Geofencing Unleashed for Small Business Growth

This episode dives deep into the transformative potential of geofencing for small businesses, demonstrating how this location-based technology can effectively target customers in real-time. Listeners will learn about the practical applications, success stories, and the importance of monitoring ROI in their digital marketing efforts.  

• Understanding the concept of geofencing and its applications  
• Examining case studies from local businesses  
• Discussing the importance of ROI and analytics in marketing  
• Exploring the benefits of demographic targeting in ad campaigns  
• Emphasizing ethical considerations in using customer location data  
• Encouraging small business owners to embrace geofencing strategies

Chapters

• 0:27 Geofencing for Business Growth
• 12:53 Benefits of Geofencing for Small Businesses

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hey y'all, I'm so excited about this episode. This is a topic that I have recently learned a lot about. In the last six to eight months, I've helped multiple clients reach targets and customers in areas that they haven't actually been able to get into, and so today I'm going to teach you all about it and how to apply this to your business. And that's right. We're talking about geofencing, and it may have piqued your interest whenever you saw the title of this podcast and you're probably like I've never even heard of geofencing. I have a few clients that have heard about it, and then I have new clients that haven't heard about it, and so just really trying to educate you guys about how you can use geofencing to help with your business, today's question is how would your business change if you could target customers exactly when and where they need you? This is something really cool about geofencing that I've recently learned is we can target such a specific audience on any platform that we want to, as well as any area that we want to, and we don't get told no. The biggest pet peeve of mine when it comes to meta ads is literally the fact that they tell me no so many freaking times, and I don't like being told no, I'm an Enneagram 8, so if you know anything about that, they don't like being told no. We want to have our way. We want to do what we want to do and we want to make sure that we can accomplish our goal. However, we want to accomplish that goal. So meta ads when it first came out, it was really great for businesses because social media was just being like, I guess, started for businesses, and so then they had ads. Come in, you could reach a lot of people and it like for a very small fraction of the cost. You may even see now on your Facebook page it it'll be like oh, boost this post for $20. And you may think $20 is really not that much. It really isn't that much. But how many times do you sit and you hit boost for $20? So if you're doing that over and over and over and it's only going for like a week, at a time that money starts to add up and where's your ROI? Like, what are you seeing in return for that $20 that you just spent on that post? And then how do you read the analytics? So another thing about when you're running online ads you want to make sure that you know how to run analytics and what those analytics mean, because that's how you're going to track your ROI with all of this.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Marketing in general, with ROI is hard because you're like I mean, I'm just out here, I'm trying to put my face out there, I'm trying to put my brand out there. Really, that's what digital marketing is for. We want to put your face and your name and your business and your logo in front of as many people as possible. We want to take those people from that ad, from that social media post, and we want to take them to your website. Once they're to your website, then you can capture their email. You can capture their attention with more services, something that's easy to look at on mobile devices and on desktops. So, any kind of ads that you are doing, if this is a route that you want to take, make sure that you have a landing place for those people.

Speaker 1: 3:27

So when we're talking about geofencing, the definition is a location-based technology that uses GPS, wi-fi, cellular data to create a virtual boundary around a specific geographic area. So technically, you are literally setting up a geofence. So I'm going to use my Coffee Corner client. They are and that's literally their name Coffee Corner. They're a coffee shop here in my town where I live at, and they wanted to be able to increase their online orders as well as drive-thru for people to come through and like, just drive through.

Speaker 1: 4:01

A lot of people think that they have to go inside of their store, and we're trying to change the narrative, we're trying to change their habits. We want people to know that get off the boulevard, you go, you drive through, get back on the boulevard, that you're right there by a light. And so we set up a geofence the first month that I started working with them and this geofence was in a five mile radius. So you're like, well, that's not very big. Well, coffee shops are you really traveling more than five miles to go to a coffee shop? Usually not, and the way, like where they're located, is a very high traffic area. People are going to work, they're coming home, they're coming home to lunch or they're in. It's a town where we literally live in this town and like we leave to go to work, like this is the kind of town it is and so it's a neighborhood community. So we're trying to reach people when they're going to school, when they're going to work, that kind of stuff, and so the first month we only spent a hundred dollars. So a hundred dollars over a 30 period day. This was during the holiday time, and so people were. It was cold and people did not want to get out of their car and go in and get coffee. They saw an increase of 25% when it comes to people that are driving through, as well as their online orders. So when I set up this geofence, I set up a five-mile radius. It was $100 for 30 days. Then, on the actual ad itself, I linked it to the online order, so it was an ad.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I had one ad running that was all about their I think it was like a gingerbread mocha or something like that and it was all about their specials for that like holiday season, because you know us Americans, we love a good holiday seasonal coffee At least I do and so we had this and we're like ooh, that's really delicious looking Like there was a picture of it, people clicked it and it would go to their online ordering, and their online ordering has, like this is where we're located, you can pay and then you just run through. And their online ordering has, like this is where we're located, you can pay and then you just run through and they literally have it within three minutes. I buy coffee there all the time and if you're watching online, you see me have it right here. I picked it up on the way back from dropping my kid off at school and so this is what we saw with their little coffee shop $100, 30 days, all about seasonal coffees, and their online orders went up 25%.

Speaker 1: 6:16

We also educated people that were seeing these ads on the boulevard. We educated them of like, oh hey, hey, y'all, there's a coffee shop right here. Every morning, you're going to pass it right here. Even if they weren't one of the ones in the first 30 days, they at least were touched. The impressions over 30 days, I believe, were around 40,000 people Y'all. That's insane $100 to reach 40,000 people and over 600 clicks on the ad. That means over 600 people went to the website. So when you're thinking of ROI, when it comes to geofencing and this is like your goals and stuff, you want the clicks to be a really high number. We also want the impressions to be a really high number. So the 40,000 people, that is a huge number. That's how many people saw this ad and also super dangerous if you think about it, because I only ran it to where people on their devices, so on their phones or iPads I didn't do it on desktop and so those people are all on their phones while they were driving by within a five-mile radius.

Speaker 1: 7:20

So then you start to ask yourself, because I was kind of curious, like okay, well, if I'm doing these ads, like where the heck are they actually showing up at? Well, they're gonna be showing up on Amazon. They're gonna be showing up on any kind of meta that you have open. They're going to be showing up on a game. So I love to play games on my phone. I have several different types of games and when I'm playing I see like a little ad at the bottom for like a local car dealership and I'm like what the heck? I remember seeing this the first time and I'm like how do they put their ad on my game on my phone? Like do they have a contract with this game or something? Ding, ding, ding. No, they don't. It's called geofencing. So this is the type of ads that your client and your customer are going to see. They're going to be banner ads on their games. They're going to be square ads on Amazon.

Speaker 1: 8:08

Another example I'm going to use is a State Farm agent that I started kind of working on him first because I needed a little bit of practice with all of this, and so we did his during Thanksgiving era era, anyway. So we started doing his during the Thanksgiving time and we did 30 days and we spent $200 and he is in a very small town and within the first 30 days it was like 60,000 people had seen his ads. He got an increase of like 85% on his website and we had that verified from the state farm people on the back end to make sure like all those numbers were correct. And then the number one place that his ad showed up was on Amazon. And do you want to know why? Because of Black Friday. So during Black Friday we're running his ad and it's popping up on people's Amazon pages and I think that's like the coolest thing ever and it's kind of creepy.

Speaker 1: 9:07

So if you're kind of on the fence of like, I mean I don't really like it when I see ads. I mean I don't like it when I see ads either, but like also, if you're a small business owner and you're even slightly interested in this information, then you need to know that this is amazing Like this is something that a tool that you can use forever and almost like no boundaries whatsoever. So let's kind of break it down. When I set up a geofence for a client, like in a campaign, we have our budget, which is obvious. I do the ad creatives, so sometimes I'll do squares, sometimes I'll do banner ads, sometimes I'll run three to four different types of ads just to see, like, what people are clicking, but that's all within the $100 budget. I can also do demographics, so we're going to do male, female, we can do age.

Speaker 1: 9:55

There is an option to do an income, but we don't really want to do income because how they get their information for the like through this software is that it's what people are putting on the internet, and so I'm not putting anywhere on the internet of how much money I make and so I'm putting on the internet like I'm a female, I'm 31 and I live at this location, so the internet knows that information about me, but they don't know how much money I'm actually making every year. So I would steer away. I learned this the hard way. I would steer away from an income-based ad because people it's not gonna be an accurate ad rating, so then we can also if's say, I, okay. So I just talked to a client and or a potential client and he has a software coming out and with this software out he wants to like target customers that are home builders or contractors. So I can set up our geo-fencing to where anybody that walks into a Home Depot or a Anybody that walks into one, walks out of one or is in a one mile radius of a Home Depot or Lowe's, is going to have a geofence ad from his software. That's literally how creepy and how amazing geofencing is.

Speaker 1: 11:14

We can get down to the nitty gritty. I've almost thought about running one just for the heck of it. A state farm agent or any kind of insurance agent that offers pet insurance and be like, okay, anybody going into a pet co in this state, because you know insurance agents are per state. So, like, in this state, anyone that goes into a pet co is going to see this ad for pet insurance. I'm pretty sure it could be really cool. The numbers could be really great and those people would probably get a lot of calls because people love their pets. Right, if you have a pet, you're like I mean now I kind of want pet insurance because it's I mean, it's what we do, right? I have insurance on my kid. I would definitely have insurance on my pet. So these are just a few examples of geofencing and how I use them for my clients. I haven't personally used them for me when it comes to business to business. I haven't figured that part out, so this is still in the works on that end.

Speaker 1: 12:08

I think geofencing is going to be more for the small businesses or service-based businesses that are reaching out to the everyday person, to homeowners, to people that need their car washed, to people that need window tinting or people that need their car washed, to people that need window tinting or people that need insurance.

Speaker 1: 12:25

Like if your customer base is somebody that's just like an everyday joe off the street, I would say geofencing is going to be the the best way for you to spend your ad dollars and when I say ad dollars, that means if you're doing google ads, if you're doing meta ads, I would would take a minute, 30 to 60 to 90 days and run your geofencing ads and see what the difference is in those analytics, going both ways, and I think you're going to see a really big difference on your website traffic.

Speaker 1: 12:54

You'll see a big difference on your phone and the inquiries that you get from those ads. So I just challenge you that if geofencing kind of seems a little bit out there or something that you're not comfortable with, just reach out to me. I would love to walk you through the process and I think that it's something that you would really benefit from if you are a small business. Again, reaching out to the everyday person in a fixed location, we can do all over America. You can do the state, you can do your city, anything like that. So I hope you learned a lot about geofencing. It's a really fun subject for me to discuss and it's something that I thought was a lot bigger than what it really is. And once you get down to the nitty-gritty, you're like oh, this is actually super rad and I love it because I see so many better influences than, or so many better results than, the other ad options out there through digital marketing. So thanks so much for tuning in and I will catch you on the next episode.