What’s This GeoFencing Thing People Are Talking About?

What’s This GeoFencing Thing People Are Talking About?

by | Aug 9, 2017 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

GeoFencing is a term that I have used regularly and repeatedly for the past 3 years and apparently others in the advertising and marketing world have too.

But it has caused a ton of confusion because some people who are selling this service don’t understand how it works, what it does and so today I’m here to set the record straight.

Save this article or podcast as a reference so when someone tries to sell you GeoFencing, you know if they as much or more than they do.

Here’s a modern day explanation of GeoFencing:

GeoFencing is drawing a border or fence around a location that is then used to identify potential customers because they stepped inside the GeoFence. 

Here’s how I offer GeoFencing as a digital marketing tool:

Along with the radio options I offer with WOWO Radio to invite potential customers to your business, I also have a number of online options I offer through the Federated Digital Solutions division of our company.

Custom Audience Targeting has been proven to be one of the most highly effective online options. We use Custom Audience Targeting to determine who to serve online digital banner ads to.  Depending on the business, we will use a combination of the following 4 tools to find the right people.

  1. Site Retargeting. This is serving ads to people who have visited your website.  We know that they are potential customers because they have visited your website and we want to keep you Top Of Mind after they leave, because a majority of first time visitors don’t buy on the first visit.
  2. Search Targeting.  These people are qualified because they did an internet search for you or the products or services you offer.  Search Targeting is an exclusive offered by our vendor partner for Digital Display Banner ads.  Keywords are an important criteria in finding the right people using this tool.
  3. Contexual Targeting. Also called Content Based Targeting.  Potential customers are identified because of their browsing habits.  The content someone reads online in an article or email has keywords and phrases that match the words and phrases for my advertising partner.
  4. GeoFence Targeting. When someone enters a certain geographic zone, border or fence, they are qualified to receive your ads.

I don’t sell these four tools separately.  We offer them as a complete solution, a Custom Audience Targeting solution to find the right people to serve ads to for your business to drive them to your website.

Here’s why we do it this way:

Each business is different and there is no “one size fits all” formula for using these 4 tools.

A business has to have enough organic traffic that it makes sense to allocate enough ads to the site retargeting tool and at the beginning of a campaign, many businesses don’t have enough.

That’s why the other 3 tools are also used.  Or at least 2 of the tools are also used.

See, GeoFencing isn’t appropriate for all business either.  Why?

Some business don’t have a physical location that their customers come to.  A plumber for example.  When you need a plumber, you don’t go visiting plumbers and ask them to follow you home.  You call them and usually you have no idea where their shop or office is.

I do have a couple of examples of some really cool GeoFencing campaigns that were highly effective.  One is a doctor who GeoFenced other doctors.  My doctor has a different business model and the offices we GeoFenced were using the traditional business model.  We were able to track new patients that came to my doctor after visiting the GeoFenced doctors.

Pretty cool, right?

How does your phone identify you as someone who qualifies to see these ads?

Simple answer: Location Services.

This is built into all of our smartphones and most of the apps on our phone use it.

Your phone’s technology is telling others where you are.

When you (your phone) goes certain places, you are being tracked.

Who is tracking you?

 

Facebook for one. Google for another.  Any app that relies on knowing where you are to provide you with important information.

I just took a quick check of the apps on my android smartphone and some of the apps that are tracking me include:

  1. My camera
  2. Chrome web browser
  3. My Contacts
  4. Emergency Alerts
  5. Facebook
  6. my bank app
  7. all things Google
  8. my hair cutting app
  9. Xfinity Hotspots app
  10. iHeart Radio app
  11. LinkedIn app
  12. Google Maps (duh)
  13. Facebook Messenger app
  14. My car insurance app
  15. Panera app
  16. Starbucks app
  17. Google Photos
  18. Redbox app
  19. Regal Cinema app
  20. the Weather Channel app
  21. Twitter
  22. Instagram
  23. YouTube
  24. Yelp
  25. a couple of local news apps
  26. a couple of national news apps

Turns out that nearly every app on my phone is tracking me.  And the same is true for you.

The Location Services app built into your phone that communicates with the GPS systems that allows your phone and the apps to know where you are so your phone and the apps can tell you where the closest Starbucks or Panera is located without you having to know where exactly you are.

This location service also is important when there is bad weather heading our way to alert us, or if we are using our phone’s navigation service to guide us down the road. When you post on social media and it asks you if you want to include your location, that’s all possible due to this same technology.

 

GeoFencing by itself is not a marketing solution.  But it is a marketing tool that when used properly can be pretty powerful at finding the right people to target your online ads to.

Before wrapping this up, I’m going to clear up a couple more misconceptions about GeoFencing and the rest of this Custom Audience Targeting that I offer.

  1. Everyone that walks into your GeoFence is not necessarily going to start receiving your ads. You are buying a certain quantity of ad impressions and there are usually going to be more people who enter your GeoFence than you have bought ads for.  I can show you the formula we use that estimates the number of people you will reach with your ads.
  2. The ads don’t just pop up all over your phone instantly.  That would be annoying.  However there are plenty of apps that are advertising supported along with websites that have space for ads and that’s where your ads show up.
  3. There is a Huge Difference in the methods and capabilities of both the companies and the sales people that offer digital advertising campaigns.  I have seen the programs offered by local Fort Wayne radio stations, the “phone book companies (Dex & Hibu) and independent digital advertising agencies, even some long standing traditional ad agencies and through thorough research and verification by myself and other experts, in nearly every case, no one was able to provide a better service than what I have with the Custom Audience Targeting Digital Ad Solution with Federated Digital.

That’s enough for now, want to know more and see if this is appropriate for your company?  Reach out to me and let’s talk.

 

 

Facebook Passwords and Other Nonsense

Facebook Passwords and Other Nonsense

by | Mar 28, 2012 | ScLoHo's Web World

Recently the mainstream news broke the story that some employers are asking prospective employees for their Facebook passwords.

This is:

  1. Stupid
  2. Illegal
  3. Unnecessary

A couple of friends have shared their thoughts on this matter, including Kevin Mullett and Anthony Juliano.

Kevin and Anthony cover points 1 and 2.

My friend John Potter from the Radio Advertising Bureau talks about my 3rd point:

Don’t Do Anything Dumb

My wife told our teenagers a couple dozen do’s and don’ts every time they left the house. “Don’t speed.” “No more than one other person in the car.” “If a party has drugs or alcohol, immediately leave.” And on and on. I could never remember to tell them all those things. I told them only one thing: “Don’t do anything dumb.” And fortunately for our kids, it worked.

The 2012 annual technology market survey conducted by Eurocom Worldwide and its associated agencies was released this week. It shows one in five tech firms rejected a job applicant because of social media. People, and young people in particular according to the survey, sabotage themselves with stupid, incriminating content. This content, once digitized and placed on the web, may be there to haunt the person for years and decades into the future.

It is not just employers checking out applicants’ social media pages. Prospects are checking out salespeople before granting an appointment. Don’t do anything dumb.

Source: John Potter, VP/Training, RAB

Facebook Passwords and Other Nonsense

Measuring What Matters – Part 2

by | Mar 2, 2012 | ScLoHo's Web World

In the second of this two part series, I will share with you the absolute, definitive truth about your website and other online activity.

You need to know what matters before you can judge the efforts that you are putting into your online efforts.

There are plenty of measurement tools but unless you have a reason or purpose, you don’t really know what to measure.

When I work with businesses who want to create a strong online presence, I need to know what they want the result to look like when we are done.

I’m not talking about the colors or layout of their website, I want to know what success looks like.

And success from a business standpoint is usually measured in dollars.

So we need to figure out how to connect the dots from what they are doing online to their bank account.

If we both do a good job, then their bank account grows, but there are several metrics along that sales path that we can examine and measure along the way.

How about a personal online presence?

Again, I raise the question, what do you want to do?

Connect with the friends you already have, meet new ones, find a new job, find employees?

I’ve used it for all of the above.

But that doesn’t matter.

What matters is what ever is important to you.

There is a way to measure all this digital media activity, but you have to know what, and why before you can judge the who, where, when and how.

Need help?

 

Contact me.

3-2-12 Ft. Wayne Site of the Day

3-2-12 Ft. Wayne Site of the Day

by | Mar 2, 2012 | ScLoHo's Fort Wayne

Today I was able to combine to criteria into one update.

All week I have been featuring Fort Wayne based websites from folks who signed up to attend this weeks Social Media Breakfast.

And for the past few weeks I have been featuring Fort Wayne based websites created by my coworkers at Cirrus ABS.

Today’s site does both.

Click on Pic below:

Facebook Passwords and Other Nonsense

Power to the People

by | Feb 29, 2012 | ScLoHo's Web World

Had a bad experience? Tell anyone who will listen about it.

Had a wonderful experience? Tell a few close friends about it.

This is nothing new.

This was our nature before the internet.

“Consumers will tell others about their customer service experiences, both good and bad, with the bad news reaching more ears. Americans say they tell an average of nine people about good experiences, and nearly twice as many (16 people) about poor ones – making every individual service interaction important for businesses.”  Source: RetailCustomerExperience.com August 2011.

Because of my activity online, I write words of praise and also share words of shame that sometimes results in action from the offending companies and thank yous from those that I’ve recommended.

I chronicled my experience with Arby’s not getting the price right and followed up with how they fixed the problem.

I shared the crazy JCPenney email opt out policy.

I wrote about Idiotic QR Coding being paid for by our tax dollars.

But you don’t need your own website to spread the word.

Seth Godin wrote about what the internet has done to increase this word of mouth over the years.

I call it giving Power to the People via social media and a few related websites.

Many people use their Facebook pages, others use Twitter and FourSquare.

I recently wrote a couple of reviews on Trip Advisor.

The 1st one was a glowing review of a hotel I stayed at in Michigan.

The next one though was a warning:

“The Worst Rip-off since……”
1 of 5 stars Reviewed February 16, 2012

Fortunately, the owner of our company paid for this experience. If this is what Orlando was famous for before Disney, Orlando would be a ghost town. The hokey show, the overpriced food, the limited selection of food and what ever you do, don’t buy the special drink tickets. You’ll get watered down koolaid.

Spoiler alert: The Princess dies.
This made a little girl in the audience burst into tears even though she comes back to life at the end.

Speaking of the end, it was really weird when after the show the horses were set loose and were licking each others backsides.

We had more fun making fun of it afterwards than sitting thru the gruesome 90 minute show.

Visited February 2012
Trip Advisor sent me a note that my review has been seen 416 times in the first 7 days after I wrote the review.
The web is your world.  Use it wisely.