Many companies use geofencing to scale their businesses. If you wonder how it works, we will teach you all you need to know. In this guide, we’ll also show you how to use the service to promote your business.
What Is Geofencing?
Geofencing is a location-based tool. It uses GPS, Wi-Fi, cellular data, or RFID-enabled apps to trigger a preset command. The service prompts users to use their mobile devices or RFID tags when they enter a geofenced area.
What Is a Geofence?
A geofence is a virtual perimeter set up around a physical location. It does not need visible structures, such as network masts, dishes, or satellites to work. You only need to link it to a network connection – Wi-Fi, GPS, and so on.
Users may receive prompts, push notifications, or text messages on their devices when they are within a bounded region. Often, they will need to take a specific action.
In some cases, geofences are set up to track movement and activity within specific areas. This makes it possible for management to know when anyone enters or leaves the region.
Geofencing applies to mobile phone users. However, it also works on other devices, such as tablets and PCs.
How Does Geofencing Work?
Geofencing requires the use of GPS or RFID-enabled applications to set up a virtual perimeter within a physical location. After that, you can share your apps with customers who use your services.
Also, you have to enablethe location service to access geofencing on their phones. Alternatively, you may use Wi-Fi, mobile data, or Bluetooth to establish the connection, depending on what you intend to achieve with the service.
Geofences work for iOS and Android devices. Moreover, users do not have to download any extra application to make it work other than the retailer’s app.
Can I Use Geofencing for My Business?
Companies use geofencing for various business operations, such as monitoring employees in the field, automating time cards, and keeping track of company property.
Also, businesses use geofencing for their marketing and social media campaigns. There are other geofencing use cases for businesses, and we will explore them in this article.
How Can I Use Geofencing Technology for My Business?
You can apply geofencing to beat the competition within your industry. These strategies will help you scale your business:
1. Social Networking
Businesses use social media to create a personal, exciting experience for consumers. Incorporating geofencing makes it more fun for users. When customers enter a geofenced area, your app can prompt them to check-in, take a photo, or chat with other consumers within reach.
The moment they leave the area; the app may also prompt them to leave a review or perform other actions. Many social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, support geofencing. As such, you can easily create a personalized, thrilling user experience for your customers.
2. Marketing and Advertising
Businesses can use geofencing to offer special incentives to consumers within an area. Many retailers also use the service to draw away customers from competitors. They do this by offering better deals, lesser prices, and coupon codes when they are in a geofenced section.
It can also make advertising better. Business owners can use it to target a specific area to promote their services. An article on WebFX showed that it could be helpful to use geofencing with Facebook ads to have a greater reach.
Geofencing simplifies how to target consumers from different walks of life and age groups. This can include college students, participants in trade shows, families planning to go shopping, and more.
Moreover, studies reveal that geofencing alerts are useful for marketing and advertising. According to a 2018 geofencing survey, 53% of consumers acted on geofencing alerts that offered a special discount. The same report showed that another 67% claim that mobile alerts are most often useful.
3. Workplace and Employee Monitoring
Employee trackingis a big deal nowadays, especially if you are managing a remote team. This is also the reason why monitoring apps with GPS tracking are popular. With geofencing, you can track when an employee arrives at the workplace and when they leave.
Set up a geofence within the work environment’s perimeter. You can also use apps to prompt employees to clock in from their mobile phones whenever they are within the premises. The tool should also trigger an alert to clock out when they are leaving for their homes.
Using geofencing is helpful for employers who want to check how devoted their employees are to the company. It also makes it easier to calculate workers’ pay without anyone feeling cheated.
However, there’s a more ethical way of monitoring employees at the workplace. Moreover, it is instrumental if you are managing a remote team. You won’t have to step on your employees’ privacy just to track their activities while working from home.
Using time management apps is becoming more popular for keeping tabs on your remote employees’ work progress. For instance, Traqq is a time-tracking software that helps managers know exactly how their employees work.
The following features on Traqq make it easy to watch your employees:
- Mouse and keyboard tracking
- App and website monitoring, which helps to know the websites and applications your employees spend more time using
- Secure screen sharing with screenshots
- Automatic reports generation, to have a complete overview of your employees’ work behavior for the day
- Automatic invoice generation from the app and lots more
On a Final Note
Using geofencing technology alongside other business strategies can help you succeed in your business. We hope that this article helps to answer your questions about geofencing.
