THE BENEFITS OF GEOFENCING
Many people misperceive geofencing as 1-mile radius targeting or even 1-block targeting. Facebook claims to have a radius targeting solution down to 1 mile, but in our mind that is not a true geofence. A geofence is a virtual fence placed around the precise area or down to the contours of a building, which is what our platform at Hiyrr Agency Media does. With geofencing, you should be able to granularly target people in individual buildings, malls, retail centers, events, competitors, etc.
Over the years, we’ve found some compelling reasons for many industries to utilize geofencing marketing as part of their marketing and advertising strategy.
Target Individual Buildings…Not Just Zip Codes
Consider how much more efficient you can get when you are targeting specific buildings and areas for a company versus a 1-mile or 2-mile radius of the location you want to target. With geofencing, you can build individual virtual fences around particular locations where you know your ideal clients frequents. Consider a personal injury lawyer who wants to reach accident victims. Targeting hospitals and ER centers might be your ideal place to showcase your ads to build awareness and direct response for your personal injury law practice.
Stronger Engagement Possibilities
When you’re advertising to an audience, three key factors should matter to your brand:
- Who’s the audience you’re targeting?
- What’s the message you’re using with your targeting?
- Is the place you’re sending that audience compelling enough for them to take action?
The upside to geofencing is you are truly getting your message in front of the audience that matters the most to your brand based on their physical activities and the places they go. Maybe it’s a car shopper who is in the market looking for a car. They metaphorically raised their hand to you when they visited a car dealership, and typically those people who express strong intent are also likely to produce stronger engagement.
Our agency works with a multi-location Pet Store. We geofenced other competitor locations and places where we know pet owners frequent. That campaign is probably one of our strongest campaigns engagement-wise because of the passionate audience and how granularly we got with the campaign. Geofencing does produce higher engagement if you focus on your targeted audience.
Geofencing Does NOT Require Physical Beacons
Our geofencing platform does not require beacon technology or placing beacons inside of buildings. This can be an encumbering process and if you want to target your competitors, it becomes even more challenging to implement. Also, with beacon technology you are only able to target people who walk within 50 meters by your storefront or location and you cannot retarget those people after they leave your storefront. With geofencing, you only need to know the locations you want to target as well as the creative ads to upload prior to launching a geofencing campaign.
Advertisers Can Serve Ads Through 1,000,000’s Apps & Websites
With geofencing, your target audience will typically be on a mobile app they utilize on their devices or tablets. Or they will be on some website with advertising space. Our agency has access to over 600,000 Apps, so if you think about Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Weather Channel and other apps are places your ads will show up on. Standard ad sizes that work for these app include the following:
- 300 x 250 pixels
- 320 x 50 pixels
- 300 x 50 pixels
- 250 x 250 pixels
Compared to other platforms in which you only receive push notifications when you walk nearby a beacon, geofencing allows for more reach and targeting.
Advertisers Can Target Users While They’re At The Geofenced Location
With geofencing, you can target users while they are there at the target location. They can be on their smartphone device or tablet/laptop playing on apps or browsing websites and then potentially see your ads. So, you are able to target and speak to them while they are there.
Advertisers Can Target Users After They Leave The Geofenced Location
With geofencing, you can also serve ads to them after they leave the geofence. Our platform places a cap of 30 days that the person can see your ads, but once they click on your ad and they visit your website, that individual can be retargeted to for longer periods of time (up to 1 year in some cases).