Have you ever visited a location, then received an advertisement from the place you just came from? Kind of creepy, right? But what if this targeting helps you avoid irrelevant ads that waste your time? And what if businesses, avoid wasting money reaching the wrong people? But how do marketers actually do this? This is called geofencing, and today, I’ll explain how it works and how you can benefit from it.
What Is Geofencing?
By definition, geofencing is the method of creating a virtual border around a designated area, often referred to as a polygon.
Geofencing can be highly effective in instances where we know a relevant target audience will be at a certain place and time. It can also engage your past customers or visitors, increase brand awareness, and even reach your competitors’ customers.
How Does It Work?
How marketers are able to control when, where, and how these ads are served to a person has to do with the device you’re using, the most popular example being your cell phone. According to Pew Research Center, 85% of Americans own a smartphone, (ConsumerAffairs conducted new research and found that 92% of Americans own a smartphone) and each cell phone offers location accessibility. 80% of these people have their location settings turned on, and because of this, marketers can accurately target people.
When strategically executed, geofencing can be highly effective for businesses. For example, a retail business is having a hard time gaining foot traffic. To increase foot traffic, they geofence other local competitor businesses to gain brand awareness. And here is the cool part, they can identify how many people came to their store due to the ads they served because we can trace back to the device id the ad was served on. This helps justify the return on investment and optimizes campaigns.
If you’re a business that is interested in utilizing geofencing to accomplish your marketing goals, visit our website at discoverforce5.com, send us an email at [email protected], or talk to a human at 574-234-2060.
