Sarah Berry is a Lead Web Marketing Consultant at WebFX. With more than 10,000 hours of experience, she offers practical insights and strategies you can use to grow your digital revenue. When she isn’t polishing her Time Magazine Person of the Year Award, she’s spending time with her flock of ducks.
What is geofencing marketing?
Geofencing marketing is a type of location-based marketing strategy that enables companies to advertise to potential customers within a specific geographic radius or area.
One of the most effective ways to hone in on your marketing’s target audience is to use geofencing marketing.
This strategy uses a combination of technology, including GPS and radio frequency identifiers, to construct a virtual boundary around your company’s location to promote your products or services to individuals in that area.
You can use geofencing to market to your target audience while they’re shopping with your competitor, browsing your offline or online store, or even as they’re preparing to use your service.
Want to learn more about geofencing advertising? Just keep reading! Here’s everything we’ll cover:
Geofencing marketing is a location-based marketing strategy that allows you to advertise your products or services to potential customers in your company’s geographic location.
How does geofencing marketing work?
So now that you know the answer to the question, “what is geofencing marketing,” you might wonder how it works in practice.
A geofencing advertising strategy works by setting up virtual boundaries around a specific location, like the location of your business. Then, this boundary will track whenever someone with a mobile device enters it.
As soon as someone enters the virtual boundary around your business or a competitor’s, your geofencing advertising campaign will send a notification or mobile ad to that person’s phone that advertises your local store, service, or product.
Expert insights from
Sarah GaffneyWebFX Geofencing Expert
“Geofencing allows you to form a virtual fence around specific locations you want to target. When someone steps inside this fence, they’ll be added to your audience and will be eligible to see your ads for up to ~30 days.
If you have physical locations that customers visit, it is also a great way to track users visiting those locations! By adding conversion zones (your physical locations), you can see how many users saw or clicked on your ad and then visited one of your locations.”
Geofencing is a location-based technology that relies on several technologies, including Wi-Fi, GPS, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and Bluetooth.
4 significant geofencing marketing benefits
There are several benefits of geofencing marketing that your business can enjoy. Let’s take a look at four key geofencing advertising benefits below:
Geofencing can help you improve your local search engine optimization (SEO) strategy by giving your company more opportunities to show up in local searches when your audience is looking for your products or services in their area.
The result? You can help more local customers discover your business, boosting your foot traffic and sales in the process.
2. Drive better marketing results with data-driven campaigns
A core part of geofencing marketing is analytics. It runs on data, giving your marketing team or provider actionable information for your next campaign. Geofencing also provides your team with that data in real-time.
Some factors you can measure include:
Ad impressions or views
Conversion zone visits
And more!
Another benefit of geofencing marketing is that you can modify your campaigns on the go. If you notice users aren’t responding to your promotions, for instance, you can investigate what’s not working in your campaign. Maybe you’re targeting the wrong area or timeframe, for example.
3. Personalize audience experiences
Perhaps one of the best geofencing marketing benefits is that it allows you to use data to personalize experiences for your audience.
Your geofencing advertising campaign will give you detailed insight into the local population’s demographics and which offers generate interest in your local business. You can leverage this data to personalize your messaging to resonate with your target audience.
For example, if you notice one of your products is more popular among a certain age group, you can alter your messaging and targeting to focus that product’s marketing on that specific age group.
4. Make your marketing more cost-effective
Finally, geofencing allows for much more cost-effective marketing campaigns. You don’t need to worry about spending money to advertise to people who aren’t even located in your area, because you know that all of your marketing is being targeted to a specific geographic area.
As a result, you know that every dollar you spend on your marketing campaigns is being used to reach people who are actually potential customers. You’re not wasting your budget on people who have no chance of purchasing from your business.
That cost-effectiveness goes up even more when you add additional parameters like demographics.
7 types of geofencing you can use
If you want to use geofencing for your business, it’s important to know what types of geofencing you can run. Here are seven tactics you can try:
When you think of geofencing, this is probably the main tactic that comes to mind. Location targeting, also known as competitor targeting, involves targeting a specific location, often a competitor’s location.
For example, a wedding dress company might build a geofence around locations belonging to their competitor — David’s Bridal — to target their customer base. When those customers are near David’s Bridal, they’ll see an ad related to the other wedding dress company.
Location targeting is a great way to direct interested people to your business and away from your competition.
2. Event targeting
If you use event targeting for your geofencing marketing, you’ll build a geofence around a location where an event is happening. This geofence is set for a scheduled timeframe of when the event is running.
Anyone who enters the fence during the event gets added to an audience. You can then remarket to these leads up to 30 days after the event occurred. Event targeting is great for industry events, job fairs, concerts, and more.
So, for example, a country-themed bar and restaurant might target people who attended country concerts at a local venue because they know those people would likely be interested in a country bar.
3. Addressable geofencing
Addressable geofencing involves targeting people who live or work at a certain address. This option is great for business-to-business (B2B) companies that want to advertise to decision-makers at a desired company or for businesses that have a list of addresses from customers.
An HVAC company, for example, could have a list of addresses from previous jobs. They could use that list to target those people with promotional offers for yearly maintenance.
4. Keyword targeting
Another geofencing marketing option is to use keyword targeting. Keyword targeting involves targeting potential customers based on the content they read across the web. It’s an effective way for you to target people who have an interest in your industry.
For example, a cabinetry supplier may target a list of keywords related to kitchen remodeling to show ads to people who have been looking at topics related to kitchen remodeling. It’s an effective way to reach people who might need your products or services based on what they’ve been searching.
5. Category contextual targeting
With category contextual targeting, you use geofencing marketing to target people based on the content they view online. You target topics or categories of information and your ads are shown to people viewing that content.
6. Geo-optimized targeting
As the name implies, geo-optimized targeting involves reaching people in a specific geographic area, based on zip code, city, state, or something similar. This option is good for companies that want to build brand awareness through targeting a larger geographic area.
7. Website retargeting
To wrap up this list of type of geofencing marketing, let’s talk about website retargeting. This type of geofencing serves ads to people who already visited your website in an effort to drive them to your physical store. These ads are great for getting people in the door who showed a previous interest in your business.
4 tips for implementing geofencing into your marketing strategy
Wondering how to implement geofencing into your marketing strategy? We’ve got you covered! All you need to get started with geofencing is an app and GPS coordinates.
Then, you can follow these simple geofencing tips for incorporating geofencing into your marketing strategy:
If you understand who your audience is, as well as what they want, you can create a target area that’ll drive results. Plus, you can develop ads that will engage shoppers and encourage them to purchase. If you’re unsure of who makes up your target audience — or if you’re revamping that audience — look at the data you already have available.
If you’re active on social media, for example, interact with your customers and see what they’re saying about your business, services, or products.
2. Keep your geofencing boundary small
In most cases, you’ll want to keep your geofencing area to a four to five-minute radius around your local business. Making your boundary too large could result in you promoting your brand to uninterested people.
It’s also a good idea to consider whether most people in your city walk or drive. If they tend to walk more, you’ll want to keep your boundary to a four to five-minute walking radius. And if they drive, a four to five minutes driving distance will do.
3. Make your call to action (CTA) actionable and clear
Which is more actionable — “Buy an entrée and get one free, today only!” or “Come in for our dinner special!” Sure, you’re inviting users with each, but you’re much more specific and to the point in the first call-to-action (CTA). Try to follow that example with all your CTAs.
It’s also worth noting that you should develop ads that aren’t spammy or self-serving. If you’re promoting a new product, for example, invite users to try it versus telling them to buy it. With this approach, you’re guiding them through the buying funnel in a natural way.
4. Use all your targeting techniques
In geofencing marketing, you can use several outside marketing techniques, including:
Context targeting: A targeting option that shows an ad that’s relevant to the content on the page, such as an ad beside a news article about local restaurants.
Content targeting: A targeting tool that targets keywords used in searches, as well as the intention of those keywords. If you have content for the keyword, “restaurants with private dining areas,” you’d ensure the content discusses your private dining area and options.
Retargeting: A targeting strategy for marketing that shows an ad to users that have viewed a product on your website, such as after visiting your storefront.
Dayparting: A targeting technique that targets users at certain times of day, better known as ad scheduling. If you have a target audience that’s active on the weekdays, for instance, you may only run your promotions Monday through Friday.
Like many digital marketing tools, geofencing marketing will support and complement your digital marketing strategy. It’ll inform your team, for example, about when your target audience is active, as well as how to market to them after a store visit.
5 geofencing marketing examples
Ready for a few geofencing marketing examples to inspire your campaign? Here are five to start:
Taco Bell, a fast-food giant for Mexican dishes, leveraged its mobile app for geofencing advertising. The marketing team at Taco Bell wanted to target users under the age of 30 that had enabled push notifications for the Taco Bell app. The goal? For users to say, “Yo quiero Taco Bell.”
By creating well-defined geofences in areas near Taco Bell locations, the team improved the company’s annual profits by six percent. For reference, the company recently posted $10 billion in annual sales — that means the campaign generated close to $600 million in additional profits.
2. How the History Channel raised brand awareness
The History Channel, a television network for all-things history, improved awareness for its brand by partnering with Foursquare, a mobile app for finding local restaurants, entertainment, museums, and more.
If users opted to check in to a historical location, such as the White House, they’d see additional information on the location.
For the White House, for example, they may see an overview of its construction dates, as well as notable historical events. While the companies didn’t release numbers on the campaign, industry insiders view it as a success.
3. How Burger King detoured customers away from competitors
Burger King’s Whopper Detour campaign is an excellent example of geofencing marketing. More specifically, it’s an example of geoconquesting — a geofence marketing strategy designed to draw customers away from competitors.
Here’s how the campaign worked. Burger King set up geofences around McDonald’s locations. When users entered those geofences, they received a notification offering a Whopper burger for one cent if they bought it through Burger King’s recently redesigned app. The app then provided directions from the McDonald’s to the nearest Burger King where the customer could pick up their order.
Many companies focus on geofencing as a marketing tool — and BMW did too — but as a unique selling point. How? With their BMW Trackstar and BMW Trackstar Advance services, which track the position of your vehicle to ensure its security.
If your vehicle moves without your car keys, BMW notifies you. For BMW, the decision to bring geofencing into its marketing and business plan worked. The service not only offers an advantage to consumers but also offers a continued source of revenue for the company.
BMW Trackstar and BMW Trackstar Advance have an annual subscription fee.
5. How American Eagle increased in-store purchases
American Eagle, an apparel company, also found success with geofencing marketing. It focused on targeting mall locations, which often house American Eagle stores. The company also wanted to persuade its competitors’ customers to choose American Eagle.
By creating ads with special offers, as well as incentives for trying on clothes, the company accomplished its goals. In fact, its in-store sales increased three times over, generating new revenue for the business.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Craft a tailored online marketing strategy! Utilize our free Internet marketing calculator for a custom plan based on your location, reach, timeframe, and budget.
Sarah Berry is a Lead Web Marketing Consultant at WebFX. With more than 10,000 hours of experience, she offers practical insights and strategies you can use to grow your digital revenue. When she isn’t polishing her Time Magazine Person of the Year Award, she’s spending time with her flock of ducks.
