What is Geofencing?

Geofencing is a location-based marketing service. Geofence technology uses a mobile device’s physical location to trigger targeted advertising based around a pre-defined geographical location. Because geofencing is a mobile-based advertising solution, it cannot be used without a mobile app. A powerful and effective digital marketing tool, geofencing helps businesses target ads to a specific audience based off the user’s location.

The Rise of Mobile Devices

Around the U.S., mobile device usage continues to increase. This trend doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon either. Comscore reported that mobile usage is the leading digital platform, with total activity on smartphones and tablets accounting for an astonishing 60% of all digital media time spent in the United States. As a result of rising mobile device usage, advertisers are paying more attention to mobile than ever before.

According to Search Engine Land:

• 70% of consumers are willing to share their location information if they believe they are getting value in return
• 60% of consumers search for local information on their mobile devices
• 40% of consumers search for information while on the go

How Businesses Can Use Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing advertising technology enables digital marketers to customize audiences based on a predefined location through the use of unstructured data and a programmatic infrastructure. Geofencing is an extremely effective mobile marketing optimization strategy. Using geofencing, businesses can serve targeted ads to mobile phone app users by creating a virtual boundary around a business’s location. Users receive notification the moment they enter or exit the virtual boundary. Ads can also reach users after they’ve left the geofenced area by using past location and leveraging user cookies.

Geofencing Advantages

• Target users in a specific location
• Drive foot traffic to a physical retail location
• Personalize customer experience
• Increase brand awareness & customer loyalty
• Drive mobile reach
• Measure offline conversions
• Event management – real time location data
• Granular localization
• More accurate than IP targeting
• Identify high concentrations of customers
• Real-time foot traffic attribution reporting

Conversion Zones – Measuring Success

In order to determine ROI, geofencing marketing uses conversion zones to measure the effectiveness of each campaign. When the targeted audience previously served the ad enters the predefined conversion zone with their mobile device, the conversion zone recognizes the user and attributes their visit as an offline conversion for the geofencing campaign.

Conversion zone reporting provides actionable insights that can be used to maximize ad campaign effectiveness, measure impressions, clicks and click-through rates, and conversions. Advertisers can measure the amount of physical traffic driven to the location through targeted geofence ads.

Conversion Zone Reporting

• Conversions
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Total spend
• View through visits
• Click through visits
• Total visit rate (TVR)
• Cost per visit
• Visits

Event Targeting

Geofencing marketing allows businesses to target customers who attend special events. Using geofence technology and Event Targeting, marketers can build an audience within a pre-determined area and send them targeted advertisements within a specified timeframe.

Event Geofence Benefits

• Turn-key event targeting
• Location granularity
• Specify date and time parameters
• Target single or multiple locations
• Portable and reusable audiences

Competitor Locations

Competitor geofencing allows businesses to target potential customers who have recently visited one of their competitor’s physical locations. With the help of geofencing technology, marketers can target audiences in predefined competitor locations with pinpoint accuracy. Using this type of digital marketing, businesses can target a precise competitor location, conference, and/or event, increasing return on investment (ROI) potential.

Competitor Geofence Benefits

• Target customers who have expressed interest in a similar product
• Increase market share by attracting the competitor’s customers
• Launch targeted promotional offers
• Geofence an area as small as 1,000 square feet
• Disrupt the competitor’s sales efforts
• Targeted promotional delivery

Please contact us to learn more about geofencing.