Notify your Customers in Real Time when you use Geo-Fencing Advertising
It’s an exciting time for marketing at the crossroads of technology and advertising. When you use geo-fencing, new opportunities are abound for engaging consumers more effectively than ever before, and nowhere is the innovation more amazing than in the method known as geo-fencing.
Imagine being able to grab shoppers’ attention by notifying them about personalized promotions when they’re near your store. Better yet, imagine offering them an unbeatable deal when they’re near your competitor’s store! Imagine no more, because all types of companies are already using geo-fencing to their advantage.
Simply put, the technology uses global positioning (GPS, like you have on your phone and in your car) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define a geographic boundary. Once this “virtual perimeter” is established, you can set up triggers that display an ad or promotion to potential customers’ mobile devices when they enter or exit the specified area. In other words, businesses can section off a geographic area and communicate with devices within that space using GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi or cellular data.
It’s every marketer’s dream-come-true: drawing a circle around your customers on a map and hitting a bullseye with your message!
Consider the Possibilities
Once a geographic area is defined, there are many ways to engage consumers. Your success in doing so will depend upon having all the data necessary to understand the shopper mindset at that place and time so that you can send the right message. That’s where Take 5 Media Group’s extensive market data offers intelligence that is second-to-none.
On the front end, the campaign may include a testing period to confirm which strategies work best based on demographic, psychographic and all other consumer profile data that Take 5 can provide, plus the location data. The goal, of course, is to trigger immediate sales. For lapsed customers, a well-timed “win-back” campaign with an irresistible deal or freebie can be the perfect tactic to re-connect.
The more creative and customized the campaign, the greater the results are likely to be. For example, an outdoor apparel company used notifications about the weather. Their weather-based geo-fenced alerts delivered a 79 percent increase in store visits from customers who received the alerts, and 65 percent of those customers made purchases.
Few other companies have put location technology to work more brilliantly than Uber. The transportation technology company continues to innovate in various ways, such as Los Angeles International Airport, so that when customers arrive at the airport they are notified about the number of cars available to meet their needs. It illustrates Uber’s engagement in providing what their customers need when they need it most.
“Know your customer” is the Golden Rule for geo-fencing, as it is for any type of strategic marketing. You can successfully attract consumers with offers that fit their lifestyle only if you have the demographic and past purchase data describing who they are.
Use Geo-fencing and Social Media
Geo-fencing has become indispensable to social media apps. The most attractive features of Snapchat, for example, are its location-based filters, stickers and other shareable content. From travel destination filters to user-made filters for a friend’s birthday, geographic customization on Snapchat is made possible by location-based technology. On Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, it enables companies to deliver ads in the context of a social media feed when the consumer enters a specifically targeted area.
Use Geo-fencing for Competition
Building geofences around your competitors’ locations can help you refocus your current offers and win the sale. There’s significant advantage to knowing that a consumer is in a car-shopping state-of-mind. For example, an auto dealer could set up a geo-fence around shoppers who are leaving a rival dealership and these shoppers could see ads or offers on their mobile devices offering them zero percent financing on a comparable vehicle.
Use Geo-fencing for Audience Engagement
Beyond retail sales, it is also used to engage large audiences at organized events such as concerts and festivals. A concert promoter might use the technology to crowdsource social media posts, gauge fan sentiment and deliver information about the venue or event. Concert and events producer Live Nation, for example, uses it at music events in order to aggregate and curate fan-generated social media content and participate in real-time social media conversations.
Savvy marketers in all types of consumer industries have embraced it as an important technology and data-driven tool. It provides the metrics you need for evaluating ROI and enables you to adjust your resources and strategies for the future based on what has worked best so far.
To find out more about how Take 5 Media Group can help you use geo-fencing to engage consumers and boost sales, call us at 561-819-5555 or visit take5mg.com.