Addressable Geo-Fencing Use Cases & Success Stories
This month we talk about getting the most out of Simpli.fi’s addressable geo-fencing including exploring the 500+ demographic variables available, example strategies on how to use addressable audience curation, and success stories in addressable geo-fencing.
Transcript David McBee Hello and welcome to the Simpli.fi Webinar Series. I’m David McBee, director of training. It’s the second Monday of the month and that means another episode of The Simpli.fi Webinar Series. This month, we’re focusing on Addressable Geo-fencing and the Addressable Audience Curation Tool. Advertisers continue to recognize the value in addressable programmatic, with total spend on Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing solution growing more than 170% in 2020. As you know, addressable Geo-Fencing pairs GPS and plat line data to identify the exact property locations that advertisers wish to target, making it a highly precise and scalable solution. It allows us to Easily reach users where they spend the majority of their time and across all of the devices in a home, including connected TVs. Advertisers can leverage Addressable Geo-Fencing via two methods: 1. They can capitalize on existing first-party data by uploading address lists directly to the Simpli.fi platform with an average 90% match rate. So that’s like their CRM list, or a list they may have purchased. 2. (*)The second way is to Use Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to build custom addressable audiences in real-time using full Boolean AND/OR logic. We can curate audiences using location data and over 500 demographic variables to activate a relevant addressable audience. The Simpli.fi system then automatically matches the exact physical location of each property and draws a target fence around it to capture users for retargeting. We even offer the ability to Use the “visitor frequency” option to specifically target frequent visitors, infrequent visitors, or all visitors to further filter the audience. No matter their size, advertisers from every industry can greatly benefit from targeting users at the address-level, and they can do so with video, display, native, or OTT/CTV ads. Simpli.fi’s cross-device graph associates all of the devices in a household, thereby linking mobile, tablets, desktops, and connected TVs. This makes it easy to reach users across all of their devices and enables attribution for both online and offline conversions. Hopefully this has been a recap and not the first time you’re hearing all of this. If it is, you may want to go to bullseye, look for the search feature at the top. (*) Type in addressable. Click online course in the left hand column, and then check out the archived webinars on this topic. Okay, you’re either still here, or you’re back, so let’s dive in. But first, let me say this. It’s always a good idea to BLEND tactics when you sell a campaign. Addressable Geo-fencing is only one of many tactics. So as good as these examples and success stories are, please keep in mind that we recommend including site retargeting, search retargeting and good old classic geo-fencing when it makes sense. So when you see me telling you that the car dealership can target people whose lease is almost up, or that they can target a certain household income, or that they have children, those are all great ideas. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t also be targeting people who visit the advertiser’s website, or people who are actively researching safe minivans online for example, or people who are visiting competitor’s car lots. All of those are still brilliant targeting tactics. It’s like I’m talking about raisin bran being good for breakfast, but really, it’s just a part of a healthy breakfast that might also include some eggs, toast and orange juice. Does that make sense? All clear? I’m gonna talk about Raisin bran, I mean addressable geofencing and you’re going to expand on these ideas as PART OF A healthy breakfast, I mean blended campaign. Alright, let’s move on. First, I want you to have an idea of how many demos and categories you have access to with the addressable audience curation tool. So, for the next 2 minutes, I’m going to show you every available category as of March 2021. Keep in mind, these are likely to change over time, so if you’re watching a recording of this some time in the future, please check with your simpli.fi account manager. So… that’s a lot of headings, right? Did that inspire you? Got some ideas now of how you can help your advertisers? Well hang on because I’ve got even more ideas coming your way. And for those of you wondering how you can get your hands on a list of all these categories, I’ll be including an excel document in the resources section of Bullseye that you can download. I ask you once again, to keep in mind that this list is current as March 2021, so if you sell a campaign a week or a month or a year from now, be sure to check with someone at your organization who has access to the UI or your simpli.fi account manager to make sure your heading is still available… and to check for additional headings. Finally, before we leave this topic, I invited Lara Evans from our Client Success team to help me create an Addressable Audience Curation tour. That brief video tour is also available in the resources section of Bullseye and I highly encourage you to watch it after this webinar. It’s really one of those rare behind the curtain” looks at Simpli.fi that you may not always be privy to. Okay, now that you have a grasp on some of the unique and relevant audiences we can target, let’s discuss some use case examples. And while the following use cases demonstrate how various industries and businesses can utilize Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool, these are just some of the possible applications. As you just saw from our AAC tour, the audience combinations are endless for nearly any type of advertiser. Let’s start with an attorney example. I’m thinking of a small business attorney that wants to grow their client base. The AAC tool can build an audience that targets Small business owners in the local DMA whose businesses generate $250k to $3 million in sales revenue and are two to five years old Additionally, we can set up a conversion zone around the attorney’s office to track foot traffic conversions. Here’s an idea for an auto repair shop that is trying to recruit and hire mechanics. They can use the commercial property targeting feature to target other auto repair shops in the local DMA. Additionally, they can choose to show ads to frequent visitors of those shops, meaning their ads will target employees, not customers. Who would a beauty/personal care store like to target? The obvious answer is women, of course. But what if they could target households with women who have previously purchased cosmetics and other beauty products or households with women who are interested in reading about fashion? And of course, we’d like to track foot traffic conversions by creating a conversion zone around the cosmetics store. Here’s an example for a bookstore that wants to generate turnout for a mystery romance author’s book signing. Using the AAC tool, we can target households with females who have a history of purchasing books and are interested in reading fiction, mystery or romance novels. And… a conversion zone around the book store to track conversions – especially on the day of the event. How about B2B software companies? Let’s consider one that specializes in HR software. They want to sell their payroll software to businesses in five of their top markets. Believe it or not, we can target households within those top five DMAs that feature chief-level executives of businesses with 10 to 49 employees. Now that’s pretty specific. As for attribution, since there’s not a physical location where customers would visit, we would instead track online conversions by tracking their form fills for requests for more information. Here’s a car dealership whose goal is to encourage drivers to lease a family friendly vehicle. Using the AAC tool, we can create an audience of nearby households with users who have vehicle leases ending in the next 90 days, have household incomes under, say… $85K, and have at least one child. And of course, a conversion zone around their showroom would be in order. Let’s look at a college that is promoting graduate programs to young adults. An easy audience to build and target would be households that feature adults under 35 who have undergrad degrees. And let’s build a conversion zone, not around the whole school, but rather the school’s admission office. What about a craft store? Especially at holiday time. Let’s target households in the local DMA that feature women who are 35 years or older, have previously purchased craft and hobby merchandise, and are interested in arts and crafts, Do it yourself, knitting and/or sewing. By the way, notice I said and/or. Using AND means that the target audience would have to qualify for ALL of the variables you’ve listed. And that could mean that you get so specific that you end up with a tiny audience. Using OR means the person could like arts and crafts OR knitting, meaning you would have more targets available to you. So if you submit an audience to us and it isn’t big enough, maybe we’re struggling to deliver, then switching a simple AND to an OR could open that audience up a lot and make it possible to deliver the campaign in full. This one is for credit unions that want to introduce consumers to new, low interest credit cards. With our offline data, Simpli.fi can curate a list of nearby households where the people have credit cards from Visa or Mastercard, American Express, or Discover… and are in the 4th quartile – that’s the highest average – for total credit card balances. And the credit union can drive traffic to their online application, or to their physical location, and we can measure either of those conversion goals. How about a gym or community fitness center that wants to increase individual gym memberships? Thanks to our interest based demographic targeting, we can reach individuals who are interested in aerobics, walking, running, fitness or healthy living. Because this example wants to increase individual memberships, we can target households with unmarried individuals, but you could also target married people or people with kids if you wanted to increase family memberships. Additionally, the gym can upload their current list of members, giving us the ability to exclude them from our targeting, thereby avoiding wasted impressions. A landscaping company can use addressable geo-fencing to increase their residential client base by simply targeting single-family homes in specific zip codes. They could even choose to target members of hoa’s and/or properties of a certain size. Here are three ways that a pet store can showcase cat products to cat owners or dog products to dog owners. Households that feature a dog owner Households that feature a cat owner Or households that feature both dog and cat owners. By the way, all of these examples come from a document that we put out a few weeks ago. There are a total of 28 use case examples on here, so if you like the ones I’ve shared with you and want more, they’ll be available in Bullseye under the resources section. Or you can just do a search in bullseye for Addressable Audience Curation Use Cases. Well, I hope those use case examples gave you some ideas. You’re probably eager for this webinar to be over so you can call on some attorneys, car dealerships, colleges, gyms, furniture stores and all the other examples we used. But first, I’d like to share some actual success stories with you. This first one is for a national family entertainment center that wanted to boost online conversions and foot traffic. Now, this was a big campaign that ran nearly a half a million dollars. But before you say “well that’s not a good example. I’m working with local stores that don’t have anywhere near that budget” let’s consider that this was for about 500 locations. That comes out to only about $1000 per store. A strategy to utilize Simpli.fi’s OTT/CTV solution with foot traffic attribution and Addressable Geo-Fencing was developed, allowing the client to target specific individual households and measure offline conversions. They also incorporated Keyword Contextual Search Retargeting and Site Retargeting. The two campaigns featured :15 second OTT/CTV video creative to reach users with immersive streaming content on large screens, as well as pre-roll video and display ads. The media plan also included two other media partners, allowing the advertiser to validate foot traffic attribution and compare performance across vendors via a single source of reporting. Goal #1 was to get Online Form Fills. The first of the brand’s campaigns was designed to encourage their target audience of moms with kids aged 2-10 to book birthday party packages online. Supported by Keyword Contextual Search Retargeting and Site Retargeting, their goal was to achieve a $90 Cost Per Action (CPA) based on online reservations. Goal #2 was for In-Store Visits. Simultaneously, the entertainment center was running a new “All You Can Play” promotion and wanted to drive families in-store to take advantage of the offer with a goal of achieving a low Cost Per Visit (CPV). They used Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing solution to target individual households and then track online-to-offline conversions to the brand’s 500+ locations. Simpli.fi curated custom address lists based on their target demographic of women aged 25-44 with kids aged 2-10 in English and Spanish, and also incorporated Site Retargeting. As the campaigns developed over multiple weeks, performance continued to improve based on Simpli.fi’s in-flight optimizations and machine learning. The CPA (cost per action) for online form fills decreased an average of 42% week-over-week for the first five weeks, while the CPV (cost per visit) for foot traffic saw a 75% month-over-month improvement for the first two months. Overall, the online form fills campaign exceeded the $90 CPA goal with a $59 CPA. The in-store visits promotion had a CPV of $3.44 as measured by third party, Cuebiq. Not only did the campaigns exceed their goals, Simpli.fi outperformed every other advertising partner for both online conversions and in-store foot traffic. This next success story was for a professional AAA baseball team. They were looking for an advertising solution to help them reach their target audience, drive ticket sales, and grow gameday attendance. The team knew they needed to use a variety of solutions to find the right people who were likely to buy tickets and go to games. Simpli.fi and the advertiser established a strategy to reach a relevant audience of baseball fans via both geo-targeting and online targeting tactics. They used Addressable Geo-Fencing with first- and third-party data lists to reach local baseball fans at the household level. The team provided a proprietary list of approximately 175,000 contact addresses and Simpli.fi also curated a list of 15,000 households with people interested in watching baseball and matching other demographic criteria. These lists were then uploaded to the Simpli.fi platform where GPS data paired with plat lines automatically matched the addresses to the exact physical location, shape, and size of each household. The system built a geo-fence targeting zone around each address to capture users for retargeting across all of the devices within the home. They also used “classic” Geo-Fencing to target users who visited relevant local sites such as entertainment venues, parks, restaurants, sporting goods stores, hotels, apartment complexes, and more. In order to compare performance across location types, these geo-fences were categorized into six different audiences such as families, young professionals, and travelers. They also used site retargeting and keyword contextual targeting to reach people who had been to their website or done online research about baseball and other related topics. (I feel compelled to point out that this is in line with what I mentioned earlier. This is an addressable geo-fencing success story, but it’s also a story about the value of blending tactics.) So, they’re using this blend of site, search, geo-fencing and addressable geo-fencing. What happened? Simpli.fi delivered and reported online actions, defined as purchasing a ticket online, as well as offline conversions. By building a geo-fence conversion zone around the stadium, the team could measure the number of individuals who were delivered an ad and then visited the ballpark on a gameday, while ignoring visitors on non-gamedays. Simpli.fi’s cross-device matching allowed the advertiser to attribute physical conversions at the stadium to users regardless of what device they were served ads on, including desktop, tablet, mobile, and/or OTT/CTV streaming device. And we were able to make mid-flight optimizations to improve campaign performance. For example, the team shifted budgets to the highest performing tactics, removed poorly performing geo-fences, and added more granular geo-fences to mitigate wasted impressions throughout the entire lifecycle of the campaign. Over the course of the campaign, the Cost Per Action decreased significantly due to Simpli.fi’s machine-learning and optimizations. The results clearly indicate an increase in online ticket sales as well as game attendees at a low CPA. The online CPA for ticket sales was $9.38 and the Cost Per Gameday Visit to the stadium was $2.06. Most notably, the team experienced a 131% surge in incremental stadium visits from the targeted locations, as measured by Simpli.fi’s Geo-Conversion Lift metrics. This increase reflects the percentage difference between users who visited the stadium after being delivered an ad versus those who naturally visited the stadium without being delivered an ad. Overall, the client was delivered tangible and valuable results. With the ability to track both online and offline conversions from a variety of targeting tactics, the results were clear – more ticket sales and more gameday attendees. Here’s one for a national smoothie franchise that wanted to increase online orders and curbside pickups. This one, again, is a national chain. They have over 150 locations, but I believe this story works for just about any restaurant, chain or otherwise. A strategy was developed to use Geo-Fencing with conversion zones to drive physical store visits, as well as Addressable Geo-Fencing and Site Retargeting to increase online orders. In order to drive local store visits, Simpli.fi set up over 1,200 custom Geo-Fences, including those around coffee shops, fast food restaurants, and other smoothie competitors. Next, the Simpli.fi team drew conversion zones around each individual store location, including curbside pick-up areas. This allowed the advertiser to track conversions of users who entered a geo-fence, saw an ad, and then entered one of the brand’s stores. Simpli.fi also implemented Addressable Geo-fencing. Using our Addressable Audience Curation tool, we decided to target customers aged 25-54 within a few miles of their locations, resulting in more than 945,000 households. The campaign also used Site Retargeting to encourage potential customers to make a purchase by targeting users who visited the brand’s website but didn’t place an order. For both the Addressable Geo-Fencing and Site Retargeting tactics, a conversion pixel placed on the website order form allowed the advertiser to track online orders from users who were served an ad. The advertiser was impressed with the rapid implementation of the campaign and the ability to show measurable results. The Geo-Fencing campaign yielded 4,160 curbside visits across more than 150 locations in just 30 days. Additionally, the efforts to drive online orders resulted in 393 orders. Final campaign reporting showed curbside visits increased by an average of 25% week over week. —– Now, let me say this. Not everyone is a fan of using cast studies, but they have value. Not that long ago we produced a webinar here at Simpli.fi called Using Case Studies to Close More Sales. In it we talk about using case studies to secure new appointments, grab the prospect’s attention, establish yourself as the expert, get prospects to relate to your proposal and to overcome objections and close the deal. An example of that might sound like this: “Mrs. Advertiser, would you like to see how we drove in-store visits to a local family restaurant for only $3.44 per visit? How much does a family spend when they come to your restaurant, and would you pay $3.44 for a new customer? No, I can’t promise you that what worked for another client will work exactly the same for you, but isn’t it worth having a conversation? Can I call you on Tuesday to see if this could be a fit for you?” Want more deets on how to use case studies. Bet you can’t guess where you can access that webinar. Yep, in Bullseye under The Simpli.fi Webinar series. That’s where you can find all of our recorded webinars. And so I hope that you’re feeling more prepared to approach specific businesses, to create interesting strategies using the addressable audience curation tool, and to leverage case studies to close more deals. Remember, the addressable audience curation use cases document, along with several success stories are available in Bullseye. BTW, we’ve made them available in powerpoint so you can rebrand them and easily use them on sales calls. Just be sure to replace our brand name with yours. A recording of this webinar, along with a full transcript, the powerpoint, a handout and the use cases document are available in Bullseye. If you have account specific questions, please reach out to your local account manager. If you have questions or comments for training, please send them to training@simpli.fi or complete our two-minute survey at simplifisurvey.com. You can submit anonymously or if you include your contact information, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win simpli.fi swag. Also, I want to remind you that Ann on the Streets, our monthly podcast, comes out on the 3rd Monday of each month. If you’re still with me, it’s probably because you’re either multi-tasking and don’t realize the webinar is over or… you’re hoping for a joke. So I’ll give you one. When my wife was pregnant, I suggested that we name our son Lance. But she said the name was too uncommon. That’s when I reminded her that in the middle ages, people named their children Lancelot. Thanks for joining me today. Now go out there and do something awesome.
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