As a business owner, if you don’t stay up on digital marketing trends you can easily be left behind. In today’s world, it’s all about the customer—their buying habits, their online experience, and the reviews they write about your company.
It’s not new, but many marketers have figured out how to refine it and make it work for a wide range of different industries. It’s called geofencing. It’s a powerful marketing tool that turns ads into action, both online and offline
By creating a virtual fence around businesses that compete with you, geofencing enables users to do something that wasn’t achievable previously. It targets the right people in the right place at exactly the right time, creates viable leads, and turns them into sales. And it’s all based on their physical location.
Some people are still skeptical about geofencing, until they go into a retail location and promptly receive an ad on their smartphone from a nearby competitor. Once it happens more than once, these doubters quickly turn into geofence believers.
Here are the 4 main benefits of geofence marketing:
- Take on the competition
The customer walks into a competing business and starts getting ads about your company on their smartphone. You are right in front of their face and they can’t ignore you. If you’re able to get a click-through, you’ve done more than half of the work. Now it’s your job to offer them a deal they can’t refuse.
Many companies that use geofencing love what they call “geo-conquesting” where they periodically change their virtual fences and tweak their approach. Inside this geofence, potential customers will get your alerts when they’re near the rival store or when they do a specific action near it, like search for a good cup of coffee on Google, in some cases. This leads to up to 30% higher click-through rates than in the standard use of geofencing according to MediaPost.
2. Hit that target—fire away!
Without geofencing, your digital marketing strategies would only rely on local SEO to target the right people. With geofencing, you can target the people in close proximity to you, and encourage them to visit you while they’re there.
You can also personalize your messages, even depending on the day or time. Anytime a potential customer enters your zone, you can push out any type of message you want them to see. Maybe you’re running some specials or current promotions—the options are endless!
3. Tap into the ever-growing mobile crowd
Did you know that 77% of smartphone users research on their phones first before buying a product? (Source: REVIEWS.org). Even when they’re not doing research, they’re sure to be checking their mobile phones wherever they are.
An average user in the U.S. checks their phones around 344 times per day (every four minutes.) (Source: Invoca) This gives you a good chance of being visible to nearby consumers. You can then take advantage of the fact that many people still like getting to see and feel the product or service in-person.
4. More relevant and timely engagement
You can better engage with your customers if you give out information that’s relevant and timely. Remember, you can set up notifications each time a mobile phone enters or exits your mobile fence. You can also track the customer while inside your store, for example.
If a consumer goes in because of the geofence alert and then buys something from the store, you can then design an ad once they exit your location.
The good part about this is that it has a snowball effect. Each time you gather data about the habits of your consumers, you get to refine your geofencing techniques, which will improve your engagement rates. A good marketing company like Stratosphere Studio knows how to take that data and leverage for top results. So, call us today at: 443-640-4125 or email us at info@stratospherestudio.com.
