Increase the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in mobile marketing through the use of geolocation

The current problem of traditional user targeting is getting to people unrelated to a given advertising message, which in turn leads to user irritation and loss of advertiser money. The use of the described functionalities helps to optimize the expenses related to advertising and effectively acquiring new customers.

What is geolocation?

Geolocation in mobile devices is used to determine the current geographical location. By using device location data you can determine the exact physical location of the user.

The location is determined by data aquired from three sources:

1. GPS (Global Positioning System) – based on radio signals sent by satellites orbiting the Earth.

2. BTS (Base stations of mobile operators) – the position is determined by calculating the time differences of signal reception from base stations and the rate of received power.

3. Wi-Fi – a mobile device determines its location by sending queries to databases, which contain information about the location of the devices transmitting the Wi-Fi signal and compares the results with currently “seen” devices.

Most mobile devices support these three technologies, which definitely helps to determine the precise location.

What is geofencing?

Geofencing is a virtual area imposed on a physical location. It is one of three tools that allow gathering information about the location of users available in the panel.

When a moving user enters the geofencing area previously defined in the system, his presence will be noticed, and the information that he is in the area will go to the database without any action on the user’s side. When the customer of the commercial network creates areas for all branches, he will be able to collect information about the exact time of entry and exit in a given area, which in effect will create an advertising campaign for this group of people.

The method of building audience groups based on the location is called geotrapping. An advantage over standard geotargeting is the fact that the group is built based on the location data of users in the past, and the ads are not targeted at people who are currently in the place, but those who have visited it before.

How does locating users affect the effectiveness of advertising campaigns?

The recipient group built using the above-described technologies is with great certainty the group of users that has visited the location. However, in order to not disturb the accuracy of the data, areas should be precisely defined so that the geofencing marked on the map do not exceed the limits of the location we care about. After defining the geofencing areas and creating a campaign that collects information about users entering them, there is nothing mor to be done but waiting for the moment when the group of recipients will be big enough to carry out an advertising campaign. The proposed period for group building is one month (if the facilities are visited often, this time can be reduced to two weeks).

The advertising campaign carried out on such a group of recipients is characterized by a high conversion rate because we are very sure that the advertisement reaches only people that can be interested in it.

In order to increase the effectiveness of the campaign, you can analyze the data and narrow down the group of recipients.

7 tips on how to increase the effectiveness of campaigns in mobile applications using geolocation:

1. Create a list of places for which you want to set up a geofencing

Analyze your needs and consider the group of recipients you want to reach with the ad. Think about what competitors’ stores and other places that are not necessarily closely related to the store you care about. Think about where you want to locate users.

2. Use the potential of data analysis

Analysis of data from various geofencing, for example from competitors’ stores, allows to create new segments that will have different features – for example:

  • the segment of people visiting the competitors’ shops before or after visiting the customer’s store,
  • the segment of people visiting stores on given days or even selected hours.

In order to gather information for an in-depth analysis of data, you can create geolocation areas for locations that will allow you to segregate your audience in relation to their behavior and possible demographic characteristics at a later stage. The result of such a strategy will, for example, be segments of people with different asset status. There are many scenarios and their construction is limited only by the imagination.

3. Collect online users and then check if they came to the offline facility offers a service of gathering users who visit the customer’s stationary outlet after visiting the website. It may be a very interesting group of recipients for you, to which you will be able to direct specific ads.

4. Exclude locations where your target audience should not be

You can not only define the areas you are interested in but also create zones where your customer should not appear.

5. Create advertising content corresponding to your location

Concentrate your ads around keywords related to your location.

6. Use landing pages specific to your location to provide relevant content

In order not to lose conversions provide the user with the most relevant information related to the given location.

7. Check if the user visited the location after clicking the ad

It is a very good conversion meter that allows you to optimize your campaigns. If the conversion is lower than in previous campaigns, analyze what the reason is and make the changes to improve it.


Examples of creative use of possibilities:

– advertising for people visiting competitors’ stores,

– advertisement of clothes for people visiting shopping malls,

– advertising of food for people visiting supermarkets,

– advertisement of a new movie for people visiting cinemas,

– promotion of new products for people visiting conferences related to a given product,

– advertising of computer games for people staying in schools for more than 2 hours a day,

– premium car brand advertising for people living in rich neighborhoods and visiting car dealerships.

Currently, ¾ consumers have smartphones so mobile consumers constitute the majority of society. This is a very large group of people whose purchase intentions can be predicted based on the places visited by it. User location plays a very important role in creating customized, targeted and effective marketing campaigns. Sometimes more creativity of marketers is required, but the result is a high ROI.