With so many events held in Volusia County each year, how best to leverage those events in support of your business should be top of mind. One resource to consider: Geofencing.

Geofencing is a tactic used by businesses and events to target advertisements at a consumer based on their physical location. The location can range from a single address, commercial building or neighborhood. Geofencing an event is a great way for a business to target large groups of people with similar intent.

How could businesses use Geofencing to target an event?

Let’s take a look at two examples. Recently many local hospitals have been hosting job fairs to fill positions. We can make some assumptions about the people who attend a job fair:

1. They are proactively looking for a job
2. They are looking for a job at a hospital or in the medical field
3. We know the area where they are looking for work

Knowing this information provides digital advertisers with the capacity to target those attendees based on attending the job fair. An example of this could be an online job board targeting those specific attendees with display and video ads related to medical positions and opportunities.

A second example involves an event that took place recently in Daytona Beach – Welcome to Rockville. This event was estimated to attract ~40,000 daily attendees. Again we can make some assumptions about the event and attendees.

1. Attendees enjoy concerts and social events
2. Attendees may enjoy drinking
3. Attendees may have discretionary income

Knowing this information, multiple small and medium businesses could target this event. One example would be a large brand, such as an alcohol company or an event ticketing company. Smaller businesses might be local criminal defense law firms marketing DUI services.

Is Geofencing a good marketing channel for small businesses?

As with most good questions, it depends. In this instance, it depends on the business and marketing campaign objective. There are lots of small businesses that could certainly increase brand awareness in the area with a well-crafted, targeted, location-based marketing strategy.

Examples of small businesses using location-based targeting:

• A marketing firm geofencing local chamber of commerce
• A personal injury firm targeting auto repair shops
• A pet grooming company targeting the homes of pet owners

Can you track conversions with a geofencing campaign?

Yes, a good geofencing campaign can provide traditional conversion tracking with a pixel on a website and also offers an additional conversion tracking method. You are able to geotarget the location where a conversion location takes place. This way you can use the customer’s physical location to measure the success of a campaign and conversion. For example, if your campaign is medical recruitment, you could measure a conversion based on a candidate showing up for the job interview. No website pixel is required.

What is the goal of a geofencing campaign?

All marketing campaigns largely fall into two categories – ROI and Awareness. Geofencing does a wonderfully efficient job of building awareness for brands. It can assist ROI campaigns such as paid search campaigns since geo-campaigns keep your brand top of mind.