Maximizing Your Marketing Strategy: Using Geofencing Ads to Target Customers in the Healthcare Industry
If you’re a medical device company looking for a new way to increase brand awareness and sales, geofencing ads may be the perfect solution. By targeting potential customers in specific locations, geofencing ads offer a highly relevant and personalized form of marketing that can help you reach your target audience.
What is geofencing, and how does it work?
Geofencing ads are a type of mobile ad that uses your location information to target users with advertisements based on where they are or what location-based services they frequent. These targeted ads can be used to promote specific businesses, restaurants, shops, events, and more to users in a specific area.
Your standard banner ad creative can be used, though most impressions will go towards the mobile-favorite sizes of 300×250 and 320×50. Messaging can be hyper-targeted to speak to the person or place (depending on the situation) and will click through to a designated landing page.
How can geofencing ads help medtech and medical device companies?
While geofencing ads have been around for years, they are a relatively new and innovative advertising strategy for medical device companies that can help to increase brand awareness and drive more sales.
By using geofencing technology, medtech advertisers can target potential customers by serving targeted messages to people onsite at a conference, to the staff of medical establishments to highlight your product, or to patients at a doctor’s practice (abiding by HIPAA rules) to let them know about your brand.
How to target attendees at trade shows
One strategy we’re excited about in particular is the ability to set up geofencing for specific industry events. Headed to a conference or trade show? Supplement your in-person strategy with digital. Ads will appear on attendees’ phones and messaging can speak specifically to the event and drive people to your booth location.
If you’re cutting costs and not exhibiting, geofencing is a cost-effective way to still get in front of your audience. Showcase your brand/product and create an exclusive event offer as a CTA. Allow people to get in touch or schedule a follow-up on the landing page.
Emerged implements this tactic for our own business-building events and would be happy to share examples and discuss strategies to combine outreach and targeted media.
How to target doctors and medical staff
Another way to use geofencing ads is to target doctors and other medical staff. This can be done by targeting the location of medical establishments, such as hospitals or clinics, and serving targeted ads to people who work there.
How’s it work? Proprietary technology knows the staff based on the frequency of visits and when they’re on-premise, giving you the ability to separate them from patients. Cool, right?
This is a great way to promote new products, sway purchasing decisions or simply inform staff of what product alternatives they could offer to patients.
How to target patients at medical establishments
Finally, geofencing ads can also be used to target patients at medical establishments. This can be done by targeting the location of hospitals or clinics, and serving targeted ads to people who are visiting these places at a low frequency.
This is a great way to reach potential end customers and get patients to ask their doctors about your brand or product. With the rise in D2C, more and more patients are interested in researching products and coming to their own conclusions on which to use.
While geofencing is a gray area as it relates to HIPAA, it’s safest to abide by regulations and not disclose sensitive information. One recent court case verdict said ads should not “infer health conditions or medical status of individuals.” If you’re speaking to patients, it’d be best to talk broadly about your brand and ensure no relation to PHI.
Benefits of using geofencing ads to target customers in the healthcare industry
As a cutting-edge advertising strategy, geofencing ads for medical companies can help to increase brand awareness and drive more sales by targeting potential customers at specific locations. There are a variety of ways that geofencing ads can help medical companies achieve their marketing goals, whether it’s by targeting potential customers at trade shows or using geofencing to target staff at doctor’s offices (or their patients).
Let us know which strategy you try first! If you need help setting up a geofencing campaign, Emerged offers this service as an add-on to your outreach program. Schedule a call to learn more.
