Beginner's Guide to Geofence Marketing (+ Key Metrics)

Say you're the owner or marketing team lead of a business that wants to capture local customers passing by a brick-and-mortar location. Or, you want to serve different content to website visitors based on their location.

How can you do that? One method is to leverage the power of geofence marketing tools and strategies. 

Discover the basics of location-based marketing to transform how you engage with your local customers and drive engagement with your business. 

Understanding Geofence Marketing: What It Is and How It Works

Geofence marketing is a strategy where ads are displayed and sent to potential customers who enter a specific geographic area. It leverages the location tracking features available on many modern devices (such as smartphones) to identify good-fit prospects based on their physical location.

In other words, a geofence is a virtual boundary that triggers a real-world response. 

By setting up a geofence, a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area, businesses can send targeted messages to smartphones entering or exiting the area.

Geofence targeting typically leverages GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or cellular data to initiate location-based marketing strategies, creating an invisible threshold that beckons customers with timely, relevant offers. 

Another method of geofence targeting is to use the IP addresses of devices like laptops or desktop computers to determine their location and serve targeted ads.

For a mobile device, if the device is opted into location services, it communicates with the geofence, prompting push notifications. These push notifications can be used to send info about a sale, a reminder of a loyalty reward, or other offers to those who cross the geofence border.

It's a harmony of human desire and digital precision transforming how businesses engage with local customers.

Key Benefits of Implementing Geofence Marketing

Okay, so why should you get excited about geofencing your ads to target mobile device users and those living in your area? Here are a few of the potential benefits of implementing geofencing in your marketing strategy:

• Targeted Outreach: Send laser-focused communications to a relevant audience based on their physical location.
• Increased Engagement: Stir interest and engagement by offering timely content and offers when they're nearby.
• Higher Conversion Rates: Boost conversions by reaching customers when they're most likely to close.
• Cost Efficiency: Minimize advertising waste by ensuring that only potential customers within a certain vicinity receive your messages.
• Competitive Edge: Stay one step ahead by using innovative marketing tactics that set your brand apart from others who aren't employing similarly sophisticated marketing tactics.

Can I Set Up a Geofence in HubSpot?

As of the time of this writing, there is not a dedicated tool in HubSpot for setting up geofence marketing. To leverage geofencing, you'll need to integrate your HubSpot portal with a third-party geofencing solution like GeoMapper to arrange your contacts and create location-based lists to market to them.

You can redirect IPs in HubSpot for the purpose of sending website visitors to specific pages or versions of a page. This is useful for businesses with a worldwide audience who may need to guide users from different regions to different versions of a legal agreement or product page tailored to their region.

Best Practices for Geofence Marketing Campaigns

Craft Compelling Messages

Your geofence is only as effective as the messages it delivers. Be witty, be bold—create a narrative that resonates with your audience and compels them to step into your business.

When creating a special offer, be sure to make it enticing and useful to prospective customers. If the offer doesn't provide much real value or you don't communicate that value effectively, it won't generate the traffic you're looking for.

Respect Privacy

Trust is the cornerstone of any relationship. Ensure your geofence marketing respects privacy by obtaining consent and providing clear opt-out options. This isn't just about being compliant with regulations like GDPR; it's about being empathetic to customer preferences.

Test and Optimize

Do you know what great marketers share with mad scientists? It's that they're obsessed with running tests and learning everything they can from empirical data.

Test different messages, boundaries, and timings for your geofenced ads. Analyze the data, refine your strategy, and watch as your geofence strategy becomes a magnet for engagement.

Integrate with Broader Marketing Efforts

Don't let your geofence stand alone. Weave it into the fabric of your broader marketing campaigns for a cohesive, omnichannel approach that amplifies your message and multiplies its impact.

Measuring the Success of Your Geofence Marketing Efforts

To verify that you're getting the most out of your geofencing efforts in your marketing strategy, it's important to measure your results. 

So, how can you measure the success of your geofence marketing? Here are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that you can track to gauge your marketing effort's effectiveness:

• Foot Traffic: The most direct measure of success is an uptick in your store's visits. Track the correlation between campaign launches and the number of customers crossing your threshold.
• Engagement Rates: Analyze how many users interact with your geofenced messages. High engagement rates often predict a successful campaign.
• Conversion Rates: Keep a close eye on how many of the engaged users take the desired action, such as redeeming a coupon or attending an event.
• Return on Investment (ROI): Ultimately, the success of your campaigns comes down to return on investment. Compare the campaign costs against the revenue generated from conversions within your geofence.

Remember, the purpose of measurement transcends mere numbers—it's about understanding the impact of your campaigns and using that information to make constant improvements.

By measuring results, you can refine your approach, deepen your customer relationships, and continually innovate to keep your brand as dynamic and lively as the community (or communities) you serve.

Need a little help creating great material for your digital marketing strategy? Book a meeting with the experts at Bluleadz to get started.