Marketing is all about additional touches with your ideal client, and tapping into geotargeting and geofencing can help with these efforts.
“When it comes to marketing, this is not a seasonal business,” says Katy Doss, founder and CEO of Script Marketing. “People plan year-round, so you need to be running geotargeting ads year-round. Plus, it takes 10-15 times for your message to resonate, so you have to plant those seeds (pun intended) all year so when they are ready, you’re the first business they think of.”
What’s the Difference Between Geotargeting and Geofencing?
You don’t have unlimited marketing dollars, so you want to make sure that your ads are getting in front of individuals who can actually purchase your services. This is where geotargeting comes in.
It can target users based on their location history or zip code.
“It’s all about precision, both in where they are and who they are,” Doss says. “The more you can zero in on your exact right client, the more efficient your marketing spend is. Plus, you can tailor your messaging to specific neighborhoods, income levels, and even behaviors.”
Meanwhile, geofencing allows you to draw an invisible fence around a specific location, such as a Home Depot and serve ads to people when they’re in that area.
“Geofencing is typically used around points of interest, and there’s usually some sort of trigger-based opportunity so that either someone’s going to be served ads or going to be given a notification, if it’s in an app environment,” says Robert Murray, co-founder and CEO of Intrigue Media. “Geotargeting is using legitimate postal codes, zip codes, cities, municipalities, provinces, states, and countries, to essentially define where you’re going to serve ads.”
Use Cases for Geotargeting
Geotargeting should be set up right away if you’re looking to acquire new customers.
“We definitely want to make sure that we’re isolating our ad spend to where people actually can do the work,” Murray says. “Maybe even becoming hyper-localized, from a geotargeting perspective, around specific neighborhoods and communities where they want to focus their efforts on trying to get more customers.”
Doss adds that geotargeting allows you to reach leads in the context of their lives, when they’re actively scrolling on their phones and more open to messaging.
You can also utilize geotargeting with your recruiting ads, reaching interested candidates in your service area.
Murray says one drawback to geotargeting is if you are in a summer community that consists of mostly secondary homes, it’s harder to target a population that doesn’t live there regularly.
There needs to be a threshold of population to ensure your geotargeting is effective. Murray says if you only want to reach a couple of streets of 50 houses, you might be better served by simply going door to door.
“If you’re targeting something in a city or a suburban environment, and there’s a population of even 1,000 or 2,000 people within those communities, you could probably get some value,” Murray says.
Use Cases for Geofencing
Geofencing is useful, depending on your company and the sophistication of your current marketing efforts. Murray says in their experience, geofencing hasn’t driven a lot of qualified leads, but it does help ensure your ads are showing up in front of the right people.
“Especially if you’re trying to build relationships in B2B sales, or if you’re in high-end construction, it can have a two- or three-year buying period,” Murray says. “If someone’s thinking about doing a big renovation, then they’re going to research what they should do for said renovation, and then eventually they buy. Getting in front of those people who have the money that you’re looking for to do the types of projects you want to build, it can work really well.”
Murray says an example of this is geofencing an area of high-end car dealerships like Maseratis, Cadillacs and Mercedes. People visiting these locations end up getting served ads about your brand and your business, so eventually you become top of mind over time.
“It’s valuable,” Murray says. “It’s just not necessarily going to drive behavior immediately.”
Doss says if your ad says the right thing at the right time, geofencing around home improvement stores like Lowe’s could convert an overwhelmed shopper standing in front of 50 kinds of mulch, but they have to see it first.
“Potential clients aren’t generally making snap decisions in the Lowe’s parking lot to utilize your services,” Doss says. “They’re there for something specific, and if they’re on their phones, it’s for a quick look at something – your ad may not even register.”
Geofencing can be used for recruiting as well.
“With geofencing, you can geofence trade schools, job fairs, and even specific job sites,” Doss says. “If you’ve got the right messaging – something like, ‘Sick of mowing for someone else? Come grow with us’ – you’ve got a solid recruitment tool.”
Murray says geofencing has yet to become a priority for their clients as they’re still able to tap into the cost per qualified lead on other platforms.
“Geofencing is an advanced approach,” Murray says. “If you don’t have your fundamentals of reporting put into place to understand what’s working and what’s not, don’t bother.”
