Have you ever come across an advertisement on your smartphone from a nearby store? There’s a high chance they are using geofencing as their digital marketing strategy. Geofencing is a location-based advertising strategy that uses GPS and other location-tracking tools to create a virtual boundary. When a smartphone enters the virtual boundary, it triggers an action, most commonly a notification on your phone, enticing you to take a desirable action. The marketing strategy allows brands to show their ads to people who have been inside the geofence.
Geo-fencing marketing has many benefits. However, as a marketer, you must be aware of the best practices to optimize the results. The following are the best practices that must be followed while implementing this strategy:
1. Identify Your Customers and Their Journey
The first step to a successful geo-marketing campaign is to identify who your customers are and the places they visit. If your potential customers are shown your ad, what are the possibilities that they will come to visit your store? Understand why and how your potential customers will need your services. The answers to the questions will help you create a geofence that will actually be effective.
Also, you can segment your audience for a more targeted ad campaign. Segment them based on their buying habits, demography, interests, and browsing behavior. This will help you create different ads that resonate with them.
2. Keep Your Geofence Small
You must have heard this quote, “Keep your circle of friends small,” because having a small group of true friends is better than having a large group. The same goes for your geofence. Keep it small and intact. Having a bigger geofence means you have more problems to tackle. A geofence that covers an area that is one hour away from your store is pointless. No one is going to drive an hour to visit your store. Plus, it is more expensive to have a bigger geofence. But having a geofence of a 5-minute drive area is doable, and people are most likely to visit your store in this situation.
3. Add a Compelling CTA
If you don’t entice your audience with a compelling CTA, they won’t take any desirable action. If you want your audience to act, you have to tell them what they will get after following your directions. For instance, “click here to get a flat 50%” is a compelling CTA compared to “click here now.” This strategy is great for retailers who want to increase their in-store foot traffic and brand engagement. These offers will motivate your potential leads to visit your store in person and may turn into paying customers.
4. Put a Geofence That Overlaps With Your Competitors
This may sound crazy, but you need to overlap your geofence with your competitors to target their customers. Take the example of two popular pizza joints: Joint A and Joint B. They both sell the same products to the same customers. In order to target the customers of Joint A, Joint B can set up a geofence that overlaps with Joint A and give the customers offers that are hard to resist. This will help increase Joint B’s brand awareness and make the customers think about their brand instead of the competitor’s.
5. Don’t Target Them 24/7
Getting the timing right for your geofencing ads is very crucial. You don’t want to target your customers 24/7. It is best to show them the ads when your business is open. For example, if you have a breakfast joint, showing your audience ads during dinner time won’t be very effective. In the same way, if you have a bar, showing them ads in the morning is not a good idea. This saves you a lot of money and prevents your geofencing efforts from going to waste.
Conclusion
Geofencing creates a lot of opportunities to generate new leads and revenue. However, to succeed in your strategy, you must implement them with the best practices in mind. If you are unaware of the best practices, all your efforts will go to waste, and you won’t see any expected results.
