Impact Group Marketing Blog

Are you looking for a better way to keep track of your customers? Understanding consumer patterns, how often customers visit your business, and how much time they spend at your business not only helps you but can work to promote customer loyalty. Currently, one of the best ways to accomplish this is the use of geofencing.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing is essentially a virtual fence around a targeted area that allows you to track customers as they enter and leave the designated perimeter. It may sound invasive, but it’s not actually tracking the person as they go through their day. Instead, you are virtually creating a perimeter around your business so that you can be alerted when a customer has entered that field. You can collect information on that customer based on the time he/she enters the field, how much time he spends there, where he goes within the field, and when he leaves. This allows you to reach out to the customer and offer a location-specific deal, announcement, or incentive for returning to your business. In fact, 80% of the population agrees that they want to receive location-based information. Geofencing is a marketing tool, not a tracking device. You can implement geofencing into a mobile app for your business that utilizes GPS, RFID, or Wifi to monitor customers within the designated field. However, GPS drains a phone battery too quickly and may be ineffective for what you are trying to accomplish. Relying on Wifi pings that your phone already makes can give your company an accurate geofence and monitor customers without physically tracking them or draining their battery.

How Your Company Benefits from Geofencing

If the goal is marketing, how can geofencing benefit your business? Ideally, your customers will download your app to easily access information about your company. When doing this, they will have the chance to opt-in for push notifications, alerts, and location services. They must opt-in to location services for geofencing to work. After customers have done this, you will have the ability to know when they cross the perimeter of your geofence. You can use this information to send them push notifications about a sale at your establishment, send a coupon, or promotions you believe will direct customers to your business. This can benefit your company as a notification or coupons are sent to whoever crosses the threshold even if they intended to stop by a competitor in your area. Geofencing has been extremely beneficial to companies that rely on social media for marketing. Content can be sent directly to your customer’s phone where they not only receive alerts and updates about events, promotions, or sales, but also allows them to advertise by sharing this content on their own feeds.

The Future of Geofencing

Currently, one of the best implementers of good geofencing practices is the concert and events producer, Live Nation. They have create geofences at each venue that links concert-goers to one virtual photo album, ShowBook, which compiles any content posted on social media at the event. This enables Live Nation to better understand what their customers enjoyed about the show and how to connect with the audience at future shows. Additionally, various retail stores partner with an app called RetailMeNot that sends opted-in customers notifications and coupons for location specific sales as well as online purchases. Boosting sales as well as customer loyalty is the driving force behind geofencing.

As our reliance on smartphones and location sharing become increasingly more accessible, so will geofencing. In fact, a press release from MarketsandMarkets predicts that by 2022, geofencing will increase in use by 27%. In other words, don’t shy away from it - being at the forefront of this new marketing trend and learning more about the technical side of geofencing could be beneficial to your business.

For more information about Geofencing and how it can support your digital marketing strategy, contact Evolve Impact Group today!

Sources:  http://academy.pulsatehq.com/7-things-about-geofencing, https://www.cio.com/article/2383123/mobile/geofencing-explained.html, http://www.geomarketing.com/geomarketing-101-what-is-geofencing