Have you ever asked yourself the question: What is geofencing? Well, probably not — geofencing doesn’t come much in every day conversations, does it?
One day while working at a self-storage management company that managed about 50 self-storage properties I was tasked with identifying an appropriate geofencing vendor.
Ever hear of geofencing?
It is technology that allows companies to target people based on their physical location. So, if they are within a certain radius of a store which has a geofencing campaign set up those people will see a banner ad in apps or on content sites when they are on their smart phones, tablets or laptops — but most likely their phones. The banner ad can have a phone number in it and/or a live link. It is also possible to make the phone number interactive, so the user can do a click-to-call right on a mobile device.
Of course, it took a while to research various geofencing companies online and set up some calls with sales people from them. The whole process took several weeks (along with doing other duties) but a final candidate eventually emerged.
It was Agility Digital in Utah because this company worked with smaller accounts as well as larger ones, whereas some of the bigger companies would not work with accounts that were less than $5,000 per month.
Initially, we set up a test with $500 a month using several locations in the Bay Area and in Utah. The geofencing campaign includes web-based analytics which showed the cost per click, the locations and campaign names. Within Google Analytics, the number of referrals each month could be viewed which confirmed that our website landing pages did get views from the geofencing banner ads.
The banner ads were made by the geofencing company’s in-house graphic designers and we provided some photos and the copy.
What was much less clear was if any of the self-storage locations received any walk-in visitors.
The geofencing analytics showed there were dozens each month, but when I called each local office and asked an onsite employee if they had any walk-ins for the previous day they was only about one.
In some cases, it seemed as they the geofencing technology might have been counting people who walked or drove by a store with their mobile devices on as a walk-in. That event should not have been counted as a walk-in because no one came into the location after viewing a banner ad, clicking it or calling in.
So the walk-in data never seemed to be all that accurate, but the website did get referrals from people who were within the target radiuses defined for each location. The cost per website visit was around $3.00 which was less than for some of the Google Adwords campaigns that were also running.
It wasn’t possible to determine cost per lead though, nor customer acquisition.
So, it was a very intriguing campaign to set up and run. Again, it’s based on physical proximity, not on keyword searches.
There is a another form of geofencing that might be more common which is getting users to download an app, and then placing sensors within a store or near it. The technology then sends text messages with information about discounts or other offers when users are near or in the store.
To be clear, the geofencing technology I used did not employ a downloadable app, it shows ad banners in a content network of apps and websites based on physical proximity.
This kind of geofencing might work in densely populated areas where mobile device usage is high. It might also be effective for an event where your target audience is going to be or meets with some frequency.
While geofencing might seem invasive, another perspective suggests that a number of mobile device users appreciate receiving offers or updates on their smart phones while they are in a shopping area or in a neighborhood with restaurants and cafes.