Have you heard of Geofencing? Most probably you have, you may even have experienced it already but some of you might still be wondering about what it is and how it works. Moreover, those of you that own businesses might even be interested to know how it can benefit your business. So, here is the good news! Geofencing can help your business tremendously and I will share those benefits with you shortly but, first, the basics.
Geofencing is the name for defining a virtual fence around a specific geographic area on the map. Once you have the mobile app developed for your business with Geofencing, you will ask your clients to download it. As your customers download your app on their phones or tablets and enter the predefined Geofenced area, they will receive a push notification triggered by Geofencing. This push notice can include a link to your location on the mobile app, google map for directions, or to a specific landing page related to your marketing campaign, etc.
Geofencing offers variety of promotional applications for small businesses. It is up to you how creative you want to become with it and how you deploy it to make it serve you to your advantage. One of the many creative ways to use Geofencing can be one that does not require the Geofencing to be centered on your location. For example, if you own a pizzeria, and like to trigger a push-message to your fans or subscribers when they leave a certain night club or a bar, you can!
Let me share one example for each of the three following niches briefly to help you see how Geofencing can greatly benefit your business:
Business type 1 – Coffee Shops
A local coffee shop has added new tasty treats to their menu and want to promote them while also getting their customers’ feedback. So, to promote and collect feedback, the coffee shop logs into their admin dashboard of their app and sets the Geofencing notification to invite fans in for a free sample. This way, the coffee shop gets all the feedback on their new treats that they needed and also drive a lot of traffic to sell bunch of their other goodies and coffee!
Business type 2 – Real Estate Agents
Real Estate agents can use the free marketing kit that we provide to market their app to their active potential home buyers. The agents can establish a Geofence around their listings for the dates of their open houses. When one of their potential customers enters the Geofenced area, he or she receives a push notification informing them of the open house and the link to a map to find directions. If the potential buyer is interested in the property he or she will head right over!
Business type 3 – Dry Cleaning Stores
Let’s say that the drycleaner’s clients have already downloaded and installed the app on their phones or tablets. This means that the dry cleaner can now track all of its customers who have the app installed on their phones. The store then creates a half a mile radius around its location with Geofencing. When its clients with their phones enter the Geofenced zone, a push notification shows up on their phones with a reminder to pick up their order. Customers love to be reminded because reminders help them not to forget their clothes at the cleaners and end up losing them forever. And, the dry cleaners’ benefit is that they get to offer a value-added service to their clients without having to use additional manpower.
Geofencing benefits both customers and businesses
Geofencing is not about bombarding customers with messages, no, it’s not! Because, if you do that, the customers will opt out and there will be no benefit of it for either party. However, when done correctly, Geofencing will not only help your business drive more traffic to it, but it will also benefit your customers. Geofencing must only be used to improve and enhance customer experience while delivering value, otherwise, the customer will not keep the app or this feature enabled or worse, may even discontinue doing business with you altogether.
Geofencing can also be used for data gathering about your customers to study and understand their shopping behavior. This type of data can further guide you to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, advertisements, store layout, and much more.
Geofencing is a great feature that is in its infancy phase these days but does have a huge potential in supporting your business growth when used appropriately and wisely. The most important thing to remember for making your Geofencing program a success, put the customer first.
If you would like to learn more about creating your own custom mobile app for your business with Geofencing, its affordability and effectiveness, please click here!
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