How many times have you convinced yourself your smartphone has been listening to every conversation you’ve had? You walk past a Crumbl Cookie shop and talk about how much you want one or you point out a Dunkin Donut your drive past one because you haven’t seen one in a while and all of a sudden, your phone is flooded with ads of mouth-watering cookies and tasty donuts. Feels a little creepy right? Although having a smartphone listening to you would be equally scary as it is convenient, the reality is your phones aren’t the ones listening to you – it’s the marketing wizards.
Marketing companies listen closely to their consumer base to better understand what habits, hobbies, lifestyles, and characteristics make up each audience. Knowing your consumers allows you to know how, where, and when to target your audience with strategic ads without spending advertising dollars on people who may not be your target audience. The solution to spending your advertising dollars wisely is by geofencing marketing.
What is Geofencing?
Geofencing marketing can be looked at as a location-based visible perimeter drawn in any shape on a map. Some companies may refer to this tactic as location-based marketing. Using cell phone locations to send a targeted ad, this marketing strategy can be narrowed down to very specific details to give your target audience a personalized experience. Geofencing is an untraditional form of marketing and allows you to target consumers based on the places they go and their physical activity. When the location service is turned on a mobile device, you can ping people’s phones with all types of ads once they enter the virtual perimeter of your geofence. Ads pop into apps users already use like Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify. By setting up locations around neighborhoods, competitors, and places of business, you can track the habits of your target audience greatly and can eliminate sending ads to those outside of your target audience.
For example, let’s say you are a die-hard football fan who traditionally has a few beers at every tailgate with your friends. There are necessities you need for any successful tailgate – your team outfit, beer (of course!), maybe a canopy, something to barbecue, and a few good friends. After the game, you see ads for the beer you saw some football fans holding at the tailgate on your phone for the next 30 days. To the untrained eye, it is a bit strange to see the same beer pop up as ads when you’ve only mentioned them in passing. It’s just a case of your phone being in the virtual geofence perimeter during the geofences dedicated hours to pinging phones.
Conversion Rates
Measuring the success of marketing campaigns can be a challenge with traditional methods such as billboards or radio ads but what is great about geofencing, besides getting ads popping up in people’s phones, is you can track conversion rates. A conversion rate measures how many times people physically went into your place of business after seeing the ads even up to 30 days after. Unfortunately, for retail and online stores – conversion rates are untrackable. If your business falls into one of those two categories you can track success by targeting one location with ads and seeing the sale lift.
For all other types of businesses here is an example of conversion rate in geofencing. Let’s say your goal is to get more college students to come to your local coffee shop right off-campus. You virtually draw your target zone geofence around campus housing, greek rows, and homes around campus to receive ads for your coffee shop. You then mark your coffee shop as the conversion zone. Once a targeted consumer clicks on your ad and proceeds to walk into your coffee shop, ding ding ding! You just got a conversion and hopefully a returning customer. Plus, you can track other results to see how your ads performed. You can see how many times your ads were displayed (impressions), and how many times people clicked on the ad no matter if they went into the conversion zone or not. Geofencing marketing is beneficial for directional, engagement, and brand awareness marketing as well. If you have ever used uber eats or share your location with friends, your location is turned on and capable of receiving targeted ads every single day. For businesses, this means your ads can be seen by existing customers, possible leads, and can spread brand awareness.
If you are looking for new ways to spend your advertising dollars on trackable non-traditional methods, geofencing could be a great option for you. If you are new to the marketing world and this sounds like a solution, our team at Louvre Media can help you decide what strategy is best. We can help figure out the approach best suited for your business and your goals and make suggestions along the way. We want your business to be successful.
