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About nine in ten people are smartphone users in the UK today and the number is only increasing. Two-thirds of American adults use a mobile smartphone, and if we count people under 35, the percentage goes up to eight five percent.

These staggering numbers are evidence of a vast ecosystem of marketing opportunities. The possibilities to advertise to potential customers based on their locations are endless in their versatility. However, for most marketing people, a deeper understanding of this technology is needed to develop sound marketing strategies.

What is Geofencing?

This concept of a geofence involves the use of GPS triangulation to create a virtual fence surrounding a location such as a shopping center or outlet. When a smartphone gets near that geofence, the apps in that phone can send and receive data as set by the specific geofence.

This functionality opens up a world of marketing opportunities for the tech-savvy marketer. For any smartphone user that crosses a geofence, on-site companies can deliver their message directly to that user. It will revolutionize the way you reach customers.

The geofence can be customized to your liking, so it can be 5 or 15 miles, for example, or simply cover the grounds of a single building. The purpose of smaller geofences may be to inform visitors of certain steps they may need to take before exploring the terrain.

Mobile data collection via geofencing

Mobile phone users download apps on their phones that store usage data to provide customized service. That data is accessible to mobile marketers using geofencing technologies. This valuable information generates insight into what kind of foot traffic is being received in particular locations.

These insights include spending patterns, preferences, frequencies, and so on. Every mobile app marketing strategy is based on the premise of message personalization. Therefore, location-based marketing is crucial to target marketing efforts to a high-potential audience.

Location-based marketing includes technologies such as Wifi and GPS to triangulate coordinates. Those coordinates are then used to retrieve and deliver data from smart devices within those coordinates.
During the pandemic, governments around the world have used this technology to inform and alert citizens about social distancing precautions and requirements. But this technology is not only available to governments. Mobile marketing agencies are also entering this arena.

Geofencing as an effective advertising tool

The key to great marketing is to try to make your message as relevant to the audience as possible. Here we share a few tips to effectively use geofencing to deliver your message to smartphone users in your chosen area.

1. Define your catchment area

Geofencing implications for mobile marketing can be quite daunting. The number of people who travel through densely populated urban areas every day or month can provide an overwhelming amount of data in a short amount of time.

Geofencing is a mobile marketing tool that allows companies to get their message across to highly targeted audiences. Find out how with this guide.

The trick to solving this problem is to clearly define your target audience and then set parameters that filter only by the demographic you want to target. For example, as a baby product brand, you should limit your marketing to parents of babies, especially mothers.

For such purpose, you can set parameters for women with certain types of apps on their phone, such as baby monitoring or feeding apps. Plus, you can separate the wheat from the chaff by adding keywords related to your product and filtering out those phones that have had similar searches done.

2. Use data to gain insight

The data that smartphones store on their owners is truly a gold mine. It helps develop further understanding of users. The data that can be collected from geofenced areas includes how many times a person visited a store, how long they stayed, what they searched on their phone during that time, and whether they passed similar locations.
Mobile marketing experts suggest using algorithms to sift through this mountain of disparate data to create patterns. These reports can then be used to deliver content that meets a customer’s unique needs. Starbucks often uses foot traffic data to promote coffee delivery and membership services during peak hours.

3. Explore Uncharted Territory

Having a channel that delivers direct messages to potential customers is indeed a powerful tool. But it’s only effective if your content is strong. When the NYT reported that Apple was slowing down its marketing strategy for Apple TV+, savvy advocacy marketers stepped in.

Smartphone users in and around media stores often search for questions about the streaming service. Users wanting to know how to buy a subscription, or want the best Apple TV VPN, may be inundated with messages from competing services targeting the marketing area that Apple wasn’t.

Sum up

The use of geofencing technology is revolutionizing mobile marketing. More targeted content is created for the exact customer you want to reach. This saves time and resources that would otherwise be spent targeting only a small fraction of the intended recipients and a lot of other audiences.

Whether you use geofencing to send SMS promotions, personalize outdoor display ads, or promote your brand on the social media apps users have downloaded onto their phones, the possibilities are endless.

For the future of mobile marketing, all that remains is to create more sophisticated tools to sift through the mountains of data generated by geofencing technology and turn that into models for delivering relevant content to the millions of smartphone users out there. .