In today’s world, businesses constantly need to evolve to fit the needs and wants of their customers. If you think about the changes in the landscape of how consumers make decisions it has changed in the last 50, and even, 20 years. Now, people have information at their fingertips with smartphones. Looking up information over the internet takes seconds, reviews are readily available on apps such as Amazon and Yelp. And instead of talking to others, many are face down looking through social media. However, there are many advantages to the advancements in technology, especially when it comes to your business. We will take a look at three ways you can boost your local sales with geofencing.
If you’re asking yourself, what is geofencing? Here is a quick refresher. Geofencing is a type of location-based marketing that allows you to set a perimeter around a specific area to target people based on their location. So, a person on their phone walking by your shop or bar can see an ad simply because they are within the designated area. According to the Pew Research Center, 96 percent of Americans own a cellphone, with 81 percent owning a smartphone. That is up 35 percent from the center’s research in 2011. As you can imagine, this is helpful for ads a customer may see on a website they’re browsing or on social media while liking their best friend’s vacation picture. The ability to reach consumers on mobile devices has grown exponentially and can help your sales grow as well.
Grow brand awareness
You want customers to know who you are. Think about the businesses in your area. Are you a local dessert spot near other restaurants? Or maybe you sell accessories, handbags and shoes near popular clothing stores. With geofenced marketing, your ad can display for people who are within the virtual fence encompassing those complimentary (or even competing) businesses to get another sale.
Brand awareness is crucial in the marketing and sales funnel. It means customers recognize your brand, so by adding geofenced marketing you are able to contribute to the brand awareness of your business. According to the Harvard Business Review, 73 percent of consumers say they use more than one channel during their shopping journey, so it is not surprising to know that consumers will shop around, look online, take advice from friends or reviews before making a purchase. Studies show that brands or businesses that consumers recognize are most likely going to get the sale. By specifically targeting consumers with relevant and quality ads within the geofenced area your ads will convert to more sales.
Increase local traffic with quality leads
You may get 1,000 plus views on a funny social media video for your business but what does it mean if you’re only getting views and not conversions? The quality of your leads is low, so you want to be able to target your video to the correct audience to increase the quality. We will dive into the importance of analytics next because it plays a factor as well, but geofencing allows you to reach local traffic and the desired audience to have quality leads for your business. In the long run, this will keep acquisition costs down because you can make adjustments to perfect the outcome of the ad performance.
Use analytics to strengthen your marketing plan with local insight
Analytics is a relevant factor in strategizing or refining your marketing strategy. Thumbvista, for example, provides full-service reports for its customers. Reports include data and insights about campaign results and recommendations for future campaigns. This is vital information because it allows you to make better decisions for your business.
Let’s take a look at some scenarios. When you are creating your marketing strategy, preliminary research can help identify the best time or people to target for your ads. But as you conduct testing with your campaigns, insights will help you make better decisions such as A/B testing a call to action, testing the time of day to present your ads to customers, how big or small the geofenced area should be and targeting specific interests/demographics. With Thumbvista, your ads can be leveraged based on inventory and the most popular apps/sites to display your content. Plus, Thumbvista reports will drill down to the specifics that matter the most to you.
To create a geofenced campaign, you will want to partner with a company that excels in this area. Thumbvista offers geofencing, analytics and more to help create the perfect campaign. More information is available at Thumbvista.com.