The concept of location targeting, such as geo-fencing, isn’t new, but many don’t use it fully to their advantage. Geo-fencing is one of the most granular ways to leverage location data. It allows you to create a virtual radius around a location or list of locations to reach consumers in key informational or decision-making spaces. According to eMarketer, geo-fencing ranks as one of the leading digital products sold, only ranking below OTT/CTV video, targeted banners and banner ads.
As restrictions with privacy laws and depreciation of the third-party cookie continue to shake up digital advertising, revisiting tried and true strategies to create consumer centric communities, brand experiences and engagement is important. Plus, there’s the constant battle omni-channel campaigns face tying digital activity to offline conversions. Using geo-fencing can help capitalize on digital campaigns and foot traffic in stores to help marketers find their target audience.
Follow along in the next sections to learn more about how geo-fencing works and how to incorporate it into your marketing plans.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The technology utilizes GPS, IP addresses and mobile IDs to identify when your target is or was in the desired location. It not only identifies potential customers, but the technology also gives you the flexibility to differentiate employees from customers based on patterns in frequency, such as days a week and hours in a day by marking certain mobile IDs. Consider if your brand would deliver unique messaging to customers vs employees to determine if that is useful to you.
Where you create your virtual fence will depend on your brand and strategy. Locations can be a combination of street addresses or latitude and longitude coordinates. Types of locations may include stores, neighborhoods, parks or even trade show venues. Typically, you can also specify a lookback window. Lookback windows related to geo-fencing help define how far back is relevant to capture visitors of your desired locations or points of interest into the targeting pool. To capture farmers visiting ag retail stores, for example, you may want a lookback window of a year to create a large enough targeting pool based on the frequency farmers visit those stores.
This targeting tactic can be leveraged with a variety of platforms. It is available to execute within your programmatic DSPs (a demand-side platform that allows advertisers to buy digital ads through real-time bidding across publishers and inventory sources), social media platforms and various direct or managed service partners. There are opportunities to combine with other types of targeting as well like audience or weather triggers. Depending on the platform you are running the geo-fence through, your ads will show up in multiple places. If you go through social media platforms, like Facebook, your ads will show up within mobile Facebook applications. When using programmatic display, your ads will appear on mobile wherever the person captured by the geo-fencing is browsing.
HOW TO USE GEO-FENCING
Geo-fencing provides a contextually relevant environment, meaning the right time, right place and right opportunity for messaging. You can apply a geo-fence almost anywhere. A few examples of how to put a geo-fence to work for your brand include:
A common way to build a geo-fence is around retailer locations with the goal to be top of mind when consumers are getting ready to purchase, seek out more information or are looking for coupons or deals. You can also reach the ag retailer employees themselves so they are more informed about your product and likely to recommend it.
Trade shows bring together brilliant minds in the b2b space and provide a key time to communicate with consumers – a great opportunity to create a fence to serve content to your target audience. But a well-defined approach takes more than creating a geo-fence. It starts with strategy. Create a trade show strategy that includes pre-show, during and post-show communication that tells a story about your brand by building a geo-fence that targets those at the tradeshow and surrounding hotels or restaurants. Get consumers involved by connecting your mobile ad messaging with unique booth experiences like special offers or meet-and-greets with an influencer. Be sure to let your audience know ahead of time you will be at the show and where they can find you during the show.. Then reach them afterwards to learn more about their experience or with a follow-up offer.
Wherever you choose to create your virtual fence, build retargeting pools so you can reach those same visitors after they have left. Since reaching people while at a particular location is typically restricted to mobile devices, retargeting them later allows you to serve ads with additional tactics like online video, connected tv or streaming audio. Reengaging visitors of locations important to you helps drive them further down the funnel to convert.
WITH ANYTHING COMES CHALLENGES
Expected engagement results will vary depending on your goal, audience, and type of location. It’s important to right size your KPIs and budget to expected audience size or foot traffic and purpose of the event or location. Consider if there is enough traffic for retargeting from a particular domain, landing page or customer list You need 2,000 unique people minimum to make an impact when you consider match rates will never be 100%. If you don’t have enough traffic, geo-fencing isn’t the right tactic.
Geo-fencing also provides an opportunity to boost engagement. In some cases, however, it might be best for brand awareness. Again, provide useful information to your target audience in that moment to enhance the consumer experience and achieve your desired KPI. Direct your audience to the right aisle in a store for a product, booth at a trade show, but don’t expect someone to spend significant time reading an article or watching a video while on the go.
Some brands might not see a lot of physical traffic to retail locations. In ag, for example, the timeframe for buying decisions is seasonal as farmers aren’t considering their next seed purchase during the spring. For such brands with seasonal selling cycles, it’s important to choose a large enough lookback window to attain a big enough audience. However, increasing awareness around third-party cookies and opting-out reduces the capability to lookback and decreases retargeting pools.
As the future continues to see challenges with privacy laws and less reliance on cookies, location data and geo-fencing is an important strategy for keeping efficiency and efficacy of ads. We’ve put it to the test on our own campaigns and recently doubled Facebook campaign site visit rates by adding retail visitor audiences. When working correctly it enhances consumer experience, builds brand awareness, and directs down the funnel.
Want to learn more? Take a look at our other blog posts where we cover digital targeting and digital classifications.
Are we speaking the same language? Reach out to pick our brain on additional and unique ways to reach your customers and increase engagement with geo-fencing. Get in touch with us today!