Location Based Marketing … Growing in Importance

By Mike Schoultz · 1 Comment ·

Is your business utilizing location based marketing?

The attention economy is not growing, which means we have to grab the attention that someone else has today.

-Brent Leary

One way to grab attention of your customers is to take the messages to them with location based marketing. The benefit of location based marketing with mobile devices is the ability to tailor a message to a specific customer in the vicinity of your business. A growing number of sites are innovating in this space as many consumers are seeing benefits to broadcasting their locations to their social networks.

The percentage of Americans using mobile phones to find local information is increasing dramatically, and the number of people in the US broadcasting their location through geosocial sites is ticking steadily upwards, according to a new eMarketer report, “Location-Based Marketing: Driving Sales in a ‘What’s Around Me?’ World.”

In February 2012, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 74% of smartphone owners and 46% of adult mobile phone owners overall accessed location-based information services—defined by Pew as GPS-enabled map services or reviews of nearby attractions accessed via an app or mobile browser.
services.

This locationcasting (a term coined by Rohit Bhargava) behavior helps merchants offer customers special promotions to attract them to the store … when they are close to the store. It becomes even more powerful when combined with specific preferences known about the shopper.

Locationcasting also connects the consumer with friends in their social networks who may be in the area or same space. Brands are using this technique in increasing numbers to create more opportunities to engage their customers in real time and location.

The two most popular examples of location marketing sites are Foursquare and Scvngr.

Foursquare lets you ‘check in’ to real life destinations to earn badges, see special offers, and share your location with your friends. It has been growing advertising opportunities and is poised to offer hyperlocal geolocation for both large and small brands.

Scvngr describes themselves differently than Foursquare by defining their vision of adding a ‘game-layer’ to geolocation. Here the consumer competes to solve real live challenges defined by the business and amass points which can be redeemed for goods and services.

Our experience points to the game layer of Scvngr as the best approach, particularly with its better ability to engage customers and execute special promotions.

The burning question for most marketers is how to connect with these locally minded consumers. From geotargeted alerts or push notifications to offering location-aware apps, deploying local/social networking tactics, building out a location-based loyalty program, or all of the above, putting a locally relevant message before a consumer will mean many things.

As smartphone adoption grows over the next four years, the number of consumers using location-based and geosocial services will grow exponentially. “The amount of behavioral data available will proliferate and offer greater opportunities to marketers,” said eMarketer. “Success, however, will hinge on marketers providing a high degree of transparency regarding the use of personal data and delivering tangible rewards or relevant content that improves a customer’s shopping experience.”

What is your experience with location based marketing? Please share a story or two with this community.

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