Often deemed complex, Geofencing Ads are a straightforward tactic for businesses to attract the right kind of footfall to physical bricks and mortar or online locations.
You simply draw a digital fence around any location of your choosing. Once users come into this area and pass through it, they have a digital marker placed on them, which in turn gives you the ability to serve them with ads on whatever device they’re using on the move, such as a smartphone or tablet.
You define the location. It could be one of your local stores or even one of your competitors.
Here are five ways you can use Geofencing to your advantage.
1.Engaging with potential customers when they are close by
Everyone uses their devices on the move these days. No longer is consumer research constrained to time on a laptop at home. Smartphones and tablets have turned things on their head. It’s time to use it to your advantage.
Consider this scenario.
A couple enters your department store and therefore your digital fence. One might be ready to shop, the other may be slightly bored and spend their time looking at their device. Would an ad with the right deal, offer, or product make them consider viewing the products in another part of the department store?
The same goes if your store is within a shopping mall. Consumers may enter looking for something specific, but your deal might just be too tempting to refuse.
2.Combining your national brand awareness campaign with local advertising
If you have a number of stores across the country you might be running a national brand awareness campaign focusing on the launch of a new product line.
But how does this translate to sales in your local stores? By creating geofences locally, you’ll be able to pull potential customers into specific locations through additional enticing and local promotions.
3.Pulling previous customers back to store
Returning customers will be so important to the future of your business. While you can use tactics like retargeting to engage with previous visitors to your website, geofencing enables you to do the same thing with people that have previously visited your store in person.
Simply create a fence around your location to capture the data of those visitors and message them through a targeted ad after a few days, with a tempting offer to bring them back.
4.Serving your competitors’ customers with a relevant ad
You can even use geofencing to poach potential customers from your competitors.
Remember, you have the ability to choose the exact position where you draw your fence, meaning this can be done around one of your competitors’ locations or other locations you know your potential customers may visit.
When users enter those locations, you’ll know they have intent to buy, but a relevant ad with a better deal from your business could be all the motivation they need to visit you instead.
Just remember to tailor your ad and offer them something your competitor isn’t.
5.Targeting potential customers looking for similar products
Understanding the intent of consumers is key to getting your approach to geofencing right. When consumers enter your store you know what they intend to do, the same goes with your competitors’ stores.
It’s also crucial to consider related products. If you’re an electronics retailer, consider placing a geofence around a furniture store as you can reasonably assume customers are re-furnishing their home or moving house. Fashion retailers may consider placing a geofence around shoe stores and vice versa, while a health food retailer would place a fence around a local gym for example.
Having access to the technology is one thing, it’s the tactics you use that will rejuvenate your advertising and boost your offline sales in the process.
Geofencing isn’t the only geolocation tool you can use to engage with customers on a local level. In our guide for retailers we’ll tell you just how you can tap into both geofencing and geotargeting to improve your in-store performance.
Download the guide today to find out more or get in touch with us to understand how the right approach to geolocation technology can revitalise your online and offline sales.