Tell me if you’ve come across this scenario before:
We’re having an issue where customers are leaving our lot, and my competitors are calling them knowing exactly what vehicle they looked at here. These are customers that aren’t even in our CRM yet. What gives?
It’s geofencing.
No, my lot isn’t fenced in. It’s open to the public.
It’s geofencing.
Geo what now?
It’s time to get nerdy, so strap in and take notes.
As a digital marketer, Geofencing allows me to create custom segments of traffic from my website to help better service marketing communications. An example of this would be for a local sale – “$500 off for residents of Oshkosh, WI”, for example. With this campaign, I would want to create a campaign for my website (a slide, or maybe an announcement bar), but I only want this message to be shown to users within Oshkosh, WI.
Ok so far? Good, this part gets a bit nerdier.
If I wanted to create a geo-fenced segment, I would first need to use www.google.com/mymaps – this will allow me to determine location boundaries.
Let’s take a look at a map, shall we:
Once I have set my boundaries, the information contained in the map is parsed into geo-coordinates, a series of numbers (lat/long) that determine the shape of a geo-fenced area. Once I add this geo-fenced region to my campaign targeting, I can target any users that visit my website with a location (IP vs GEOCo) within my geo-fenced region.
Key Factors
- Rule-based marketing – this system will allow Ignite users to create campaigns based on location rules. Many dealers are now hands-on when it comes to building campaigns, so a rule-based system will help them personalize messages on their websites.
- IP vs Geo-Coordinates – using both targeting elements allows us to be very flexible in determine user location. IP address is somewhat imprecise, but it doesn’t require users to opt-in to share their location, whereas Geo-Coordinates is very precise and requires a user to opt-in within their browser. Affording this functionality to dealers will be great.
Hopefully that explains what you’re going through. If it was too much to take in at first glance, no worries. Our team has a Nerdtronic 3000 to help you translate. Give us a call, or just wait for our ad about a free $50 gift card to pop up while you’re browsing on your ‘throne’.