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We live in a global economy, where products and services reach us from across the world. But in many cases, the most effective ads are all about zooming in to precise locations. Geofencing is one of the most effective ways to reach buyers in a specific location at the exact moment they’re primed to engage.
With geofencing, you capture your customer in the context where they’re primed to engage with what you have to offer. Read on to learn how it works and get inspired with geofencing examples for B2B marketing success.
Geofencing is a location-based technology that uses GPS, Wi-Fi, or cellular signals to define a virtual boundary (fence) around a physical area. When a device crosses this boundary (either entering or leaving), the geofence activates a specific predefined action.
Geofencing use cases can include broad business applications, such as logistics alerts and site monitoring. It’s also ideal for targeted B2B marketing strategies.
Common geofencing examples:
In B2B marketing, geofencing empowers you to target the right buyers based on where they go, not just who you already know. Unlike a pre-built list or traditional ad campaign, you can guarantee context based on your target criteria.
First, you define the geographic area you want to target. It might be as broad as an entire region or as narrow as a specific building. Envision a pin on a map with a defined radius around it—that’s your geofence.
As mobile users enter your geofenced area, ad platforms instantly match their device IDs and deliver relevant display, video, or native ads. Your ads show up on mobile-optimized sites and apps as long as people are within the geofence. You can even deliver ads when people leave the radius of your geofence.
Conference and trade shows are classic geotargeting examples for B2B marketers looking to reach high-intent audiences in real time. By placing a geofence around an event location, you can serve ads to high-intent buyers while they’re actively engaging with industry content or shopping behavior.
Use programmatic ads to drive booth traffic and entice visitors away from competing booths while they’re in the venue—a more effective strategy than passively waiting for visitors to find you. You can also use geofencing to support post-event follow-ups. Set the radius for your geofence to encompass nearby hotels and airports to reinforce brand awareness as attendees leave the area.
>>Read: How to use geofencing to maximize conference and event attendance
Like trade shows, events and concerts attract highly-motivated niche audiences. Attendees typically share common traits, interests, or roles that can make them strong potential customers. It’s an ideal occasion to get on people's radar without having a physical presence at the event.
Example geofencing use case: a small-batch cannery could target regional farmers markets, raising awareness of their custom-canning services for local produce growers.
These geofencing opportunities also support recruitment, partner marketing, and competitor targeting efforts. At a hiring event, for example, you could push an alert for a specific job listing to attract top talent away from the competition. At a music festival, you could push a promotion for a between-set energy drink from a partner brand on the concert grounds.
B2B marketers have to break through a lot of noise to get buyers’ attention. Decision-makers are constantly juggling priorities. That’s why convention centers and hotels are powerful geo-targeting examples: buyers shift into strategic, big-picture mode.
The beauty of geofencing in these locations is that you don’t have to be physically present to make an impact at a conference. Establish a digital footprint with location-specific and industry-relevant ads on attendees’ mobile devices. Plus, you can use retargeting later to reinforce your brand presence with people who engaged.
Hotels offer a unique geofencing use case: targeted programmatic connected TV (CTV) advertising. Go bigger than the mobile screen and reach buyers when they’re unwinding with a show. To make the most impact, follow best practices for geotargeting in CTV advertising for programmatic: precisely define your audience, target precise areas, and customize ads with location-specific content.
Geofencing isn’t limited to one-time events and store locations. You can place a geofence around convention centers, industry hubs, and other high-intent locations to reach B2B buyers while they’re in a business mindset. Imagine a city breaks ground on a new sports arena. That’s a perfect location for construction supply and logistics companies to target with geofencing campaigns during the multi-year build.
That said, you shouldn’t target just any location with high population density. Geofencing best practices are about understanding context. The visitors to the location should share relevant characteristics. Case in point: say you offer business operations software. You could focus geofencing campaigns around industry hubs that decision-makers in your target industries frequent in their daily routines.
You can also geofence business hubs, industrial parks, and large corporate campuses for precise targeting without relying on contact lists. This geofencing example is most effective for supporting ABM efforts by targeting multiple stakeholders in clustered office environments.
Geofencing marketing examples abound in these locations: marketing software and services, HR platforms and benefits administration, IT support, facilities vendors, operations, and productivity solutions. Your buyers are facing business pain points every day; put your solutions in front of them when and where they’re looking for answers.
Competitor HQs also offer a compelling geofencing use case. Reach people visiting the campus with ads that put your company top of mind—from directly targeting their customers with your competitive value prop to enticing their best talent with recruiting campaigns.
Where else do executives and decision-makers spend a fair bit of time? Traveling through large airports and train stations.
Geofencing high-traffic travel hubs allows you to increase regional awareness, target executives as they enter a relevant space, and broaden enterprise reach—especially for companies selling high-value B2B solutions. You could even align your geofencing campaign with the start or end of a large industry event, catching attendees' attention the moment they hit the ground.
Looking to target a specific account but lacking an employee list? This geofencing use case offers a practical solution for named account targeting. By focusing on company campuses (particularly the headquarters), you can engage entire buying teams based solely on location while staying within privacy guidelines.
Another geofencing example in this area: corporate facilities services. Targeting large corporate campuses is a strategic move for companies that offer vending, janitorial, maintenance, security, catering, and other services crucial for building operations.
Geofencing, ABM, and contextual targeting each capture a different type of buyer signal. Each strategy can be powerful on its own, but using them together enables full-funnel, hyper-targeted campaigns that align physical behavior, digital intent, and account-level activation.
Geofencing targets real-world activities by reaching visitors at high-intent physical locations. You can engage people in the places where they’re most receptive to your message, even with limited pre-existing data.
Contextual targeting captures intent based on the content buyers are consuming online. Your ads are served alongside the most relevant articles, videos, and social posts, reaching prospects as they actively research industry intel and business solutions.
An ABM strategy leverages CRM, marketing automation, and data enrichment to identify high-value accounts and target them with personalized messages. This approach encompasses multi-channel marketing campaigns along with direct sales outreach.
Together, these strategies create full-funnel continuity. ABM traditionally works best for reaching buyers at the middle or bottom of the sales funnel. Filling the top of your funnel is one of the most effective use cases for geofencing and contextual targeting.
When you leverage all three approaches, you create a holistic strategy with a positive feedback loop. The characteristics of your target accounts for ABM provide the characteristics for geofencing and contextual marketing campaigns: your ideal buyers’ interests, locations, travel habits, and business needs. Those top-of-funnel campaigns build brand awareness and trust. As people engage, ABM tactics convert opportunities into pipeline through both account-level activation and contact-level attribution.
The result: a cohesive go-to-market motion that reaches buyers everywhere intent shows up.
Geofencing use cases go beyond individual ad campaigns. You can funnel users who engage with your ad into the sales pipeline by de-anonymizing website visitors. Plus, your geofencing efforts give sales teams valuable insight into buyer intent.
One of the main advantages of geofencing is that you can reach a relevant audience without knowing who they are in advance. No pre-built contact lists required. But once people engage, you can turn them from anonymous users into known contacts, ready to flow into your ABM and sales funnels.
This is most powerful if you use a platform that de-anonymizes website visitors at the contact level, not just the account level. Purchasing decisions are made by individuals, not accounts. Now you can make a human-to-human connection with people who’ve signaled their purchasing intent by engaging with your ads.
Intent data allows sales teams to identify the most promising leads, personalize outreach, and time engagement to optimize conversions. Geofenced ads drive qualified site visits from targeted physical locations. From there, sales knows which event or location drove the visit, enabling more relevant and timely follow-ups.
Geofencing also helps sales prioritize leads based on contact-level intent. A prospect who engages after visiting a high-value location often signals stronger buying intent than a generic inbound form fill. That clarity enables sales teams to focus efforts on the opportunities most likely to close first, shortening sales cycles and improving close rates.
Events and campuses are typically located in heavily trafficked areas, where people who aren’t in your target audience are steps away. Use a smaller radius to:
When targeting travelers or regional traffic, you want a wider radius. This helps you:
More is not always better. Limit your maximum radius to 15 miles or less to:
Website tracking is a vital geofencing best practice. Set up tracking before you launch a geofencing campaign to ensure that:
One of the best practices for bottom-funnel geotargeting is to pair your geofencing with ABM and/or contextual targeting in order to:
Remember, serving up ads isn’t the only geofencing use case. This is an opportunity to coordinate your campaigns with sales efforts to ensure that:
Geofencing is an opportunity to fold real-world behavior into your full-funnel marketing efforts. It’s all about delivering the right message to the right people—in the right place for optimal engagement.
Feeling inspired by these geofencing examples? Start a free Propensity trial or book a personalized demo to see how geofencing can elevate your B2B marketing strategy.
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