Here’s a list of common mistakes that even the most experienced agencies can make in Geofencing Marketing.
Considering that 80 percent of those using location-based services report wanting to see location-based promotions from businesses, the growth, and engagement that geofencing marketing can offer customers becomes obvious.
As an increasing number of brands begin to implement this form of advertising, however, a few mistakes repeatedly appear. These eight common errors can result in businesses losing potential opportunities and diminishing the positive impact of their ads.
As you begin to set up your geofencing ads, review your strategy to eliminate these potential mistakes.
Excessive or limited coverage
Brands often run into trouble with their geofencing ads if they do not set up proper parameters for their promotions. Excessive coverage, when the ads get displayed to too broad an area or when they do not employ the full potential of dayparting, means that they will waste a lot of money getting the ad in front of people who have a low probability of making a purchase. Dayparting allows brands to select certain times of the day to promote their ad, allowing them to target potential customers based on likely buying behavior.
On the other hand, brands can also limit their success if they set these parameters too narrowly. Confining the parameters of the people who receive the ad too much can result in missing potential customers.
To avoid these problems, brands should focus on building a solid understanding of buyer behavior so that they know when and where customers become more likely to purchase. They also need to track their results from their efforts so that they can expand or narrow their parameters as needed.
Missing out on 3rd party data
Marketers who use geofencing successfully pull in their data from a variety of sources. Using only 1st party data can limit your ability to properly target customers with geolocation. Make sure that the ads you use employ 3rd party data as well. Using 3rd party data can drastically increase the amount of data available to accurately run the ad.
Not using frequency capping
Customers are exposed to thousands of ads every day, which means that they can get overwhelmed. If brands do not place a cap on the number of times an ad will get displayed to a particular prospective customer, then they run the risk of sending that prospect countless ads, causing banner blindness. In other words, when people receive too many impressions from a single company, they start to just ignore the ad.
This does not create a positive user experience. Brands need to set a reasonable cap on the number of ads displayed per person and pay attention to how customers respond to each impression or click.
Lack of walk-in tracking
Geofencing provides brands with an excellent way to drive both foot and online traffic to their business. Although tracking digital traffic can generally be accomplished fairly straightforwardly, businesses that do not also track their walk-in traffic will potentially miss many data points.
Organizations need to understand when a customer comes to visit their store because of a well-placed geofencing ad. As geofencing ads are set up, you can track customers who come to your physical store by drawing a second fence right around your store. This will allow you to track the people who saw your ad first and then passed through your second fence, into your store.
Inaccurate tracking data
Data changes very quickly as people move around physically and online, making quality location data sources in geofencing critical. For geofencing ads to work effectively, they need to properly target prospective customers. Trying to complete this task with inaccurate tracking can be virtually impossible.
Data can go ‘bad’ because of a variety of reasons, such as cached location data, IP changes, and the lack of the recency filter. Those running geofencing ads should verify where the data used comes from. Make sure that it can be verified and produces a positive experience for users.
Bad ad placements
When running geofencing ads, businesses also want to watch for the placement of an ad. For example, having an ad for gambling appear in a game targeted at kids will not engage the intended audience and could upset people.
Consider the types of businesses where you would like your ad to appear. Examine the platform used to run the geofencing ads and make sure that the parameters that define where the ad may appear to align well with the types and categories of ads created.
Relying on expired audience data
Customer behavior changes rapidly. No one can afford to rely on expired customer data that could result in the display of ads to the wrong customer or miss real potential leads. Expired data, such as an outdated customer list, can result in mistargeted ads and lead to poor user experience.
To avoid this, take steps to ensure the data is regularly refreshed. Instead of targeting all users who visited the geolocation, only target users who visited the location within the last 30 or 60 days.
Not taking advantage of exclusion lists
Exclusion lists can make it simple to target the intended audience, without potentially wasting money on people who would not benefit from the ad. For example, an exclusion list might avoid showing ads to those who have just made a purchase. Ads focused on getting people to the store would also not effectively engage those already in the store.
As businesses run geofencing ads, they need to consider two categories of people. Primarily, they need to know their target audience. They also need to understand who does not need to see it. This reduces waste in the ad budget and helps campaigns run more efficiently.
Geofencing marketing makes it easy for businesses to take a personalized offer to the next level for customers. By eliminating these eight common mistakes, brands will improve their ad strategies and significantly boost their returns. Finding Geofencing companies that have a deep understanding of the technology and marketing strategy can be tricky. At Demand Local, we help educate our audience on the various aspects of geofencing marketing so that they can grow their business.¶
Work with Experts in Geofencing
Over the past few years, we have been continuously optimizing and refining the walk-in attribution process to maximize precision and accuracy. With the right location tracking technology and attribution system in place, tracking digital advertising to actual store walk-ins is easy. Got any questions? Write to us and we’ll help you set up a winning Geofencing campaign.
