What is Geofencing?
Geofencing is an advertising product aimed explicitly at smartphones and tablets. For those devices where location services are turned on, the service places ads in those apps or mobile web browsers. When the device/user is within a given distance from a location – for example, within 1000 feet of a particular restaurant or within a mile of a department store – the ads will be displayed. We call this “the fence.”– Joe Mann
- Ad viewers are already where they want to be – they launched the app where they see the ad – so you need to make sure your display banner contains an offer or incentive that will motivate your potential customer. 320×50 is the ad size that accounts for more than 90% of mobile display ads and is a mandatory size in geofencing campaigns.
Do match the offer in the creative to the landing page!
- Once you have convinced them to check out your offer, you have only a few seconds to hook them. If your ad does not link to a landing page that matches the offer you presented in the ad, the customers are likely to ignore the message and go away.
Do use UTM codes so the geofence traffic can be double checked in Google Analytics!
- Often it is difficult to match the traffic from geofencing reports up with traffic observed in Analytics. By adding UTM codes, we can easily identify all the traffic from the campaign directly in Google Analytics and can see what else they do on the website.
- So, what are UTM codes? UTM codes are a character string that is added to the end of the URL for the page where the user is taken if they click on one of the ads in the campaign. They record web traffic and allow Google Analytics to attribute the click to a specific source so users to where the traffic is coming from – did the visitor click from a search result in Google? A specific social post? A piece of content? Google can display a wide range of information based on the codes, for example, how many of the people from the campaign visited a certain page (ex. this month’s specials) or took a certain action (ex. made a purchase or submitted an inquiry).
Don’t land traffic on a website home page!
- Home pages are jumping off points for everything and the viewer is almost always going to have to search the site for particular offers. Make sure to lead your ad campaign traffic to a page with a clear, compelling offer for best results.
Don’t make your fences too small and restrict your traffic!
- Think about how far people are willing to travel to buy your product or use your service. In many cases, people will travel several miles to buy a product or try a service. However, geofencing campaigns are often set up with very narrow fences and the ads are shown to only a very small percentage of the business’s most likely prospects.
Don’t EVEN think of landing traffic on a page that is not super mobile friendly!
- Geofencing ads are ONLY shown in mobile devices. Mobile users are notoriously quick to abandon pages that are difficult to use. Cater to the audience you are advertising to.
If you’d like to experiment with geofencing to get more people into your store, we can help. Click here to learn how.