If you're like most people you probably carry your phone on you all day right? Well chances are that you also keep your location on on your phone. Did you know that if you use Google Chrome or the android operating system then your location can be shared with different apps?
While some people may find this a little creepy, as a business it’s a very useful tool to drive customers into your store. In this blog I’m going to share with you how to use Geo fencing to Target customers to visit your store.
So what is Geo fencing?
Geo fencing in this article will refer to the use of location to define who you want to send PPC ads to. Have you ever visited a store and saw an ad for that same store later that day? If you did you’ve probably seen a Geo targeted ad. Businesses can use this feature in Google ad words and Facebook to show ads to people within one mile of a specific location.
This could be very powerful because it can allow you to combine the location data with any other data that you may have about that person if they visited your website. Now to get that information you’ll need to refer to your pixel, however for this discussion let’s just assume that you have set up a custom audience within Google Ad words using Google analytics or Google Tag Manager.
Once you have a defined audience, you can show them PPC ads. Imagine showing ads to people after they visit your store to remind them about an upcoming sale. Or what if you could show them an ad to remind them to set their next appointment after they leave your office? Your ads can be a source of driving new business or getting continued sales from existing customers.
So now that you have an understanding of what Geo fencing is let’s start to review the different ways you can use it in order to grow your business.
Show dynamic ads to people
A dynamic ad is a series of ads that change up to a deadline. Dynamic ads can be used in order to make a customer aware of a deadline or to improve an offer (10%/20%/50% off). If you have a three-day sale, or some promotion ends on a certain date then dynamic ads can be very powerful. Essentially what you do is load and ad for each day before the deadline period
As a customer, you may see an ad that shows you a special offer with a deadline and each day the deadline gets closer. This plays on the human psychology of scarcity and it helps us to take action.
This tactic can be very powerful if you are running a seminar, if you are a car dealership who has a special sale, if you make a special offer to customers to have them returned into the store within a certain amount of time, and many other ways. You can run dynamic ads on Google ad words and on Facebook at.
Show special offers to visitors
This tactic is an extension of the first point, but because it can be customized to so many different situations I wanted to make it a separate section. Getting an existing customer to buy again can be up to seven times cheaper than getting a new customer.
Since this is been shown to be true overtime regardless of industry, you should focus on getting repeat buyers. This could be a special offer that gives them 50% off their next purchase above $50 before a certain deadline or it could be something like reminding them to leave you a review.
This is a great idea for customers who leave your Store within a certain amount of time. If you look at the amount of time spent in the store and only show ads to people who spend less than say 20 minutes in the store then you may be able to get sales because chances are that person did not find what they wanted and left. However, just because they left doesn’t necessarily mean that they made a purchase. So, you could show an ad to them.
There’s another step though..
..if you have a pixel from Google Analytics or Facebook on your website. If your pixel is set up properly then you should be generating custom audiences based on the visitors to your website. A more advanced custom audience could be based on specific products, services, or pages including the cart. If this is the case then you can take that information and show a visitor to your store a specific ad based on the page that they visited on your website. This could be very powerful for a car dealership, a restaurant looking to set future reservations or a retail store.
Show ads to competitors
To build a geo-fence you just need the latitude and longitude of a location. This means that you could target smartphone users who were at specific locations, such as your competitors.
How would you like to show ads to people who visited your competitor’s store?
Now you can!
Using a geo-fence ad campaign you can target your ideal buyer who visits your competitors locations.
This can be powerful for coffee shops, restaurants, car dealerships and more. It wouldn’t be as effective for service-based businesses that visit their clients at their home.
As you can see, there are boundless opportunities to implement geo-fencing into your business development or marketing campaigns. To do so you’ll want to work with an experienced PPC team who can guide you on the essentials including:
If you’d like to speak with a member of our team about helping build your PPC Geo-Fencing campaign please click here.