Geofencing is a must-have tool for mobile marketers. The ability to target by latitude/longitude in 254 countries is impressive, but sometimes the client gets a little “greedy” and asks us to drill down to .00001 miles from a location. While the mindset is to eliminate waste, this thinking can cause wasted impressions and missed opportunities.
Sometimes buyers have a split personality regarding mobile. On one hand, they see the possibilities of geotargeting smartphones, running video ads, downloading IDs of tagged users that received an impression and a retargeting folder for devices that engaged with the creative. It is exciting and makes billboard, TV, and radio advertising look inefficient-which is true, they are.
On the other hand, buyers have an issue with perceived waste. They want to build a geofence around a store with no leeway, but there are a couple of problems with this. First, people enter and exit the store to go their cars, bus or walk to their next destination. This is an overflow that should be captured. Second, when we drill down to lat/long we are hitting a small target on the planet earth; rather, we would be more comfortable to drill down to .2 miles out. This gives the system room to breathe.
We can set up a campaign for each location and monitor to see if the click rate is within goal projections. If the ID pool was polluted, this would be the first line of defense to indicate there is a problem. As we use our optimization the program (app placement, operating system, etc.), we’re making the campaign efficient; this acts as a filter to weed out any underperforming impressions.
We capture impression IDs and the IDs that have engaged with the creative. The impression ideas will then be filtered by additional mobile campaigns: retargeting IDs will come in between 2x and 16x and have already passed the first test by engaging with the creative.
When Copley Advertising reviews the program, clients ask how many locations they can geofence. One… three? 40. I like to start with 40 because I need data. The more data we have, the quicker we can optimize and build ID folders. This way, when during the first week, we find four or five locations getting lower than a .2%, we pull those locations and stop delivering impressions and ask for five more locations to take their place. Over time, we like to get down to about 15 locations that are doing very well, fully optimized, with a large impression ID pool and a retargeting campaign ready-to-go. Now that is fun.
“Copley Advertising is first and foremost a resource. I want every company or agency to know that they can call Copley Advertising and we will break down exactly how we create and implement a mobile marketing program. If they become a client, that is secondary.” says John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising.
So, remember what I said: go with a geofence with a radius of .2 miles and rest assured that when it comes to data, less is more because its geofencing, not geo-strangulation!
