6 Geofencing Best Practices: Geofencing Marketing Strategy

Are you looking for a strategy that will drive more local customers to your business? Geofencing marketing is an excellent strategy for helping you get more local shoppers in the door. By following geofencing best practices, you’ll become a pro at using this strategy.

On this page, we’ll provide you with six geofencing best practices to help you take full advantage of geofencing. If you want to stay in the know-how about this marketing strategy and more, subscribe to our newsletter, Revenue Weekly, for the latest tips and trends!

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What is geofencing?

Before we get started, you may be wondering what geofencing is. With geofencing, you set up a virtual barrier that allows you to send targeted messages, ads, and app notifications to anyone in your target audience that enters, dwells, or exits your virtual boundary.

Targeted messages are sent directly to mobile devices, phones, or laptops when GPS technology shows that they’ve entered the location inside your “fence.”

How to implement geofencing

Before you implement geofencing, you should consider the journey of your customers. Where do they typically go? What other businesses interest them?

What questions do they ask? When you understand your customers, you can create geofencing campaigns that are more likely to result in customers.

1. Create ad copy that resonates with your audience

One of the best practices you’ll want to follow for geofencing focuses on ad copy. You want to create copy that resonates with your audience. While you can send push notifications as part of geofencing, many businesses opt to advertise on apps, websites, and more.

When you run a geofencing ad, write ad copy that resonates with your audience. You want your ad to catch your audience’s attention and get them to engage. So, how can you create a geofencing ad that works for your audience?

Follow these tips:

Make sure it’s relevant

You need relevant ad copy to get your audience’s attention. People won’t engage with your ad if it doesn’t apply to their interests. To create a successful geofencing marketing strategy, you must create ad content that connects with your audience.

Segment your audience

A great way to create ad copy that resonates with your audience is to segment your audience. When you segment audiences, you group them based on similarities. Those similarities can include:

• Demographic information
• Location
• Buying habits
• Hobbies
• Interests
• Browsing behavior

Group people based on this information to help deliver ad content that’s relevant to them. By segmenting your audience, you can create different types of ads that resonate with your audience.

Create content that your audience wants to see

When you create different ad sets, ensure that your ad content is interesting for your audience. Don’t present bland and generic information that doesn’t get your audience excited.

Build creative and enticing ads that compel people to visit your business.

2. Choose the right location for your geofences

As you look at how to use geofencing, focus on placing your geofences in the right place. The location of your geofence plays an essential role in your geofencing marketing strategy. If your fences aren’t where your target audience goes, you’ll miss the opportunity to capture qualified leads.

When you create your fences, place them where they have the most impact. Determine where your target audience spends their time before visiting your business. Whether it’s a shopping mall or a specific block in the city, you want to set up a geofence where your audience is most likely to enter it.

As a geofencing example, a clothing company may find that many people visit Starbucks before coming to their business. As a result, they could set up a geofence on and near the local Starbucks to show ads to potential customers waiting for their coffee. By choosing the right location, you’ll create a more successful geofencing marketing strategy.

3. Keep your fence small

Aside from where you put your fence, you must make your fence the correct size. Many businesses make the mistake of creating geofences that are too large. It’s best to keep your fences small to drive the most effective results.

So, what’s the ideal fence size? If people typically walk to your business, the ideal fence size is a maximum four- to five-minute walk to your location. For companies where people usually drive, a maximum four- to five-minute drive to your company is ideal.

When you have bigger geofences, you run into more problems. If you had a geofence that accommodated a 20-minute drive, people are less likely to visit your business. You’re too far away, and your offer may not have enough value for someone to make the drive.

On the other hand, a four- to five-minute drive is doable. If you make your audience an excellent offer or provide a special deal, your audience is more likely to take advantage of the opportunity because it’s close to them. If you want to follow geofencing best practices, focus on building appropriately sized fences.

4. Add a compelling call to action (CTA)

Geofencing strategies require that you create compelling ad copy to get your audience to act. One of the most critical components of persuasive ad copy is the call to action (CTA). The CTA gets your audience to act.

When you create your CTA, focus on what your audience gets from following through. If they can claim their unique coupon code by clicking on your ad, state it. Say “Claim your 50% off coupon!” so your audience knows what happens if they click on the ad.

Don’t use a generic CTA like “Click here.” That CTA doesn’t tell your audience what happens if they click on the ad. Instead, focus on CTAs, like “Learn More” and “Sign Up,” that tell your audience what happens if they click on the ad.

5. Don’t target all hours of the day

One of the most critical geofencing best practices is to get your timing right. You don’t want to target people with ads 24/7. Generally, ads that run at late hours, like 11 P.M. to 6 A.M., don’t perform as well because most people sleep during this time. If you run a nighttime business, like a bar, though, you may see success targeting this time frame and less success targeting daylight hours.

It’s also the best practice to show ads when your business is open. For example, if you want more leads to visit your franchise store that’s open until 6 P.M., don’t show ads if it’s 8 P.M. You should only run geofencing ads when your audience can visit your business.

This practice will help you save money. You won’t waste time showing ads to leads that can’t visit you.

6. Optimize your campaign

No geofencing campaign is perfect. As you continue to work on your geofencing marketing strategy, you should continue to optimize your campaign. Many companies make the mistake of setting up their fences and never checking back on their performance.

When you don’t optimize your geofencing strategies, you risk losing revenue and miss opportunities to reach more leads and capture more sales. When you run a geofencing campaign, monitor its performance, and check out the analytics. From this information, you can see what’s working for your business and what’s not.

Whether it’s the ad copy or the fence placement, you’ll gain an understanding of where you can improve. With your geofencing analytics in hand, conduct A/B testing to see which elements you can change. By running these tests, you’ll help create a better geofencing campaign and drive more valuable results for your business.

Start using geofencing best practices to drive more leads for your business

Geofencing is an excellent strategy for reaching people interested in your products or services.

This process creates the opportunity for you to write compelling ad copy that drives more leads to your business. Now that you know how to implement geofencing, you can begin using geofencing to increase your return on investment. At WebFX, our team of over 500 experts will help you create results-driven ad campaigns that generate more leads for your company.

With over a decade of experience, we know how to develop geofences that bring more customers to your location. To see how we can help you get started with geofencing, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist!