GEO-FENCING iOS App: Pop-up Your Business

As mobile marketing is repeatedly expanding largely due to GPS-enabled smartphone usage, GEO-FENCING iOS App helps to pop-up business marketing to become more location-based & targeted.

In this blog, we will discuss the insights of Geo-fencing, its purpose and its importance in the field of iOS app development.

What is “GEO-FENCING”?

A unique revolutionary software program utilizes the global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries.
‘Geo-fence’ is a geographical area or a virtual barrier in a radius around a specified point.
Geo-fencing helps to trigger a response on the user’s entry and exit across a specified area.
As per the administrators’ privilege, it enables us to send a location-specific pop-up message to Smartphone users, when entered or exited the defined geofenced location.

Importance of Geo-fencing iOS App

With the help of ‘Core Location (CL)’ Framework, the user can incorporate Geofencing in iOS Apps.
It provides two ways to monitor a user’s entry and exit for a specific region, i.e. Geographical region monitoring (iOS 4.0 and later and OS X v10.8 and later) and Beacon region monitoring (iOS 7.0 and later).
Helps user to monitor up to 20 regions closest to the user-location at a time. Beyond that, it may result in an error indicating that the over limit.
In iOS, Geo-fences can be tracked, even if the app isn’t running.

Region Monitoring

Before monitoring any region, make sure that the current device supports the region monitoring. There may be some reasons and circumstances due to which region monitoring might not be supported.
iOS possess classes and methods to determine the availability of region monitoring.
While working with App in the background, it is recommended to check the background ‘RefreshStatus’ property of the UIApplication class, to process the location updates.

Defining & Registering a Region

Before monitoring of a region, the region must be defined and registered. ‘CLCircularRegion’ Class in iOS 7.0 or the later versions are used to define the region.
It must include the geographical area data of the region, as a center and also, the desired radius around the center region.
Also, include an identifier for the region to distinguish each region. The identifier string acts as a guaranteed weapon in the App to identify a region later.

Triggering Location Manager

Call the ‘startMonitoringForRegion’ method of ‘CLLocationManager’ object.
Monitoring of regions immediately starts after the registration.
Events of crossing the region are handled by delegate 2 methods.
As soon as the user’s App enters a registered region, location manager’s ‘-locationManager:didEnterRegion:’ method will be triggered.
Similarly, when the user’s App exits a registered region, ‘-locationManager:didExitRegion:’ method will be triggered.
The identifier string identifies the region which made the delegate trigger.
During failure or error of region monitoring, the location manager will trigger a notification ‘-locationManager:monitoringDidFailForRegion:withError:’

Targeting Initial Geo-fence

In iOS7, one can use ‘requestStateForRegion’: method of the ‘CLLocationManager’ class to monitor whether the user is already inside a fence.
On launching the App, the location manager checks all the registered regional states.
The ‘didDetermineState:forRegion’ method of ‘CLLocationManager’ will be triggered, that determines the state for each region, which comes under any 3 categories of CLRegionState; CLRegionStateUnknown, CLRegionStateInside, and CLRegionStateOutside.
If Region State is equal to CLRegionStateInside, the region is already inside the geofence.

Stop Monitoring for Region

Call ‘stopMonitoringForRegion’: method of ‘CLLocationManager’ object, by passing through the monitored regions.
If the specified region is not being monitored, this line of code will have no effect.

Plan & Manage Reminders

One of the most functional and useful features built into iOS.
Now, Set location-based reminders to plan or remember the things when to do & to be done, based on regional location & time.
How to set a Reminder in your App is mentioned here below:

Open the Reminders app
Click on the list to add your reminder
Click to add your reminder
Click the ‘i‘ icon to add more info and set a location
Toggle Remind me at a location to on and then Click Location below it
Click to search for a location or use Current Location or a saved address
Click the desired location from the results and then drag the black marker on the map to set the geofence.
You can set your reminder when you arrive or leave the periphery of the selected location. Now click Details in the top left to go back to your reminder’s information
Location is now set. Finally, press Done in the top right corner to save your reminder.

Pop-Up Your Business with Geo-fencing iOS App!

a) Advertisement & Marketing

Advertise shoppers with Cool marketing and advertising strategies.
Send promotional messages to the customer’s Smartphone who enter their premises. i.e thereby steer customers away from competitors.
Analyze whether promotional or targeted offers actually bring people into stores and result in more sales.
Also, analyses the frequent customer visits to the store, duration of shopping and how well a marketing campaign works.

b) Manage Fleet

Enables constant, automated updates to a fleet manager with geofencing App about a vehicle’s movement/activity and minimizes unwanted vehicle usage to save fuel costs and working hours.
Helps drivers to know the pre-defined landmark locations.
Integrates into fleet vehicle send reports whether a vehicle enters or exits a geofenced area and the vehicle duration in those zones

c) Enforce Law and order

Allows quickly locate stolen vehicles displaying the exact Vehicle’s position, to inform the concerned authority.
Alerts the official if someone with an ankle bracelet on house arrest, try to escape the premises.
An employee smart card will send a pop-up alert to security on an unauthorized entry in a pre-specified area.

Other benefits

Notification can be sent to parents with an email, whenever the child’s mobile device is no more near to or in the school premises.
Information can be provided to the tourists about interesting places to explore a city.
An alert can be sent to field service technicians when they are about to reach a customer or in the near vicinity.

For more information, how to use Geo-fencing iOS App to pop-up your business need, you may feel free to REACH US.