What is geofencing?

Marketing nowadays is constantly developing more and more new options to reach the audience, especially the local one. So, 2020 is just the right time to use some of the new smart solutions for your business. One of them which is really worth mentioning is geofencing. By the term geofence, we mean virtual boundaries within a certain location. For example, it can be a certain district of the city or even a region. So, with the help of GPS and Wi-Fi, and of course, some specifically developed local-based apps, different configurations of pre-programmed actions are activated, as soon as a mobile device enters the given area.

Where is it used?

Comparing to previous years, geofencing has gained popularity in various fields of life, trade, and management. Companies can develop a customized set of the above-mentioned actions like:

– Alerts and informational messages

– Push notifications

– Adds in browser

– Adds in social media

– Sharing any kind of direct and indirect marketing data

Before gaining great popularity in marketing, and e-commerce, in particular, geofencing was also widely applicable in security systems and employee time checking. For example, the local applications would give alerts if someone enters the secure area without permission. With the help of time cards, companies have been controlling the time-efficiency of their employees for many years using the same geofencing technologies. Besides, geofencing is widely used in product tracking and warehouse management.

How it works?

To apply geofencing, the first thing a developer must do is establish and introduce geofence boundaries around the chosen area for GPS-based devices drawing a virtual circle around the center of this area. Within this area, a specific response of the application will be automatically triggered each time an authorized device enters the area or leaves it. The related maps are usually based on geolocation platforms, such as Google Maps, or other analogs popular in your area. As companies are still not familiar enough with the algorithms of geofencing, they are often interested in how exactly it can help in their business. Often concert halls use geofencing to attract visitors to a nearby area to consider the upcoming events. Shops use push messages and messages on social media to assigned visitors to inform about sales and new collection arrivals. Many e-commerce companies invite potential users to download their application as they get close to their location. If you own a retail shop, you can always extend the area of geofencing to attract potential customers who enter the nearby areas by sending them smart invitations to visit your shop. Hotels, restaurants, and spa resorts use geofencing around the location of their main competitors. In this way, they provide an additional choice to the customers who are looking exactly for the services they provide but might haven’t noticed them as an option. In the messages the visitors receive, there are always a couple of competitive advantages the nearby competitors may lack. Geofencing, in general, provides endless opportunities for businesses to initiate a process of communication with their future customers. These technologies are much cost-efficient than any kind of outdoor advertising, such as billboards, and so on. Of course, in the process of application development for your geofencing needs, audience targeting and customized message variations must be also taken into account.

Potential benefits of geofencing for business

Those endless opportunities mentioned earlier can be easily grouped to understand what functions can be added to your strategic plan with the help of geofencing.

– Relatively cheap means of advertising

Serving as an informational portal, geofencing apps trigger the interest and shout out your potential customers visiting a nearby area. On the other hand, you will also monitor their presence and easily calculate the effectiveness of this advertising tool. Notifications on discounts, giveaways, and sales are highly effective and will certainly attract even those customers to the funnel who were not planning a purchase in advance.

– Audience analysis and attraction

Before thinking about how to attract and maintain the audience, a clearly-developed geofencing app will provide you with priceless information about the potential audience that you mightn’t even plan to get, but that is active in the given area. Targeting your potential customers on social networks who can get interested in your offers is a great advantage of this tool. So, you can easily design a marketing campaign for the device owners with transactional potential. The effect of surprise that the audience gets having received your message, will make them excited to visit you, as far as cute geofencing notification often looks like a personalized invitation, and people like them.

– It helps you grow brand awareness

The geofencing messages help the customers choose you out of other similar companies, sometimes only because you are close to their present location. So, even those customers, who don’t visit you simultaneously after receiving your message, will learn about you and your value proposition. So, the notifications act like reminders, that they need to visit you soon. They are more personalized, so potentially are more visible than huge billboards.

– It associates you with your online and offline presence

If you also operate online, like selling goods on social media, geofencing will help the audience find the real concept of your business, liking your offline presence to the accounts on social networks. It raises customer engagement and affects your brand identity.

– It provides product security

As it has been mentioned, geofencing can be widely applicable for product tracking, so you can use it for additional security in your store. If someone wants to take products away illegally, you’ll be informed immediately. In comparison to other ways of security, geofencing-based tools are fast, accurate, and relatively cost-efficient.

As for application development, geofencing also has many advantages, such as speed and lower complicity, in comparison to other applications. The only thing you need is to find a reliable application development agency, like owlab.group and decide on the audience you would like to target within a specific location.