Break into the customer journey with geofence targeting

As digital marketing continues to advance, it becomes more crucial than ever to cater to your prospects throughout the customer journey. But it can be hard enough to implement the right digital strategy to reach your target audience, let alone an individual prospect with his or her own unique actions and experiences.

One way to break into the customer journey and reach individual prospects is through Geofence Targeting. This strategy allows your dealership to advertise directly to specific customers at a crucial time – when they are visiting a location other than your dealership that indicates they have likely interest in the boats that your dealership sells.

Geofence Targeting tools make it possible for dealers to target people who enter a predesignated geographical area. Imagine geofencing entire local neighborhoods that are near a lake or the most popular swimwear shop in town. An even more strategic geofence location would be your local competing dealership. Using the GPS tracking enabled on mobile phones, Geofence Targeting allows you to serve advertisements for your dealership as soon as people enter the geofenced area that you have chosen. These ads could include special offers, price comparisons, information about your newest units, or anything else you choose. The goal is to reach the people in that location and entice them to visit your dealership – especially if that means leaving the current competing dealership where they see your ad.

The best way to capture a prospect’s attention is to send them the right message at the right time. Let’s say that you choose to geofence a local event center during the dates of a boat show. Show attendees are in the perfect frame of mind as they stroll the event, moving from booth to booth and checking out all the boats on display. Let’s say that a prospect checks his phone and an ad pops up for your dealership with a specific message tailored for someone just like him – maybe promoting a great deal on a boat that is brand-new in stock. Your ad is much more likely to resonate with this prospect because of the location he is in when he sees your ad.

The goal is to entice that prospect to visit your dealership as a result of your ad, and ideally make a purchase. It doesn’t need to happen right away, and with a purchase as large as a new boat it would be unrealistic to expect an immediate conversion. With some Geofence Targeting providers, you can continue to target people who have visited your geofenced location for up to thirty days post-visit – giving them plenty of time to consider the purchase and make the decision to follow through.

A high-ticket item like a boat typically requires a long customer journey with many steps. Before a prospect enters a geofenced location like a boat show or competing dealership, they have likely done some research and given some thought to the purchase. Reaching the prospect with an ad at this point is powerful, but there is still plenty of potential to continue reaching the customer after their visit. Keeping your brand at top of mind and reminding them about that purchase is an incredibly valuable advertising ability.

The list of possible Geofenced locations is only as limited as your imagination. Your competitor’s dealership and a local boat show are certainly great options, but so are local marine lifestyle shops, racing and fishing tournaments, entire neighborhoods, individual home addresses of people who have submitted a lead online – anything you can think of.

Geofence Targeting provides strong focus for a dealership’s digital marketing efforts and helps to efficiently reach customers. But it’s not just about reaching customers – Geofencing Targeting is all about reaching the right customers with the right advertising message.

Lauren Labunsky is the public relations manager for Dealer Spike, a company that provides innovative websites as well as a suite of powerful online advertising solutions that help marine dealers help increase sales and service profitability. For more information, visit www.DealerSpikeMarine.com or call 800-288-5917.