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Google Ads, Facebook, and other traditional digital marketing platforms do a good job finding ad space, but how curated is the audience that views your ads? What if there was a technology that would promote ads to people interested in shopping at hardware stores, or a technology that could place ads to people who have been to a competitor’s store? Let’s take a step back and create a geofencing strategy coordinated specifically for your hardware business.

What Does Geofencing Do?

Geofencing is a way to create geographic boundaries virtually using Google Maps satellite imaging. People who go into these geofenced areas will begin to see ads that you specifically placed there for them. With geofencing, you can mark areas where you think your potential customers would be. That could be different stores, neighborhoods, or even individual houses. But the ads don’t just stay within the boundaries. The technology captures a user’s device ID and shows them ads for up to a year. The only requirement is that they keep location services running on their device, which around 90% of people do. Then, when the user connects to another network, other devices connected to the same network will begin receiving your ads. Seems like a very useful strategy, right? Now let’s talk about where it can help with hardware stores.

Residential Renovations

Many people who come into hardware stores are DIY builders working on projects in their own homes. When geofencing, you want to mark areas with a high concentration of people who need your products. A great way to do that is to target older neighborhoods because houses that have been up for decades are more than likely needing repairs. Use Google Maps to look at communities in your area and find homes that look older and possibly need some renovations. Since these home improvement projects would be on their minds, your ads could bring more customers into your stores.

Using Your Competitors to Your Advantage

Have you ever thought of competitors as a potential resource? A great way to set up geofencing to bring in more customers is by geofencing your competitors. If you were to geofence stores like Lowe’s or Home Depot, this would send the customers ads after visiting their locations. This could be used to promote deals that are going on within your stores. For example, if you’re running deals for power tools, you could geofence the areas in a Lowe’s that sells wood for DIY projects. Customers in need of lumber also need power tools to do their own renovations, so promoting power tools to them is a perfect opportunity. Since geofencing places ads to the customers for up to a year, they would have time to view your ads if they headed back home. Geofencing can also track conversion zones, which tracks the number of customers in your stores that saw your ads from a geofenced location.

Setting Up a Geofence for Gardening Season

We’ve covered what geofencing can do for you all year round, but what about during those peak seasons? During the spring, people are beginning to delve into gardening, so you will want to be selling more gardening tools and supplies. Once again, you can geofence your competitor’s sections for gardening supplies and outdoor areas, but you can also geofence plant nurseries or any other store that is dedicated to selling gardening supplies. This will mark any devices entering these areas and send them your ads for gardening supplies for the entire season. This is just one of the many examples of how geofencing can be utilized.

One of the hardest things to do in advertising is getting your ads in front of the right people at the right time, and that is exactly what geofencing does. Finding ways to get to the people who may have an interest in your products, or even competitor’s customers, has never been easier with this technology. Geofencing has been an excellent tool for many companies so far, so let’s see what it can do for you.

Are you looking to dive into the world of geofence marketing? Our dedicated team at Titan Digital can assist you in all your digital marketing needs. Contact our office to get started on building your custom geofence.