It’s 2018 and you, as a business owner, are inundated with offers and tools to grow your business in the digital arena. One of the newcomers on the digital marketing field is a method called geofencing. But just what is geofencing and how can you use it to grow your business? Webtivity Marketing & Design will endeavor to give you a solid grasp on just what geofencing entails and more importantly how to apply geofencing capabilities to grow your business.
What is geofencing?
Ge
ofencing in definition refers to several different technologies whose main goal is creating a virtual perimeter around a specifically defined geographical area. There are several ways to enact a geofence with some methods requiring proprietary physical technology known as beacons to using GPS, Wi-Fi, radio frequency identification (RFID) or even increasingly social media tags. Once you have a geographical area virtually defined or geofenced, you can target users in this area with promotional offers or other types of useful client facing information.
Taking Advantage of Geofencing
The biggest draw to geofencing targeting for most businesses is the ability to lower advertising costs. Simply put your typical entrepreneurial business owner is not looking to compete with national or even statewide retailers. Instead savvy business owners look to reach the potential client that is nearby. This is in part what makes geofencing so cost effective, the ability to reduce competing voices, or ad dollars, to the minimalist of levels.
There is one additional benefit of geofencing targeting however that often goes overlooked. Geofencing can also be used offensively as well as defensively. Defensively it can help reduce the ad noise that most users experience on their various digital access points. As our world becomes overwhelmed with more and more information, it is becoming increasingly easier to target not only nearby potential clients but those close to competitors as well.
Getting started with Geofencing
Let’s get into the nitty gritty of the various methods you can use to take full advantage of geofencing for your own business enterprise. There are several advertisers or providers that use proprietary devices known as beacons to create a virtual geographical area using these devices. Unfortunately this usually involves considerable cost and upkeep to manage and is usually priced out of range for most small to medium sized businesses.
The relatively new method of geofencing uses established advertising platforms that have already done most of the leg work of crating geofences for you. These services such as Google Adwords and Facebook include features that target specific areas around you or your competitor’s business using GPS, Wi-Fi, mobile device location from apps and other methods that are collected by these big players. They then offer these options as part of their possible client targeting matrix.
Webtivity Geofencing Services
Webtivity Marketing and Design has been providing digital marketing services since 1999. From link building, to blogging, to website design and digital advertising, including geofencing targeting we do it all.
Have we mentioned that we are a Certified Google Partner Agency? Give us a call at 941-753-7574 or contact us for more information on how we can work closely with you to help your business achieve all of your geofencing and overall marketing goals!
