What is Geofencing in Real Estate? The Ultimate Guide for Agents

Chances are you have heard of geofarming and geo locations for real estate marketing. The technology allows you to cater your advertisements to specific locations. Geofencing in Real Estate, this technology is a great way to focus marketing efforts and ensure your digital ads are getting in front of the right audience for lead generation.  

Geofencing takes targeted ads based on location to another level making it a great tool for real estate agents. Let’s take a look at geofencing and how it can help grow your real estate business.  

Introduction to Geofencing in Real Estate 

While community involvement, direct mailers, and paid advertisements are great for attracting new leads, it’s undeniable that digital marketing is integral to the success of a real estate agent. You likely already have a real estate website, social media pages, and maybe some paid digital ads as part of your marketing strategy, but how do you know the right people are seeing these things? Geofencing can help get your digital marketing in front of the right people.  

Definition and Importance of Geo-Fencing Real Estate 

Geo-fencing can make a huge difference when it comes to lead generation from digital marketing. Having flashy and eye-catching ads is fantastic but they need to get in front of the right audience for you to gain clients. Geo-fencing uses location technology to gear your ads toward people near areas where your target demographic may be. It essentially sets up virtual boundaries around areas like shopping centers, offices, or other areas where potential leads may be so that your ideal audience sees your ads.  

How Geofencing Benefits Real Estate Agents 

Think about where your ideal client may go. Maybe they go to the local park, hardware store, or main grocery store in town. With geofencing, you can set up virtual boundaries in these areas so that your ad pops up in places where your clients would likely go. For real estate agents practicing geo farming techniques, you can use geofencing to benefit your business by getting your name in front of the right eye.  

Overview of the Ultimate Guide 

The latest marketing technology is capable of personalizing ad experiences for all types of customers. The location technology used in geofencing is perfect for real estate agents with a niche in a specific area or those looking to target a specific demographic. Ready to start experiencing the benefits of geofencing? This ultimate guide will go over everything you need to know about geofencing and how to implement it into your digital marketing strategy to grow your real estate business.  

Understanding Geofencing Technology 

Location technology has come a long way in recent decades and with its improvements have come many practical applications for marketing. The whole concept of geofencing technology can be a bit confusing at first so let’s break it down. 

5 Expert Real Estate Marketing Tips

Download EAP’s 5 Marketing Tips FREE.

 

Show Me!

GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth-Based Geofencing 

Geofencing uses GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular data technology to determine where a person is through their smartphone. From here, whenever a person walks through a geofence point, they will be in the virtual boundaries to receive targeted ads set to that area. There are also some Bluetooth-based geofencing options called beacons that can alert users to interact in stores to improve engagement and offline sales.  

What Is Geofencing and How It Works 

Geofencing is the practice of using location technology to set virtual boundaries for targeted ads. It uses GPS and Wi-Fi technology to see when users are in certain areas. When a user passes a geofence point, they’ll start to get targeted ads that are set to those boundaries.  

Applications In Real Estate 

While many retail, coffee shops, and fast food restaurants can benefit from targeted ads using geofencing to bring customers in, the strategy is a little different for real estate. Agents can set up geofence points for popular areas that their demographic may frequent. If you primarily target first-time homebuyers in a given area, you’ll want to set up geofence boundaries in areas this target audience frequents.  

This may be the local coffee shop, the gym, the grocery store, or wherever else in town you see your target clients frequently shopping at. If they happen to be scrolling through social media, search engines, or other websites with ads, they’ll see your advertisement pop up so your name stays in their mind for all things real estate.  

Advantages of Geofencing for Real Estate Agents 

There’s nothing worse than paying for advertisements only to have no one-click them and receive poor lead generation. With geofencing, you can significantly increase the effectiveness of your digital ads because your ads will be targeted toward your ideal client. Let’s see the advantages of using this technology as a real estate agent to grow your business.  

Targeted Marketing Campaigns 

When you set up a digital ad, you can set certain parameters for who the ad will be targeted. For real estate agents, location is arguably the most important factor for targeted marketing. You want the people seeing your digital ads to live in the area you serve, not outside of where your listings are. You also want the people in your area to see your advertisements, otherwise, it is a waste of time, energy, and money. Using geofencing for your ads will help to get your content in front of potential leads.  

Improved Engagement With Potential Clients 

Because your ads are getting in front of your target audience, you’re significantly more likely to see improved engagement with potential clients. You’ll notice your click rates and interaction with digital ads improve after utilizing geofencing to target the ideal potential client.  

Geofencing For Real Estate Agents: Competitive Advantage 

Real estate agents are no strangers to competition and much of their marketing efforts, content creation, and online activity are geared toward standing out among the sea of realtors. With geofencing, you can get that competitive advantage of targeting ads to your ideal client. The technology truly opens many doors for real estate agents to grow and thrive in their businesses.  

Implementing Geofencing Marketing Strategies 

Utilizing geofencing in your digital marketing strategies can make a significant improvement in lead generation and engagement with your ads online. By using virtual boundaries to target your ideal client, you can be sure that the time and money put into your digital ads is resulting in getting noticed by the right audience. So how do you implement geofencing marketing strategies? Let’s dive in.  

Creating Geofence Boundaries 

The first step to using geofencing technology in your digital marketing efforts is to set virtual boundaries to trigger your ads in specific locations. When choosing where to set these geofence points, it helps to do a little research on your ideal client and audience. Where do they like to go? What shopping centers might they frequent? The answers to these questions will help you to determine where to set your virtual boundaries for geofencing.  

Crafting Targeted Marketing Messages 

Geofencing can help get your digital marketing in front of the right eyes but you must ensure your content is equally eye-catching and convincing. Depending on where your geofence points are, you can craft targeted marketing messages to pull in leads.  

What is Geofencing Marketing and Best Practices 

The potential for geofencing marketing is inspiring. The ability to target your ads to locations where your future clients may go makes your digital marketing efforts significantly more fruitful. So how do you get the most out of geofencing? Here are some best practices to consider when implementing geofencing marketing for your business: 

• Craft relevant messaging in your ads. Hire a copywriter to ensure you are putting the best wording and messaging out there.  
• Research locations and determine the best boundaries for geofencing. 

• Don’t make your boundaries too large. Small geofencing areas are more effective.  
• Include a call to action that is engaging and resonates with your clients.  
• Analyze data to fine-tune your virtual boundaries, content, and CTAs to optimize your digital marketing.  
• Run ads during peak hours and avoid 24/7 targeting.  

Geofencing Integration with Real Estate Websites 

One of the most significant tools for digital marketing is your real estate website. This is where you have your listings, contact information, blog, and more. It’s often where real estate agents collect contact information for their CRMs and acts as a first impression for many clients who find you through search engines.  

By integrating geofencing into your real estate website, you can increase organic traffic and generate high-quality leads. So how exactly do you use geofencing to generate leads through your website? We’ll go over everything you need to know.  

Real Estate Geofencing and Website Optimization 

When you craft your geofencing marketing strategy, you’ll want to include a call to action. Often this consists of a link that will take leads to your website. Your website needs to be optimized to engage leads. This means ensuring that your website is optimized for mobile browsers as well as trying out different landing pages for your digital ads.  

If the ad copy focuses on great listings, this may mean the link takes you to the listings page on your website or if the ad focuses on home staging ideas for sellers, it may link to your blog where you have content relevant to the ad. Wherever the link in the ad takes leads, it’s vital to make sure that your website is optimized for this use so you don’t lose leads from website errors.  

Leveraging Geofencing Data for Personalization 

When it comes to marketing technology, everyone wants to make the most of the tools available. With geofencing, that means leveraging location data like specific addresses, landmarks, shopping centers, or other popular locations to personalize your marketing campaign.  

You’ll also be able to leverage geofencing data to optimize your digital marketing to improve performance, engagement, and lead generation.  

Capturing Leads and Tracking Conversions 

While it does take some time to start seeing the results of your geofencing marketing efforts, it’s beneficial to analyze the data to fine-tune your ads. Your ad data will show how many leads you’ve captured through obtaining contact information and you’ll be able to track which of these leads became clients. You see what works and what doesn’t so you can optimize your digital ads.  

Measuring the Success of Geofencing Campaigns 

Keeping track of the data from your ads will help you measure how successful they are and where you can improve. Here are a few ways of measuring success that are beneficial for optimizing geofencing campaigns.  

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) 

KPIs track how successful your marketing campaigns are. Here are a few KPIs to keep an eye on: 

• CPM: refers to the cost it takes to generate 1,000 impressions from your ads.  
• CPC: refers to the cost per click and shows how much attention your ad is getting.  
• CTR: refers to click-through rate is the ratio of how often your ad is shown versus how often people engage with it.  

Analyzing and Optimizing Geofencing Strategies 

Analyzing KPIs allows you to optimize geofencing strategies with data-based decision-making. Understanding the data will point the way to what needs improvement.           

Conclusion and Next Steps 

Now that you know the geo-fencing real estate essentials, you can implement them into your marketing strategies to improve your lead generation. There’s nothing worse than pouring money into ad campaigns that yield very few results. With geofencing, you can pinpoint the times and locations of your ideal clients so that you can target them with relevant and engaging copy. Through data analysis, you can fine-tune your geofencing strategies to generate as many high-quality leads as possible.