A geofence is a virtual fence, like an invisible dog fence.

The difference is that you’re creating geofences around specific locations that you want to target, using GPS or radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. These virtual fences can range anywhere from 1 meter to 30,000 meters, based on how far out you want to target your audience.

For best results, we create geofences that are at least 93 square meters or 1000 square feet.

more complex than an invisible dog fence, geofences have an identical concept.

When a user enters or leaves a geofence, there is a reaction. While dogs feel a vibration or hear a noise from their collar, people interacting with a geofence don’t even realize it.

Instead, when users leave a geofence, they get added to an audience so your business can retarget with ads through mobile apps and webpages. This feature builds on pay-per-click (PPC) ads, which allow you to target by demographic and general geographic location.

The benefit of geofences, however, is that the targeting is much more granular.

With geofencing, you can filter your target audience by their location. You can serve them ads based on an event they’re attending, a competitor they’re visiting, or even a street they’re walking down. It is the ultimate targeting solution.

Take a dental practice as an example. If their office wants to attract more dental leads, they can use competitor geofencing advertising to target to specific areas — like a suburban neighborhood — to attract new patients.

Geofencing works as well as the strategy developed for it.

The success of your geofences depends on several factors, including your fencing size, advertising offer, audience size, and more. For the best results with geofencing, take time developing, testing, and monitoring your strategy and ad creatives.

You can use addressable geofencing in dozens of ways. For perspective, here are a few examples:

• Veterinarian

A veterinary clinic can use addressable geofencing to reach new or existing clients.

The made-up clinic, Fido’s Vet, for example, may reference a client list to advertise a promotion for wellness check-ups or vaccinations. This ad can bring returning customers (and their pets) to the clinic and generate revenue for the center.

• Banks

A financial institution can also use addressable geofencing to build and retain its customer base.

The fictional bank, Vault, for instance, may use a direct mail list to promote its interest rates for auto or home loans. Or, it may advertise its upcoming promotion for opening a new checking account if it wants to attract new clients.

• Utility Provider

A utility provider, whether for cable, power, or Internet, can also use addressable geofencing.

The made-up power provider, Got Power, for example, may use a list of targeting addresses to capture a competitor’s customers. Their ad may promote their lower rates, for example, or stellar customer service.

If you’re not sure whether addressable geofencing could benefit your business, you can always talk to our team. We’re here to help your company earn more revenue. You won’t find us recommending services that won’t work for our clients.

Just contact us online or call us at 888-256-9448 to chat with our experienced strategists.

Our addressable geofencing services can target up to one million addresses per campaign.

As an example, you could have Campaign A with one million addresses, Campaign B with 500,000 addresses, and Campaign C with 10,000 addresses or any other number combination equal to or less than one million.

On the technical side, our addressable geofencing services follow these steps:

1. Upload a list of addresses to target
2. Match the addresses against plat line map data
3. Scrub customer data for security and to protect user privacy and company data
4. Create geofences around matched addresses
5. Target users within each geofence
6. Set cross-device targeting, if applicable
7. Develop creative deliverables, like copy and banner ads
8. Launch your addressable geofencing services campaign

An example of geofencing marketing comes from the retail industry.

While a well-known and established brand, American Eagle wanted to increase its sales. The retail brand set up geofences throughout malls with American Eagle stores.

When members of its target audience entered the geofence, they became part of a remarketing audience. The company then served this audience with ads that promoted special offers, like incentives for trying on clothes at an American Eagle store. These ads appeared on mobile apps and webpages, reaching users on-the-go.

The advertising campaign encouraged shoppers to come back and shop at American Eagle. As a result, the retailer tripled its in-store sales.

Burger King also invested in geofencing targeting, using it as a defensive marketing tactic against another leading fast-food chain, McDonald’s. The campaign revolved around Burger King’s mobile app and visits to McDonald’s.

The campaign, called #WhopperDetour, encouraged diners to go to or drive by a McDonald’s and open the Burger King mobile app. Once users completed this part of the step, they received a deal that allowed them to order a Whopper sandwich at the nearest Burger King for a penny.

The campaign, which ran through December 2018, generated significant brand awareness. The tweet announcing #WhopperDetour earned more than 4,500 retweets and over 15,000 likes from users, suggesting that many people took advantage of the offer.

While both examples come from established companies, these kinds of results are possible for small-to-midsized businesses (SMBs), too. It’s only a matter of partnering with a trusted and results-driven geofencing advertising company.

Geofencing advertising offers your company several impressive — and noticeable — benefits, including:

1. Customer satisfaction

It’s a surprising fact for many businesses, but consumers want to hear from your company. According to 80% of consumers, they’re more likely to do business with an organization that offers a personalized experience, whether through apps, websites, ads, or another channel.

If you want to satisfy potential shoppers, you need to appeal to their wants and geofencing advertising does that. With compelling and actionable ads, you can remarket your business to your target audience, whether they’ve visited your location or purchased your product.

A sale isn’t necessary to appeal to consumers, though. You can also encourage users to visit your store, trade show booth, or website by resolving their needs.

Let’s say for example, they’re looking for an experienced fence installer or a specialty manufacturer. With your ads, you can show users that you’re the solution to their problem.

2. Increased conversion rates

Competitor geofencing advertising services also assist with boosting your conversions, which can range from in-store visits to quote requests and newsletter sign-ups. Geofencing involves identifying your goals and having a deeper understanding of your target market and competitors so you know the best areas to place geofences.

This strategy involves identifying the optimal size for your geofences, maximizing your company’s exposure to your target audience. Plus, when you work with a top geofencing agency like WebFX, you get compelling ads that appeal to the wants and needs of your audience.

When done right, geofencing drives high-value traffic to your company. Instead of an everyday consumer visiting your store, it’s your ideal shopper.

That means they’re more likely to act on your calls-to-action (CTAs), like joining your email newsletter. If you’re a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, for example, earning more newsletter subscribers can help your business earn more clients.

With your email marketing strategy, you can create newsletter content that moves new subscribers down your buying funnel and towards purchasing your software.

This later gain can help your business expand its team of developers, which can make it possible for your company to develop additional features for your software. You may even develop another software application to expand your services and revenue channels.

Even though geofencing advertising rarely generates immediate sales, it can provide the foundation for future sales via brand awareness and micro conversions. This advantage of geofencing advertising can help your business move ahead of competitors that only focus on bottom-of-the-funnel users.

3. Improved lead quality

Even if you’re a business that doesn’t operate a storefront location, geofencing advertising can help by generating high-quality leads. For your sales team, that’s an immense benefit, as they can focus their time on converting leads, rather than finding them.

If your company attends industry conferences and trade shows, for example, you can use geofences to reach your target audience — which is difficult during packed, noisy industry events. When attendees leave the event building, they can start receiving ads for your business.

This strategy works well even after a long day, because people will unwind with their phones. They’ll browse the Internet, watch some YouTube, or follow up on some industry topics — and in the process, they’ll see ads for your business.

Your ad can encourage users to visit not only your website but also your booth. In this scenario, you’re directing high-value consumers to your sales team. Your team can then connect with these users and turn them into leads.

In this example, your traditional and digital advertising combine to drive your company forward.

4. Customer loyalty

It’s essential that your business not only earns new clients but also retains its current customers. Why? Increasing customer retention by 5% can boost revenue by as much as 90%, which significantly impacts your bottom line.

How does geofencing advertising encourage customer loyalty, though? By offering relevant and helpful ads to your target audience.

If you’re an HVAC company, for example, and someone visits your competitor across town, you know they’re looking for an HVAC-related solution.

Your advertisement can help them, such as by promoting your offer for a free installation quote or a 10% discount on all HVAC systems. When shoppers arrive at your store, your team can then follow up with great customer service, providing users with a positive experience.

The same scenario applies to businesses without a physical storefront. At a conference, trade show, or event, your team can still provide your audience with a positive, memorable experience.

That kind of care can encourage your audience to choose your company, and not your competitor, for their unique needs.

5. Improved brand awareness

Competitor geofencing advertising services can improve your brand awareness. This benefit carries unparalleled value and convinces users that your business is the best choice.

A geofence contributes to better brand awareness by exposing consumers to your business. When they use their mobile apps or mobile browser, they see advertisements about your company.

The continued presence of your business in search results emphasizes that you offer a solution to their problems. Those problems can include finding caterers for a festival, picking a restaurant for a family get-together, or even selecting a venue for a company event.

The best part is that once a user chooses your business, you can start building their brand loyalty. That brand loyalty can lead to a long-term partnership — and source of revenue.

For example, if you’re an events place, a business may choose to book your venue for all their company parties. Even better, they may recommend you to other companies.

6. Better audience targeting

Geofencing advertising provides your business with helpful information about your target audience. It also allows you to refine your marketing personas by location, demographics, and several other additional features.

With detailed target audiences, you can maximize the success of your geofencing advertising strategy. Top geofencing agencies like WebFX can create specific ads for audiences that are five minutes away from your store, versus 10 — or for audiences that visit competitors with higher or lower price points than your business.

By enhancing your target audience, you can improve your overall geofencing advertising campaign. That can lead to better results, such as in the form of more leads, conversions, and sales. It can also help you reach your goals faster.

7. Better digital marketing strategies

An integrated digital marketing strategy offers your company a competitive edge. That’s why many businesses invest in not only geofencing advertising, but also in other services:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• PPC advertising
• Social media advertising
• And other services

A multi-pronged approach to digital marketing maximizes your company’s online visibility. It can also drive the results you’re looking for, like more reservations at your restaurant or more requests for an HVAC system quote.

Data from your geofencing marketing campaign can also inform your other Internet marketing strategies.

Maybe, for example, you learn that many users come from a town that your SEO strategy doesn’t target. Or that in-store consumers note a frequent pain point that your content marketing strategy hasn’t covered yet.

With geofencing’s multiple benefits, it’s a smart choice for companies looking to grow their business.

Geofencing advertising agencies use geofencing technologies to target your potential customers while they’re at your competitors’ locations. Geofencing agencies can create advertising strategies, write and design ads, run tests to optimize your campaigns, and report results.

When you start to understand competitor geofencing, you might wonder if it’s a campaign you can handle on your own. To answer the question, take a look at some considerations below.

Determine if you’re able to manage the campaign on your own

There’s a lot that goes into a competitor geofencing campaign — keyword research, setting up your ad platform, figuring out your monthly spend, and setting up your virtual boundaries. That being said, there are a few questions to ask yourself before deciding to take on the project within your own company.

Do you have the knowledge?

Knowledge is power, and you need to tap into extensive knowledge when implementing a new campaign that has the potential to improve your business. However, if marketing isn’t a part of your job description, ample research may still not be enough to understand all the important technical aspects of competitor geofencing advertising.

If you don’t have the knowledge necessary, it’ll be difficult to implement your own competitor geofencing campaign.

Do you have the resources?

Becoming an expert takes time, which is something all business owners understand. You didn’t start a successful business overnight, and it took a period of time for you to learn about your industry, customer service, and finances, to name a few. You likely took some classes in college, read some books, and dealt with some real-life scenarios — and by some, we mean a lot!

Learning how to implement competitor geofencing advertising is no different. You’ll have access informational resources, read extensively on the topic, and maybe even watch a tutorial or two.

If you said “no” to the last question about being knowledgeable in the realm of competitor geofencing, you’ll need to consider if you have the resources to become knowledgeable.

If you don’t have the information necessary to learn extensively on the topic, it might be best to hire a competitor geofencing agency to help you.

Do you have the staff necessary to take on the job?

Let’s say you’ve started to teach yourself all about competitor geofencing in hopes of implementing your own campaign. You spend late nights watching tutorials and taking notes on all the informative content you’ve read.

Two days into your self-teaching journey, something comes up at work and your geofencing campaign is now on hold.

Teaching yourself how to implement a successful campaign is taking more time than you originally thought, and you’re beginning to think that you need to pull a few more of your employees in on the efforts.

The only problem is that every employee has their own job to do at your business, and you don’t have the time to train them on a topic that you barely understand yourself.

If you don’t have the staff necessary to help you with the job of setting up a competitor geofencing advertising campaign, and you can’t handle it on your own (let’s be honest, what business owner can?), then hiring a competitor geofencing advertising agency is your best bet.

Do you have room on payroll to hire an expert?

Let’s say that you’ve decided that you don’t have enough staff members to learn the ropes of competitor geofencing, so you consider bringing on a full-time marketing expert to help you with your campaign.

Though this might feel and sound like a good idea at the beginning, you’ll have to consider a few things. Do you have enough room on payroll to hire an expert? Do you have enough company resources to offer another employee benefits?

Overall, it’s your best option to hire an advertising firm to take care of the job for you.

With so many companies starting to adopt competitor geofencing advertising, how can you be sure that you choose the right agency for your business?

We have a few pointers!

Pay attention to how long they’ve been in business

One of the first things to look for in a competitor geofencing advertising agency is how long they’ve been in business.

If an agency has only been in business for a year or two, they probably don’t know the industry, trends, and strategies as well as an agency that’s been in business for decades.

Young agencies also haven’t had time to build up a client profile, which means there aren’t very many people that will be able to speak to the success they’ve had with that agency.

Furthermore, when an agency hasn’t had many clients, they likely haven’t had to deal with a host of pitfalls and shortcomings when it comes to campaign success. This means they don’t have a ton of experience digging themselves out of unsuccessful campaigns, making it hard to trust them with yours.

Make sure they have all the services you’re interested in

When you hire a competitor geofencing advertising agency, you’re already looking for ways to improve your business with marketing. That means you’re possibly looking for other strategies that pair well with geofencing to take your overall marketing campaign to the next level.

If your business is also interested in marketing strategies like SEO or PPC, you should be sure that the competitor geofencing advertising agency you choose also offers these strategies.

Why? When you choose an agency that can work on all of your campaigns at once, they’ll do it better than a few separate agencies would. When a single agency does all of your marketing, they can share the same analytics, insight about your company, and more across their agency.

This means that all of your marketing campaigns will move toward the same goal, take shape under the same roof, and your marketing strategy as a whole will be far more cohesive.

Not to mention, no matter how many strategies you’re interested in, having a single point of contact for your entire marketing strategy is a huge benefit.

Take note of their reviews and testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are incredibly similar but differ in some important ways. Reviews are offered on third-party sites and can be positive or negative. Take the reviews below as an example:

Testimonials, on the other hand, are typically featured on a company’s website and are all positive feedback from past clients. They are used to illustrate first-hand accounts of previous clients and are beneficial for enticing potential customers. Testimonials talk about the quality of the products and services and new customers really trust them, since they’re written by someone who was once in their shoes.

Regardless, both are extremely significant in helping you decide on the perfect competitor geofencing advertising agency.

When you’re researching potential competitor geofencing advertising agencies, you should be sure to read through reviews and testimonials to make a well-informed and well-rounded decision about who is the best option for your business.

Keep in mind that it’s highly unlikely that an agency will have all five-star reviews, so cut them a break if the positives outweigh the negatives.