Five Ways to Use Location-Based Marketing Right Now

by JD Nyland  |  June 29, 2015  |  1,543 views


Location data is everywhere. It's embedded in the photos we share, the GPS-enabled apps we use, and the online transactions we make. And, today, users are more willing than ever to share location data with brands in exchange for more personalized content and tailored promotions.

That's really the idea and the promise of location-based marketing—using location data to boost engagement, offer more personalized experiences, and build loyalty with users.

For us marketers, understanding more about a user's location provides valuable insight into intent. If users are standing near a retail location, they may be expressing interest in your brand. The opportunity to engage users at such a critical time is what makes location-based marketing so exciting.

The technology is still new, but right now you have ways to experiment with and use location-based marketing to enhance your campaigns and boost ROI.

Here are five areas of location-based marketing that have plenty of room for experimentation.


1. More Meaningful Personalization

Personalization is critical for a mobile-first strategy. So what can you do to improve mobile personalization?

Start with effective user segmentation. Dig into the data and learn as much as you can about your users: their preferences, the content they're most engaged with, the offers that appeal most to them, and their favorite app features. Then, use such data to identify the content, promotions, and cadence at which you should be sharing via mobile.

Even simple things such as incorporating first names and curated shopping lists are effective ways to personalize the mobile experience.

2. Providing Relevant Content

Content is the glue in the engagement construct. If your content is effective, it holds users' attention. If your content is irrelevant, the bond is broken and users are more likely to ignore your future communications. Location-based marketing requires effective content.

Brands are experimenting various ways—using creative tools like augmented reality, macro- and micro-maps, and beacons to provide useful information. For instance, a hotel, upon a guest's check-in, may provide a video about spa services to the customer who's shown interest in that via an app.

Or take the South by Southwest Festival. This year, the festival used more than 1,000 beacons to communicate with attendees about networking opportunities, events going on nearby, and other useful info.

The content was not merely inherently relevant; it also provided unique incentives for users to stay engaged.

3. Rewarding Loyalty

Providing incentives for using your app boosts engagement and loyalty.

For instance, you might provide users with an exclusive promotion or use a reward points system. Some retailers provide users with rewards for completing actions, such as points for visiting a physical location, or opening a map while within the store. Thus, brands are able to not only reward a customer who has shown interest in the brand but also enables them to gain insight into the user's in-store preferences.

Another effective strategy that brands are implementing: mobilizing their loyalty card programs. If your most engaged customers are in the proximity of one of your locations, you can deliver relevant content in real time. You might send a notification: "Hi! You have earned $5 off your next order!"

That's what's interesting and exciting about location-based marketing: the ability to provide incentives when they matter most.

4. Using Location Data to Enhance In-Store Experiences

More than half of consumers say they use a mobile device while shopping.

If they've opted into sharing location data, that fact allows you to better calculate customer dwell times, understand traffic flows, and recognize where customers are interacting with beacons and display devices.

Location-based marketing makes it easier than ever to refine the in-store experience to better serve customers. And not just at retail locations. Store heat maps can be used in stadiums, hotels, museums, airports, and more to improve traffic flows, reconfigure layouts based on region or seasonality, and refine merchandising displays.

5. Taking Advantage of Mobile Wallets

Mobile wallets are much more than just a method of payment. Just think, in our actual wallets or purses we store things like loyalty cards, coupons, and recipes. Applying this concept to your location-based marketing strategy, your focus should then be on how to take advantage of mobile wallets—not just mobile payments—to interact with customers before, during and after a purchase.

One example would be enabling customers to easily save coupons on their smart devices. For instance, if a user has saved a coupon, you might send a reminder to use it when the user is in the proximity of one of your retail locations.

Mobile payments are an important piece, but don't forget to take into account the entire wallet.

A Few Final Thoughts

Marketing to the mobile generation requires creativity, and location-based marketing is all about combining that creativity with technology to provide personalized, real-time experiences.

Of course, we are dealing with what's still a new technology, and there are many kinks that need to be worked out. For instance, there's a fine line between an app that provides relevant, cost-saving, and personalized content, and one that's, well, annoying, irrelevant, and (worst of all!) creepy.

But the key is experimenting with finding that balance now—because location data has the potential to ring in a new era in marketing.

Beacons Helped The NFL Reach Out To Fans At The Super Bowl

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BEACONS AT THE SUPER BOWL: The Super Bowl, which took place in the New York-New Jersey area on Sunday, is a big marketing opportunity. This year, the National Football League (NFL) looked to market to consumers both at the game and around the Super Bowl week festivities in New York City's Times Square by installing beacon transmitters. The beacons are low-cost pieces of hardware that transmit messages to an official NFL Mobile app on fans' phones. They were used to deliver messages that included in-store discounts and location-tailored directions, like where the nearest stadium entrance is. 

The Super Bowl represents a crucial step for the validation of beacons at live events.In our recent report on beacon technology, we discussed how beacons at events can relay stadium information, point people to complementary content, or promote sales. This year, Major League Baseball will also continue to deployment of thousands of beacons at 20 ballparks in time for the season's opening day, according to Mac Rumors. Beacons have already done well in a test phase at a small number of MLB parks. But the Super Bowl will move beacon application at events beyond simply installing them at a stadium or ballpark. Given the NFL's strategy of deploying beacons in Times Square, success at this year's event will signal the ease with which beacons can be implemented to reach consumers at any mass gathering, including festivals, concerts, or conventions. (New York Times)

Challenges Agencies Face When Scaling In-location Engagement

Challenges Agencies Face When Scaling In-location Engagement

By:Kris McGlone   Date posted: January 7, 2014

Here is the scenario: At some point during the client kickoff, someone will inevitably ask, “Should be we thinking about an in-location component to this campaign? Tablets in a kiosk, digital signage, something like that? I have seen some really great stuff that (insert Brand XYZ) is doing”

Faster than a first comment posted on a native versus HTML5 blog entry, the business development lead jumps in with “Absolutely! We can do a pilot to show the proof of concept; low cost, boatloads of functionality and all the usage metrics you can handle.” They may even promise two of every animal in the world if they are feeling exceptionally ambitious.

The meeting ends, and everyone is on side. The teams get to work to develop an in-location experience that is both true to the brand and aligns well with the goals of the campaign and overarching strategy.

Fast forward to the checkpoint meeting.

The pilot has been running in a local store for several weeks, engagement rates are good and consumer feedback is positive.

“We love it!” says the client. High fives breakout around the room, and just as the elation hits its crescendo the second line is delivered. “How soon can we roll it out to all our locations?”

Looking around the table the facial expressions communicate what no one is saying: “Amazing, we nailed it!” followed immediately by “Ummm… How the heck are we going to do this?”

Before you find yourself in that awkward, high-end problem moment, let’s take a look at some of the pain points that you can expect to encounter and how you can plan to be ready to scale your pilot without missing a beat.

1. Managing and scaling to accommodate multiple devices

One device is child’s play. Two or three? No problem. It’s when you start to scale into numbers greater than 10 that the issues begin to reveal themselves. Managing multiple devices becomes a bit of an unforgiving beast: software updates, connectivity issues, battery status, etc. You don’t necessarily need a full mobile device management platform since many of these would be overkill for this level of management and don’t solve all the potential problems. You will, however, need to know the basic status of your devices because no available device means no in-location engagement experience.

2. Expanding from one to many locations

The management of numerous devices is one thing, but when you introduce the geographic complexity of one or more devices within multiple locations, it starts to get a little unwieldy. Having a person physically in each location isn’t any more feasible than expecting to have a handful of individuals traveling to each location to update content and applications and manage devices. You need to have the ability to manage all locations remotely and preferably within the same interface.

3. Performing application updates

Version updates, re-installs and bug fixes are all realities of the world we live in and the applications that we love to create. Whether these happen at a rate of one every few months or a complete refresh every day, you need to know that you can act quickly and be flexible with the updating of remote applications. Stability of your chosen deployment platform is key when planning for this scalability hurdle, so you will need a solution that is both robust and dynamic. Couple this with the ability to quickly add enhancements and push them our to devices without having to publish to the AppStore or third-party market first and you have a powerful advantage.

4. Keeping content fresh – instant and scheduled updates

Yes, content is King but F-R-E-S-H content is one step above that! Campaign success stories and engagement rates are all driven by, and dependent on, great content. Having the flexibility to update content in real-time, remotely or at the location level is critical to preserving an engaging in-location experience. On the flip side, you can’t expect to have someone sitting in front of a screen 24 hours a day to perform changes and updates. You need to have the ability to schedule rich content that marches to the cadence of your campaigns well in advance while also maintaining the ability to make instantaneous changes to content.

5. Managing multiple variations in content

You don’t have to go far from your hometown to see just how much variation there is from region to region. Local terminology, product preferences, brand affinities, seasonal temperatures and fashion trends can all vary significantly from place to place. Managing a large in-location engagement deployment means that you must have precise control over the content that appears on each device and in each unique location to tailor the experience to that specific region. This level of control allows you provide the content that consumers want to see, which is as customer-centric as you can get.

It goes without saying that this is in no way a complete list of challenges that you may encounter as you scale your client’s in-location experience, but this should give you a great starting point when it comes to planning how you will tackle the hurdles.

So the next time you are in that fateful client meeting and the promise of a seamless scaling from pilot to full deployment echoes around the room, just smile and nod knowingly: Amazing, we’re going to nail it.

- See more at: http://www.agencypost.com/that-escalated-quickly-the-top-5-challenges-agencies-face-when-scaling-in-location-engagement/?utm_source=The+Agency+Post&utm_campaign=537311debb-Newsletter_1_14_20141_10_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_71c4570cf0-537311debb-63042789#sthash.Qc68lqML.dpuf

SoMoLo: A Profile of Today’s Connected Customer [INFOGRAPHIC]

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Tricia Morris

Two of the most disruptive technologies in the last decade have combined to create a customer experience challenge – or opportunity – depending on how you look at it and how prepared your brand is. The SoMoLo (Social-Mobile-Local) customer demands a real-time customer experience, consulting their smartphone and social media to make purchasing, brand loyalty and influencing decisions at every turn.
Consider these 2012 stats from Epathica:

• At least half of consumers with smartphones have searched for online reviews about a retailer on location.
• 55 percent of smartphone owners report that they have used their devices to check and compare prices while shopping.
• Nearly three-quarters of consumers use Facebook to make retail or restaurant decisions, while half of consumers have tried a new brand due to a social media recommendation.
• One in 10 smartphone owners have written a review on a website or social media platform while in-store.

This featured infographic by Parature’s Rachel Begeman provides a detailed profile of the SoMoLo customer, a customer we’ll all be seeing much, much more of in the near future:
More Customer Care Content You May Be Interested In:

• 7 Take-Note Online Customer Service Predictions
• Are B2Bs Prepared for the Social Customer?
• The Incredible Influence of the Social Customer
• Parature for Social Engagement