Where once your tactics to engage with a local audience may have focused on print, radio and out of home advertising, Geofencing creates an opportunity to reach that audience instantly on their mobile devices and drive footfall into your brick-and-mortar locations. When done well it will also provide you with valuable consumer insight.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing works by drawing a digital fence, called a geofence, around a specific location, or a number of locations. A Geofencing campaign would typically have multiple defined fences of tightly defined geographic areas with borders, based on global positioning.

Once users enter one of these fences they will have a digital marker placed on them, with digital display ads served to them on their mobile devices in real-time on the go.

Why you should use it

Customers these days expect it. In the current digital climate brands that don’t use Geofencing technology will fall behind. As many as 80% of consumers want location based alerts from businesses in their local area and three out of four consumers will complete an action after receiving a targeted ad in this way.

There is also the potential for increased campaign performance and huge potential return on investment. Take a look a look at 5 examples of good Geofencing campaigns.

Geofencing through the Soop doesn’t require any increased investment in terms of hardware or software installation in physical locations. The unique satellite technology used by the platform enables accurate geofences to be drawn seamlessly across multiple locations for one campaign activation. This ensures that the technology is accessible to multiple local businesses, even those with smaller budgets, such as coffee shops, solicitors, beauticians, mechanics and retailers.

Benefits

There are a number of benefits, including:

• Boosting local sales in-store: You now have the capability to target a local audience in a defined geographic area. Your messaging, deals and offers is what will entice them into your location to spend their money.
• Attracting customers from competitors: A strategically placed geofence around a competitors’ location with a well-timed and enticing offer could be enough to get that customer spending their money with you instead.
• Increasing loyalty: Geofencing isn’t limited to engaging with individuals when they are in the proximity of your geofence. The best campaigns continue to target these users after they have left the geofence. Give your customers a tailored offer once they leave and start to build repeat business and all-important loyalty.
• Enhance your customer data: It can be very difficult to measure local sales when you can’t detail exactly what brought a customer into a shop. How can you then attribute this to your digital marketing spend? If customers are coming through your doors with your Geofencing promotions you can measure a variety of metrics including sales, time in store, and how often they visit your business. All of this information adds depth to your business analytics.
• Personalisation data: Geofencing enables your business to collect data and build out demographics about the local population including the offers that get them into store. Comparing this with purchase history ensures you can better tailor your upcoming campaigns.

Approaching it tactically

When done well Geofencing can be powerful. To get it right, it’s essential to approach it tactically. Consider the following:

Understand the local audience

How much do you already know about your local audience? The more knowledge you collect on who your potential customers are in your local area, the better chance you have of tailoring your messaging to entice them in store in the first place. Reporting from previous campaigns is also a valuable tool to do this.

Don’t go too big

For Geofencing to work well, you need to work within a close radius around your defined location. Consider the five minute rule. When you’re in a city and most customers walk to you, keep your fence to a five-minute walking radius. For businesses out of town where customers usually drive, keep it to a five-minute driving radius.

Keep it clear, simple and enticing

Your call to action (CTA) needs to stand out and it must encourage immediate action. A confusing CTA will result in a low-performing campaign.

Always go cross-device

The immediate engagement will be on a user’s mobile device, but the campaign shouldn’t be limited to this. To re-engage with users, encourage repeat business, and generate loyalty, they need to be reached on whatever device they’re using at home and on the go.

Ensure everything is up to date

Campaigns that pull customers into store with a new offer or deal on a specific product will fall flat if products are sold out or deals are no longer running. In-feed ads should always be combined with Geofencing.

To find out more, please download our Digital Marketer's Guide to Location Based Marketing.