Around nine out of ten people are smartphone users in the United Kingdom today and the number is only increasing. Two thirds of American adults use a mobile smart phone, and if we count people under 35, the percent goes up to eight five percent.
These staggering numbers are proof of an enormous ecosystem of marketing opportunities. The options for advertising to potential customers based on their locations are endless in their versatility. For most marketing people though, a deeper understanding of this technology is needed in order to develop sound marketing strategies.
What is Geofencing?
This concept of a geofence involves the use of GPS triangulation to create a virtual fence that surrounds a location such as a mall or an outlet. When a smartphone enters the vicinity of that geofence, the apps in that phone can send and receive data as set by the particular geofence.
This functionality opens up a world of marketing opportunities for the tech savvy marketer. For every smartphone user who crosses a geofence, businesses in the location can deliver their message directly to that user. It brings a revolution to the way you reach customers.
The geofence can be adjusted as required so for instance it can be 5 or 15 miles, or simply cover the premises of a single building. The purpose of smaller geofences could be to inform visitors of certain steps they may need to take before they can explore the premises.
Mobile Data Collection via Geofencing
Mobile phone users download apps on their phones which store usage data in order to provide customized service. That data can be accessed by mobile marketers with the help of geofencing technologies. This valuable information generates insight into what type of foot traffic is received by certain locations.
These insights include spending habits, preferences, frequencies and so on. Any marketing strategy for mobile apps is based on the premise of message personalization.That is why Location Based Marketing is crucial for focusing marketing efforts on a high potential target audience.
Location based marketing includes technologies such as Wifi and GPS to triangulate coordinates. Those coordinates are then used to retrieve and deliver data from smart devices within those coordinates.
During the pandemic, governments around the world utilized this technology to inform and alert citizens on precautionary measures and social distancing requirements. But this technology is not just available to governments. Mobile marketing agencies are also stepping into this arena.
Geofencing as an Effective Advertising Tool
The key to great marketing is to try and make your message as relevant to the audience as possible. Here we share a few tips in using geofencing effectively to deliver your message to smartphone users in your chosen area.
1. Define Your Catchment Area
Geofencing implications for mobile marketing can be quite daunting. The number of people that pass through each day or month in dense urban areas can make for an overwhelming amount of data accumulation over a short period of time.
Geofencing is a mobile marketing tool that lets businesses bring their message to highly targeted audiences. Find out how with this guide.
The trick to solving this problem is to clearly define your target audience and then set parameters that filter only for the demographics you want to target. For instance, as a baby product brand, you need to limit your marketing to parents of infants, especially mothers.
For an intent such as that, you can set parameters for women with certain types of apps on their phone such as baby monitoring or feeding apps. Moreover, adding keywords related to your product and filtering those phones where similar searches have been made will help you sort the wheat from the chaff.
2. Leverage Data Into Insight
The data that smartphones save on their owners is truly a gold mine. It helps in developing further insight into users. The data that can be gleaned from geofenced areas includes how many times a person frequented a store, how long they stayed, what they searched on their phone during that time, and whether they passed by similar locations.
Mobile marketing experts suggest using algorithms to sift through this mountain of disparate data in order to create patterns. These reports can then be used to deliver content that fulfills the unique needs of a customer. Starbucks frequently uses foot traffic details to promote coffee delivery and membership services during peak hours.
3. Explore Uncharted Territory
Having a channel that delivers direct messages to potential customers is indeed a powerful tool. But it is only effective when your content is strong. When the NYT reported that Apple was taking a slower approach to its marketing strategy for Apple TV+, shrewd marketers from auxiliary industries stepped in.
Smartphone users in and around media stores often search for queries related to the streaming service. Users looking to find how to purchase a subscription, or for the best Apple TV VPN, can potentially be inundated with messages by rival services to cater to the marketing area that Apple was not.
Summing Up
The use of geofencing technology is bringing a revolution in mobile marketing. More targeted content is created for the exact customer that you want to reach. This saves time and resources that would otherwise be spent targeting only a small share of intended recipients, and a whole lot of collateral audiences.
Whether you are using geofencing for sending sms promotions, personalizing outdoor display ads, or pushing your brand on the social media apps users have downloaded on their phones, the possibilities are endless.
For the future of mobile marketing, the only thing remaining is to create more sophisticated tools for sifting through the mountains of data generated by geofencing tech and converting that into models for delivering relevant content to the millions of smartphone users out there.
