Geofencing Marketing: Beginners Guide

Have you considered the idea of using geofencing marketing in your business strategy?  It is one of the best marketing tactics for those retailer stores businesses. Geofencing helps you reach out to potential customers in your confined area.

Did you know that geofencing marketing can help you increase retail sales and significantly grow your retail shop business? And since geofencing marketing is used to directly interact with consumers and potential customers in a particular area, it should be a key component of your business strategy.

But, you may ask;

What Is Geofencing Marketing?

Geofencing marketing is proximity, location-based marketing tactics that let retail shop owners send messages to smartphone users in an enclosed geographic location. The device uses GPS to confine a specific area and collect consumers’ data within the specified district.

Geofencing marketing allows store retailers to know when shoppers enter or exit a geofencing region. Then it triggers push notification messages to alert customers of possible offers and incentives. For instance, store retailers can target customers who enter a shopping mall, a stadium, or other relevant spots within the geofencing wall with ads campaigns.

This business strategy helps retail store owners to lure buyers to their enterprise.

Why Is Geofencing Marketing Important?

Several reasons account for why your retail business should integrate geofencing marketing, and the benefits are fascinating. One of the justifications for incorporating geofencing in your business is because mobile marketing has become the norm in recent years.

Mobile internet marketing has taken over the digital marketing landscape. And if you take a look at the recent mobile marketing statistics in the graphic below, you will see the potential of mobile to generate engagement and drive sales.

Therefore, it is reasonable to say that geofencing marketing must be a vital element of your business strategy.

Source Graphic via Smart Insights

The focus report reveals how mobile users dominate digital marketing in minutes spent across countries.

Benefits of Geofencing Marketing for Retail Shop Owners

Let us consider a few benefits of using this tool in growing your retail sales.

Personalized Customer Offers

Geofencing marketing permits you to gather buyers' information and use the data to better serve customers by personalizing your offerings.

This marketing tool will present you with vital information about the products or services that your customers love the most. It also shows you their demographics and other essential data.

The statistics will enable you to provide overtures that will interest your customers. As a result, improve retail sales.

Motivates and Brings in More Shoppers

According to a report by Plot Project, Geofencing marketing can drive shoppers and bring in more customers to your business. For instance, the study shows that 70% of shoppers identify location-based notifications as valuable to their buying behavior.

Also, 50% of respondents say they are more likely to embrace proximity or location-based ads. Furthermore, geofencing marketing is reported to boost mobile app usage by more than 200%, which can ultimately lead to an increase in retail sales.

Increase Sales Locally

Interestingly, as Google My Business can boost your search rankings locally, Geofencing marketing can in a similar way increase your local search visibility. Why is that so?

Because it is a proximity marketing or location-based marketing technique that allows you to target consumers in a determined locality. In consequence, to attract more buyers and improve sale, shop retailers use push notifications to send out:

• Special offers
• Discounted merchandise
• Coupon codes
• New stock arrivals
• Limited offers
• Etc.

These activities will draw in more customers to your business premises and boost your return on investments (ROIs).

Prominent Geofencing Platforms You May Like to Consider

Several platforms provide incredible geofencing services you can use today to start growing your business. Thus, we assembled a few of them below for you to examine and decide on what is best for your retail store business.

• Think Near
• Simpli.fi
• Push Maze
• ReachLocal
• Salesforce
• Phunware
• OutFront Media

How Does Geofencing Marketing Work?

Geofencing proximity marketing work in a straight-forward manner. For example, every business owner has a competitor, but you can use this tool to outperform the competition. How?

Here is how:

Let’s say you're a retail business owner, and your competitors are all around in your area. To stand out and increase sales, you can use geofencing tactics to control regions in your locale where you want to attract customers. You can do it by setting up a virtual fence in those localities.

As a result, whoever enters the borders of your virtual fencing with a mobile device or leaves the confines of your geofencing area will be automatically included in your mailing list. They will receive advertising notifications for the next 30 days.

Geo-targeted marketing gives you an edge over the competition because you can position your geofencing device near your competitors’ spot. Thus, with your fence in place, you can send out special offers and other incentives as mentioned in the sections above.

What is more interesting is that you can set when your ads notifications will appear on users' mobile apps and mobile web-pages.

Moreover, research indicates that geofencing marketing — tactics to reach consumers where they are, surpass the click-through rate (CTR) of other mobile targeted marketing tactics.

It shows the potential of using proximity technology to boost you retail sales.

How to Use Geo-fencing Marketing to Boost Retail Sales

Although there are several ways in the process to increase retail shoppers, we will discuss only a few.

1. Use Geofencing to Target Consumers Around Your Retail Store perimeter

To use geofencing marketing in your location-based business is one of the best decisions you could ever make. It is a more efficient way to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Boost foot traffic
• Improve retail sales.

For Instance, if you target buyers who live and work around your business location, and send out notifications​ about new offers and discounts, as well as gifts and coupons, the results can be terrific.

Almost everybody loves unique gifts and offers. In view of this, use proximity marketing strategy to send out mobile targeted advertising to those in your virtual fence boundaries to draw them to your retail business. It will help you increase sales significantly.

2. Use Geofencing Marketing to Target Your Competitors’ Customers

As discussed earlier, this marketing tool allows you to put a virtual fence around your competition and send ad campaigns that would lure their shoppers to your business. Geo-fencing lets you accomplish these by targeting relevant buyers who are ready to buy via Geofencing advertising campaigns.

Therefore, use this tool to target your competitors’ customers and send out discount offers and other special promotions that would draw their customers to your brand.

3. Use Geo-fencing Techniques to Target Shoppers Who Visit Other Businesses

Geo-fencing marketing — a mobile targeting ad campaign strategy is an efficient digital marketing tactic that can help you increase retail sales and grow your business several folds.

Accordingly, much as you’re using this tool to target your competitors’ customers and those within the borders of your business, use it also to target consumers​ who are visiting other companies that are related to your industry, or those who may complement your business.

Here is what I mean:

If you're selling shoes, for example, and several retail businesses are dealing with clothing items within your location, it would be ideal to target their customers. Why? Because they may want to check out shoes to go along with their clothing supplies.

Wrapping Up

With an Integrated advertising campaign based on customer information and insights, geo-fencing and or proximity marketing is a unique digital tool that will enable you to strengthen your business. It helps you maximize retail sales by enclosing particular areas and sending push-notifications to targets in that locale.

Geofencing marketing would aid you in creating brand awareness, drive more foot traffic, increase engagement and leads. What tools are you using as a retail store owner to dive more sales? We would like to know in the comments.

You can read more about push notifications here: https://www.mossmedia.biz/web-push-notifications/