Geofencing is considered the new kid on the block when it comes to mobile advertising. Many people misperceive it as 1 mile radius targeting or even 1 block targeting. Facebook claims to have a radius targeting solution down to 1 mile, but in our mind that is not a true geofence. A geofence is a virtual fence placed around the precise area or down to a building. At Propellant Media, we are able to granularly target people in individual buildings, malls, competitors, etc.
So it’s our geofencing technology that we’ll be speaking to specifically. Over the years and with the growth of ctv ott advertising, we’ve found some pretty compelling reasons for many industries to utilize geofencing marketing as part of their marketing and advertising strategy. Below are 16 really compelling reasons why you should invest in geofencing for your organization.
Mobile Geofencing Marketing Is Here
Mobile matters for everyone up and the customer journal, including content readers and content marketers. According to Google, “71% of a car buyer’s digital interactions occur on mobile,” which makes Geo-Fencing the ideal hyper targeted advertising solution for automotive dealerships. So being able to keep mobile in marketing for marketing, advertising, and content marketing is critical.
Geofence Individual Buildings…Not Just Zip Codes
Consider how much more efficient you can get when you are targeting specific buildings and areas for a company versus a 1 mile or 2 mile radius of the location you want to target. With geofencing, you can building individual fences around particular locations where you know your ideal clients frequents. Consider a personal injury lawyer who wants to reach accident victims. Targeting hospitals and ER centers might be your ideal place to showcase your ads to build awareness and direct response for your law practice.
Stronger Engagement With Geofencing Advertising
When you’re advertising to an audience, three keys matter to our agency:
- Who’s the audience you’re targeting?
- What’s the message you’re using with your targeting?
- Is the place you’re sending that audience compelling enough for them to take action?
The beauty of geofencing is you are truly getting your message in front of the audience that matters the most. Maybe it’s a car shopper who is in the market looking for a car. They raised their hand to you, and typically those people who express strong intent are also likely to produce stronger engagement. Our agency has a Pet Store with multiple locations. We geofenced other competitors locations and places where we know pet owners frequent. That is probably our strongest campaign engagement wise because of the passionate audience and how granular we got with the campaign. Geofencing does produce higher engagement with your targeted audience.
Real Geofencing Marketing Does NOT require Beacons
Our geofencing platform does not require beacon technology or placing beacons inside of buildings. This can be an encumbering process and if you want to target your competitors, it becomes even more challenging to implement. Also, with beacon technology you are only able to target people who walk close by your storefront or location and cannot retarget those people after they leave your storefront. With geofencing, you only need to know the locations you want to target aswell as the creative ads to upload prior to launching.
Serve Ads Through 1,000,000 Apps & Websites
With geofencing, your target audience will typically be on app they utilize on their devices or tablets. Or they will be on some website with advertising space. Our agency has access to to 600,000 Apps, so if you think about Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Weather Channel and other apps are places your ads will show up on. Standard ad sizes that work for these app include the following:
- 300 x 250
- 320 x 50
- 300 x 50
Compared to other platforms in which you only receive push notifications when you walk nearby a beacon, geofencing allows for much more reach and targeting.
Target Users While They’re At The Location
With geofencing, you can target users while they are there at the target location. They can be on their smartphone device or tablet/laptop playing on apps or browsing websites and then potentially see your ads. So you are able to target and speak to them while they are there.
Target Users After They Leave The Location
With geofencing, you can also serve ads to them after they leave the geofence. Our platform places a cap of 30 days that the person can see your ads, but once they click on your ad and they visit your website, that individual can be retargeted to for longer periods of time (up to 1 year in some cases).
Many Different Uses Of Geofencing
Our Geofencing marketing technology can give advertisers the competitive edge they’ve been looking for and that none of their competitors are using. See mobile location based advertising in action:
- Personal Injury Lawyers wanting to reach accident victims at ER Centers, Hospitals, and Car Repair Centers
- Exhibitor who wanted to advertise at an upcoming conference or event
- Car dealership who desires to target their competitor dealerships
- Retailer or franchise wants to run a customer loyalty program, so they build geofencing around their own stores to drive repeat customers and buyers
- Billboard company wants to serve ads to mobile drives of people who drive past their bill board
Go Mobile With Geofencing
Mobile is a very powerful device type that many more people are use utilizing through research and discovery. According to January 2018 data, the global mobile population amounted to 3.7 billion unique users. As of February 2017, mobile devices accounted for 49.7 percent of web page views worldwide, with mobile-first markets such as Asia and Africa leading the pack. So geofencing continues to be a powerful advertising channel knowing that mobile usage continues to increase.
Strong Return On Marketing Investment
With geofencing, you are expected to get a higher ROI compared to other brand and direct response campaigns because of the targeted nature of the campaign you are launching. You may be asking how are you able to measure ROI for geofencing campaigns? We more answers to that below.
Get More Reach In Ad Spend
We like to say that with geofencing, can you get at least 97% more reach in your budget than simple targeting methods like zip code targeting. Even if you decided to target a 1 mile radius of your location comparing that to 10 buildings you could geofence will get you at least 99% more reach in your ad spend.
Geofencing Data Is Better
The data is better as well. With geofencing, you can tell how many people inside those geofences saw your ads and walked inside your building even after seeing your ads. We can breakdown the following metrics:
- Impressions
- Clicks
- CTR
- CPM Rates
All that data can be used to determine which locations are translating into leads, foot traffic, and calls to your business.
Personalize & Flight Out Creative Ads
With geofencing advertising, you can personalize the creative ads specific to the people walking inside of the said geofences. If you want to reach people at a conference, you can make the creative ads specific to those conference attendees. But if you wanted to change the creative after a week, you can do that with geofencing. Compare that to billboards in which you cannot change your ads for 6 months to a year in some cases can be problematic.
Get Analytics Realtime
Compared to other advertising channels, geofencing provide you with analytics realtime. Here is a sample report. You will start getting data the same day the campaign has been launched. Having the data will allow you to make decisions realtime and pivot based on what is and is not working within your advertising.
Only Need Location Services Turned On
In our experience, 90% of people typically have their location services turned on in their mobile devices. If you think about Google Maps, you need location services turned on for that app alone to work. So most people have it turned on. Which means geofencing marketing gives you a greater chance of reaching those people who walked inside of the geofence compared to other forms of marketing and advertising.
Traffic Online To Offline Foot Traffic
Conversion zones are a powerful means to track your online advertising to offline storefront traffic and conversions (meaning those people who physically went to a particular location as a result of seeing your Ads).
- A virtual geo-fence is traced around an area where the advertiser wants to target customers visiting another location (i.e a competitor’s store, a venue, or a specific part of town, etc.)
- Next, a virtual Conversion Zone is traced around one or more of the the advertiser’s locations.
- When the customer enters the geo-fenced location, they will then be targeted with the advertiser’s ads on their mobile device.
- When the customer enters the Conversion Zone with their mobile device and has previously been served the advertiser’s ad, the Conversion Zone recognizes the user and attributes their visit as an offline conversion for the geo-fencing campaign.
Now you can truly determine the impact your advertising is having on people who have seen your ads and walk to your designated conversion zone.
Track Natural Foot Traffic To Campaign Foot Traffic
With geofencing and certainly our platform, you can track the number of people who would have naturally visited your store front versus the number of people who visited your store front as a result of seeing your Ads. It’s what we call geo lift. We calculate it by looking at the percent increase in natural store front visitors versus advertising percent increase in store front visitors. Now you really know how effective your advertising is going.
As you can see, geofencing advertising can be the most powerful form of marketing you can add to your list of strategies. We know there are several companies that do geofencing marketing. Of course we are one of them and believe we provide the best platform, but either way you should consider geofencing as your next form of digital advertising within your organization.