As marketers place an increasing value on targeting, the desired targeting window — in time, in geography, in profiling — is shrinking. Precision is the name of the game. Thus, for printers looking to expand their digital marketing capabilities, geofencing is increasingly on the radar.
“Our customers are asking, ‘I want to target potential customers for my business, but I don’t want to send to everyone in my ZIP code. Can I just target the people in that building right there?’” notes Keith Goodman, vice president of corporate sales for Modern Postcard in Carlsbad, California.
Enter geofencing. The technology has been around for a while, but people are more familiar with the concept than the name. You’re walking down the street and — bleep! — an alert comes in promoting Starbucks’ latest seasonal brew. You look up, and behold, you’re standing in front of a Starbucks location.
It’s not magic. Geofencing is pretty much like it sounds — a geographic digital “fence” placed around a customer or prospect based on their location. Once a passersby’s notifications are on, or they have accepted cookies on their mobile device, their mobile phone will be detected within that fence, triggering alerts and offers to be delivered.
While many potential clients are concerned about privacy issues related to geofencing, David Murphy, founder of Phoenix-based Nvent Marketing, explains that because geofencing works based on a device ID, not someone’s name, their identity is protected. “Geofencing recognizes your IP address and the device type, but can’t collect any other information about you,” he explains. “It’s all anonymous, so you don’t have the same privacy issues you have with other digital advertising.”
It Works for Coffee ... and Trade Shows
Most of us are familiar with the retail aspect of geofencing, but marketing applications go much further: customer loyalty programs, competitor “conquesting,” event and conference targeting, and more. For example, a business might promote itself at a trade show, targeting everyone who walks into the convention center with a banner ad inviting them to a demonstration at its booth. Or it might narrow it down even more, serving up ads only when attendees walk by its competitor’s booth.
Geofencing is, in fact, how Modern Postcard launched Modern iO, its direct mail retargeting product, five or six years ago at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As soon as attendees walked into the venue, they were delivered a catchy banner ad with “click here” for walking directions to the company’s booth.
“Two weeks before, we had gone to the venue and identified the location of our booth (latitude and longitude) and applied that as the ‘go-to’ location in Google Maps,” Goodman notes. “This way, when attendees clicked on the ad, it gave them detailed instructions from where they were standing on the show floor directly to our booth.”
The rollout was so effective that it drew the attention of a Google engineer attending the show. “He wanted to know how we hacked the Google Maps program to include our booth location,” Goodman laughs.
Flash Forward to Today
Geofencing is permission-based, and alerts are enabled through a variety of means, including location-based apps, social media platforms, mobile web browsers, push notifications, Bluetooth beacons, and more. Typically, users give permission for such contacts by accepting cookies on their mobile browsers, enabling location tracking, or turning on push notifications within the apps they use.
Most geofencing ads are either static banners or video ads. Common location types include:
- Competitor locations
- Event venues
- Retail stores
- Commercial buildings
- Individual homes
Minneapolis-based Minuteman Press Uptown serves up ads to all of these locations. While it does offer geofencing as a standalone, it more commonly provides geofencing as part of a comprehensive digital services package that also includes print.
“Typically, clients start by coming in for a consult,” explains Matt Gretz, marketing manager for Minuteman Press Uptown. “It might be a new small business just starting out or an established business wanting to have a bigger impact. We discuss how they could add a layer of geofencing to the print marketing they are already doing. If the client comes in looking for geofencing alone, we suggest that they could get a more synergistic effect if they added print.”
What might the print component look like? If someone responds to a geofencing offer, for example, and picks up promotional materials at the advertiser’s retail location. These
materials could contain a QR code that can be scanned long after the geofencing campaign has ended. “After 30 days, that geofence is no longer active, but that QR code will still take them to a landing page,” Gretz says.
For Modern Postcard, the printed piece serves a slightly different function. When it arrives in the mail, it creates the initial interest. Then geofencing serves as the conversion mechanism sometime later. “Many people aren’t ready to act on that interest right away,” Goodman notes. “It might be later, as they are sitting in a bar waiting for a friend, that the ad pops up, and they think, ‘This is the perfect time to act on that.’”
What Technology Is Used in Geofencing?
Geofencing employs a variety of technologies. Which technology is used depends on the campaign goals.
- For example, GPS offers high accuracy outdoors, plus real-time tracking and location updates. It is primarily used in targeted promotions to users when they enter a store, event venue, or other targeted geographic area.
- Wi-Fi is highly effective for indoor environments and offers better performance in urban and densely populated areas.
- Then there are Bluetooth beacons, which offer very accurate location data within a small radius, typically 30 to 100 ft. This technology is commonly used to send personalized offers to customers as they walk by.
Rather than picking a single technology, most geofencing providers use multiple technologies depending on the application. Modern Postcard, for example, uses a combination of “Lat Long” (GPS), beacon, and boundary identification.
Geofencing is a dynamic technology, as well. A customer can send one message within the activation zone (“Don’t forget to visit our merch tent after the show!”), or a different message outside of that zone (“Buy tickets to our next show now!”). This approach is particularly popular with advertisers trying to reach audiences attending events.
Not only can ads be served up at the time of the event but by integrating with other third-party ad platforms, advertisers can remarket to these individuals on the other devices in their homes. “Once they have clicked on an ad, when they come home and their device connects to their Wi-Fi network, those ads can play on those devices, too,” Murphy says. “This includes their iPads, their laptops, and even ad-supported television like Fubo or Amazon Prime.”
The Ethics of Geofencing a Competitor
Competitor conquesting is among the most popular applications for geofencing. Indeed, it is here that printers are most often consumers of their own cooking, so to speak.
“Printers will often geofence the local FedEx Office, for example, or an AlphaGraphics location — big name print locations that everybody knows,” says Murphy, 40% of whose customers are printers. “Once they have reached their competitors’ customers, those ads will continue to follow their customers over time.”
While competitor conquesting is highly popular, such situations can get sticky. Goodman recalls working with a food delivery service that had signed up with a high-end restaurant that did not want the service promoting itself on-site.
“Normally, food delivery services will put a card in your tray when the check is delivered, so you can have your food delivered at home next time,” Goodman explains. “But in this case, the restaurant earned a lot of money from in-restaurant alcohol sales, so they didn’t want to lose that revenue. So we geofenced the restaurant and served up digital ads when patrons left for home instead. It was very, very successful.”
The program was so successful, in fact, that once the restaurant got wind of it, the delivery service had to stop.
What Does Geofencing Cost?
How is geofencing charged? There are a variety of pricing models, including cost per impression (CPI), cost per click (CPC), and flat rate.
At Minuteman Press Uptown, for example, the model is CPC, similar to pay-per-click ads. The client sets the budget. They agree to a per click- through rate, which often ranges from $2 to $10 based on a competitive bidding process for the time and place similar to Google Ads.
“That might seem high at first,” Getz says. “But keep in mind that the person has A: enabled notifications; and B: by clicking through the ad, has initiated an interaction with you. In doing so, they have identified themselves as a strong interest in their business.”
For Minuteman Press’ clients, a typical budget is about $1,000 per month, with each geofence campaign having a 30-day window. Even once that window has closed, the advertiser can continue to serve up ads to respondents for up to 30 days.
Geofencing in Action
Despite its success, geofencing is not always straightforward. Success can often depend on one’s persistence and problem-solving abilities. For example, Minuteman Press Uptown was working with a home builder geofencing its competitors but getting poor results. When visitors walked into a competitor’s location, they were served an ad, and even if they clicked through to their website, the builder had an 80%-90% bounce rate (when a user lands on a page and immediately leaves). Clearly, the strategy wasn’t working.
Minuteman Press Uptown had an idea. “After talking it through, we realized that by the time someone walks into a home builder location, they have already made a decision,” Gretz explains. “They aren’t receptive to the ad at that moment.” So the team suggested geofencing the client’s own worksites. “Whenever there is new construction, people like checking it out, especially if they are looking to have work done themselves,” Gretz explains. “By geofencing their sites, the client tapped into demand at the very time that people were looking for the services they offered. This upped their conversions, and the bounce rate dropped from 90% into the teens.”
Another example came from a client offering products for bridal showers. Their target audience was not people attending the showers, but the vendors offering products and services used in them. So Minuteman Press Uptown only served up ads one hour before the general public arrived and one hour after the expo closed. “This way, the ads reached the vendors rather than the general public,” Gretz says. “This created a much more cost-effective (and efficient) campaign.”
Not for the Faint of Heart
So is geofencing for you? It will be for some commercial print and marketing agencies — but not all. From a technology standpoint, it’s mainstream, with plenty of solutions (including white label solutions) and support, but to be successful, geotargeting must be only one tool in a larger omnichannel and retargeting toolbox.
On its website, for example, Propellant Media, a geofencing and omnichannel marketing solutions provider in Atlanta, offers a wide selection of success stories. All of them reflect a robust omnichannel strategy that includes other digital channels, many of which are unfamiliar to commercial printers. One case study describes the success of one regional senior care living facility that had been doing Google ads, SEO, and television advertising the local communities.
As part of its plan, Propellant Media added geofencing, keyword contextual/ search retargeting and site retargeting using centered on display ads, OTT advertising, and pre-roll video.
To be successful, print and marketing firms must embrace these technologies, as well as a problem- solving mindset that goes beyond merely deploying technology. When things don’t go as planned, are they able to diagnose the underlying issues (be they technological limitations, user behavior, or competitive dynamics) and devise actionable solutions?
For some, the answer is “yes.” For these, geotargeting offers an irresistible challenge and a perfect complement to their other digital and omnichannel marketing services. For others, however, the link to geofencing might be as consumers of its benefits rather than providers. Either way, geofencing is here to stay.
