Marketers are adjusting to advertising methods that allow more personalized interaction with their target audience. A good example is geofencing marketing, which provides a more personalized approach for reaching the target audience. So, what is geofencing marketing, and how does the system work?

Concept of Geofencing Marketing

Often referred to as geofencing advertising, this is a form of location-based marketing, where marketers focus on displaying ads to customers who are within a particular point of interest. Therefore, whenever a customer enters a specific geographical location, the geofence trigger occurs, delivering the advertisement to their phone.

Therefore, geofencing marketing is a useful technique for instant location-based advertising.  Marketers have used the geofencing marketing technique to identify and build a quality audience. The approach involves three simple steps. Here is an overview of the steps:

Step1. Marketer identifies the geographical radius where the target audiences are.

Step2. The marketer sets a virtual boundary (geofence) around the location.

Step3. Whenever a target customer enters or exits the boundary, an event is triggered.

For instance, a marketer may want to target people arriving at a specific airport. A virtual boundary is set around the airport so that when there are new arrivals, the moment they switch on their phone, an SMS or push notification (trigger event) arrives on their phone.

What are the benefits and limitations of geofencing marketing?

Benefits of Geofencing Marketing

1.   Better targeting

The hyper-targeting method allows marketers to reach the target audience while they are at the right time and the right place. Besides, the marketers deliver relevant messages to the right audience and at the right time. By filtering the areas by specific targeting criteria, you are more likely to convert them into buyers.

2.   Spend Effectiveness

With proper targeting, sending the geofence ads at the right time, and while at the right place, your engagement numbers will go up. Therefore, with geofencing marketing,, you are spending your marketing budget on prospects who are more likely to take the desired action. Besides, you are spending less money on the more effective advertising method.

3.   Based on Personalizing Customer Experience

Geofencing marketing delivers a personalized message to the local target audience. Therefore, the advertiser can customize the promotion messages to meet the expectations of the local audience.

Disadvantages of Geofencing Marketing

1.   Prone to Technical Hitches

Not all geofencing technology provides 99.999% accuracy. Sometimes, a device may register inside the geofence, while it is not. Therefore, devices that are falsely attributed to the location mislead the marketers.

2.   Potentially Scalability Issues

Being a hyper-targeting technique, geofencing campaigns might result in small audiences. Therefore, there is a need to perform thorough research to overcome this potential problem.

3.   Blocking If Bothersome

If the push notifications bother the recipients, they may choose to block them from reaching their devices. Therefore, the marketer should rethink how often they send these notifications and send relevant messages.

Conclusion

Geofencing marketing provides greater effectiveness compared to digital marketing. With geofencing, the marketer can deliver messages to a high-quality audience, which increases the potential for getting a positive response. In that regard, geofencing is an excellent in-hand advertising technique.