If you own a business, you might have come across the word geofencing or geotargeting. It is a location-based service where you can target your audience according to the location. An app or browser is used for location data. A device can easily enter or exit the location parameter known as location target or geofence. Based on this boundary, the information about the location will trigger the programmed action. It can be anything from push notifications, display advertising, SMS message, an alert or more.
A lot of marketers use geofencing for SEO and SMS in addition to other tracking services. Businesses also use it to track their employees, to automate the time cards and to maintain awareness about the company property. It is essential for marketers to adopt geofencing in order to make the most of their advertising efforts. It is essential to refine the targeting for digital marketing for campaigns to stick to specific audience locations and to achieve the goal. You can use a radius map tool to get the initial idea which areas you want to target.
How does targeting work in marketing?
To make the most of geofencing, you need to build a virtual space around a specific location through GPS coordinates. It can be something like a circle drawn in around 1-kilometer radius in a certain location on Google Maps. The boundary will then trigger a response when certain devices enter or leave the area which is specified by the targeting settings of the campaign. It is basically defined within code in a mobile application since users need to opt-in for specific location service for the geofence to work. Any retailer can draw a geofence around the outlets in order to send mobile push alerts for those customers who have downloaded the app and opted-in for the services.
How is it used in the marketing industry?
Geofencing is the best method to engage customers based on a hyper-local location. One can easily trigger sales if it is set up in the right manner. You can also accumulate data to understand the mindset of different shoppers. Geofencing is something that should be a part of your marketing efforts. The campaigns can be built across different types of advertising campaigns including online video advertising, remarketing, display advertising, SEO and social media marketing. Geofencing can be used by any type of business in the industry. Right from auto dealers to healthcare professionals, targeting the audience can become possible with geofencing.
Even if they offer, notification or an advertisement does not lead to an immediate sale or visit, it will still allow the business owners to know about the location a consumer has passed from and where they were at the time of receiving the message or notification. This information will help with further targeting efforts. A lot also depends on the type of messages and the users which turned out to be most successful. Geofencing has helped a number of businesses reach out to the target audience and expand their virtual presence with minimal investment.
