Insights

Precisely targeting your ideal customers with your marketing message can feel like an elusive goal. But we’re here to tell you it’s not a magic trick – you can run personalized, highly targeted ads. And it’s all possible through geomarketing.

“Geolocation marketing,” aka geomarketing, is growing in sophistication and popularity. It allows businesses to target specific demographics in a defined area.

While often used interchangeably, the two forms of geomarketing – geofencing and geotargeting – are distinctly different marketing strategies. Let’s figure out which would best fit your marketing goals.

Using Geofencing as a Marketing Tactic
Geofencing refers to a virtual “fence” drawn around a targeted zone, utilizing the area’s IP addresses and geolocation data. Some services, like Snapchat, allow users to draw a virtual map around the targeted area. Ads within the defined boundaries are tightly targeted to an audience in that area that would be interested in local businesses, events, and deals.

That’s why geofencing works best for businesses with a location-based target market, since ads are only triggered when users cross the digital boundary.

Both B2C and B2B businesses can tap into the power of geofencing, as we’ll see in the following examples.

Examples of Geofencing Advertising Campaigns

• A local wedding venue that wants to market to engaged couples can draw a geofence around other wedding-related businesses and events, such as bridal shops, florists, bakeries, and bridal expos.
• A credit union that wishes to target employees that work at its various locations can utilize geofencing around each location to deliver its content.
• A video game store that wishes to attract customers who currently frequent a competitor’s shop can use geofencing around the competitors’ locations to serve promotions or discounts.
• An IT company could attract new clients by geofencing around an industrial park with multiple organizations.

Using Geotargeting as a Marketing Tactic
Geotargeting takes location marketing one step further by incorporating user data to target people by interest, behaviors, and additional demographics. In other words, geotargeted ads can be tailored to a defined demographic within a specified geographic location. This results in a smaller, most customized group of people seeing ads that are hyper-targeted to them.

Geotargeting allows businesses to test and develop highly effective ad campaigns over time. By applying known demographic data to help narrow down the most impactful ad content, geotargeting can help streamline your marketing campaigns.

Examples of Geotargeting Advertising Campaigns

• A national manufacturing company that offers repair service for its products, but only within a set radius around their individual locations, can use geotargeting to run national ads within each respective service area across the country.
• A SaaS company exhibiting at a large expo can set-up a radius around the venue, including nearby hotels and restaurants, and use geotargeting to hyper target its ideal clients based on interests and professions.

Which is Better, Geofencing or Geotargeting?
The key difference between these two geomarketing techniques is who sees them and how. With geofencing, the ad is triggered when any user crosses that imaginary fence, while geotargeting combines a defined radius around a location with data sets targeting specific demographics.

If your ad campaign is going to be highly complex, and you need to filter out some users, go with the more sophisticated geotargeting. If you have a fairly simple targeting strategy that is only location-based, geofencing can probably do the trick.

Now that your mind is spinning with all the geomarketing possibilities for your business, it’s time to find a marketing partner to execute the magic trick!

Webfitters your premier geomarketing expert in Northeastern Wisconsin. Let’s get your digital marketing hyper focused – contact us, today!