole Foods developed a geofencing strategy that included two components. The company first erected geofences at every location. Customers who crossed these geofences received notifications and promotional offers in order to encourage them to go to the closest Whole Foods. The second part was more aggressive. Whole Foods used geofences to protect local competitors as part of a “geoconquest” strategy.

Potential customers who visited these places received offers from Whole Foods to encourage them to shop at Whole Foods. Nationally, the post-click conversion rate average is 1.4%. Whole Foods’ aggressive geofencing campaign and geo-conquest campaign enabled them to reach almost 4.7%

2. Coca-Cola Maximizing Vending Machine Revenue

An average person might see up to a dozen vending machines per day. Coca-Cola, a soft drink giant, has developed a unique geofencing strategy to optimize its supply chain and attract more customers to its vending machines. More than a third of all Coca-Cola vending machines are connected to the internet today. The company has also implemented facial recognition and payment tracking tools in its vending machines. These innovations have created incredibly valuable data streams that are now available to Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola was able to quickly determine which drinks were most popular, which locations were busiest and which vending machines needed attention.

Coca-Cola announced plans to improve its supply chain and offer customers better experiences. They have enabled their vending machines to receive free Wi-Fi. This will transform Coca-Cola vending machines in developed countries into Wi-Fi hotspots and gathering spots. Although you might not be as well-known as Coca-Cola, it is worth taking steps to attract customers to your retail locations and encourage them to spend more than just making purchases.

3. Sephora: Customers Get Instant Digital Assistants Everywhere

Sephora is a well-known cosmetics retailer in the United States. The company recently introduced a new strategy, which is a unique approach to geofencing. The Sephora companion application is not limited to potential customers located near Sephora locations. It launches whenever a customer enters any Sephora location. The app includes details about current promotions, and past purchases, as well as information about the availability of items in the wish list for each location. Store-specific information is also displayed in an easy-to-access format.

Sephora’s companion app has made shopping easier for many customers. It allows them to shop at Sephora in a more efficient manner, encourages them to buy additional products, takes advantage of limited-time offers, and uses the wish list to keep them coming back. The Sephora companion app also features geofencing technology that automatically notifies users when they cross into geofenced areas about unused gift card balances. This reminds them that Sephora stores are nearby if it is something they wish to do. The Sephora companion app is an excellent resource for ideas on how to offer your customers more enriching experiences in your stores.

4. Snapchat Filters: Dunkin’ Donuts Fun

Geofencing can be used to convince customers to buy, but it also allows them to interact with the brand in other ways. On National Donut Day, Dunkin’ Donuts released a Snapchat filter that customers could only access in-store. The personalized geo-filter created giant pink donuts for users, with sprinkle animations.

Dunkin’ Donuts had ten times more followers on National Donut Day than their average daily use thanks to the marketing campaign. Although this geofencing campaign was not directly related to sales, it drove customer engagement with Dunkin’ Donuts and encouraged customers to use Snapchat filters to share silly donut-head photos on social media. This is an excellent example of geofencing being used to generate brand engagement that can lead to conversions, even if it doesn’t directly influence users toward sales.

5. Burger King continues to dominate fast food markets

Corporate trolling was also one of the most innovative geofencing strategies of recent years. Burger King started the Whopper Detour campaign by erecting 600-foot geofences at McDonald’s locations. Burger King took to social media to urge their followers to visit McDonald’s. But there was a twist. The Burger King app sent a coupon for a 1-cent Whopper to any customer who crossed into a geofence around a McDonald’s. Many customers were compelled to make “Whopper Detours” to avoid going to McDonald’s.

Wendy’s and other fast food chains, such as Wendy’s, have made use of social media in unexpected and sometimes even entertaining ways. The Whopper Detour campaign shows how companies can use geofencing to not only drive sales but also generate engagement on social media. This stunt saw the Burger King app go from being ninth in the Apple App Store’s Food and Drink category to first. This could be a great opportunity to use the power of playful competition as a way to create enthusiasm for your brand and drive people to your mobile app.

6. Domino’s

Domino’s Pizza is an excellent example of a brand using geofencing to reach guests at hotels via their mobile devices. They encourage them to order pizza and deliver it to any location they choose, even their favorite park bench.

Domino’s targeted mobile apps and popular sites in South Florida to reach hotel guests. They also ran targeted ads for travelers. The ad takes the guest to a landing page that offers multiple options for ordering pizza from their nearest restaurant. This case study is unique because the audience was already geofenced, meaning they were guests at a hotel. Domino’s used this to offer something extra. This mobile marketing strategy was unique and achieved the desired results.

7. Papa John’s

Papa John’s new locations wanted to increase their loyalty rewards program. Super Bowl Promo was the ideal opportunity to promote Papa Rewards Program. Papa John’s used geofencing marketing for this purpose.

For loyalty rewards, a Super Bowl promo code was provided. The ad ran in an average radius of 2.5 miles around four locations. Geofencing used GPS coordinates for mapping the location and providing links to place orders. This new market was important for the pizza franchise and geofencing helped to increase brand awareness.

8. Starbucks

Starbucks uses geofencing to advertise drinks to its target audience. They send push notifications to customers who are near a Starbucks location. To increase footfall, they also offer special offers. Starbucks, for example, has happy hour Thursdays from 2-7 pm. BOGO offers are available on all grande drinks. Starbucks pushes notifications to customers whenever they are in close proximity to an outlet or area to remind them to check out the offer.

A coffee chain can also recommend a drink based on a user’s order history. If you order an iced coffee latte often, you will be sent a geofenced notification encouraging you to order one.   

9. John Hopkin

Although it may seem unusual, this is actually one of the most successful geofencing campaigns. John Hopkins Hospital uses geofencing to reach more people who want to hire them. They are well-known for creating social media ads that appear in the news feeds of qualified users.

It is the idea of reaching out to professionals in order to make it easier for them to apply to John Hopkins. Job seekers don’t have to do all the work required to find the right opportunities in the market. John Hopkins, a recruiter, is happy to post the appropriate opportunities and attract them in. John Hopkins was able to find the right candidates and fill the job openings by using geofencing.

How to Create a Geofencing Marketing Strategy that Actually Works: Here’s what you can do

• Before you begin your geofencing campaign, it is important to do some data hunting. It is easier to implement the strategy if you have a better understanding of the audience you are targeting.

• The geofence should be targeted at specific people. It is important not to target everyone who enters the geofence, but only those who match the customer persona that you have created.

• Continue to evaluate and improve your geofencing strategy. This is not something you should do once in a while. It is essential to stay up-to-date and accurate for your success. Once you have the raw data, run A/B testing to determine which campaigns work best for your business.

• You should link the physical store with your user profile online. You can also include their wishlist, previous purchases, and the best-suited products for them. Geofencing can be used to promote lucrative offers and increase the interest of your target audience.

• Attention to the message. To stand out from the crowd, your message must be unique. The message must also be visually appealing to make the notifications more relevant to the audience. This will encourage them to open the notifications and read them. Segmenting your audience can help you create ads that resonate with them. Segmenting your audience can help you determine where they are located, their hobbies, browsing habits, and other demographics.

• Once you have started a geofencing campaign, don’t limit yourself to analyzing reach and frequency. Geofencing provides valuable data, such as where customers shop most often, the closest stores to their homes or workplaces, and many other details that can help you to target your ideal customer.

• To attract more customers, the fence should be placed around a high-target area. You should be careful with the size of your fence. Too small or too large can mean you miss out on potential customers. If you offer a special deal or make an appealing offer to your customers, they will be more likely to take advantage of your opportunity to purchase from your store.

• A compelling CTA should inspire the audience to take action. Generic CTAs often fall flat because they don’t tell people what to do next. A laser-focused CTA, such as “Claim Your 50% Discount Coupon” will tell them exactly what to expect once they click.

Inspiration for Your Brand       

These are just some examples of major companies that have used geofencing technology in surprising ways. Geofencing is a great way to attract attention to your competitors or provide customers with better experiences in your stores.

Geofences are a great way to increase traffic to brick-and-mortar stores. They allow customers to be enticed with limited-time promotions. Geofencing technology can be very cost-effective. Geofencing is not an extra cost for Google AdWords or Facebook. You can simply choose your target areas, create your campaign and track the results.

Think about the potential benefits geofencing marketing can have for your brand. Then, brainstorm ways to connect with your local market more effectively.