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Geo-location has become the latest buzzword in the marketing domain. It is an effective platform that helps a marketer locate a consumer and at the same time know their interests by seeing what that person is looking at online. This allows the marketers to connect with customers directly, and to categorize customers into different target audience segments. By doing that, they can then direct their marketing efforts to many people with similar interests at the same time instead of one by one. In the past, this kind of marketing was only available through billboards, direct mail, and television ads. Now they have more information than ever about prospective customers, allowing them to design their efforts toward specific interests.
It is All About SoLoMo Marketing
Short for social-local-mobile marketing, this term reflects the new focus on social media, location-based marketing, and mobile commerce as the most critical and impactful marketing strategies of the day. Geo-location technology has made it possible for marketers to advertise to specific localities thanks to people’s dependency on mobile handsets and tablets these days. In fact, the consumer shift towards smartphones provides a massive opportunity for brands by enabling them to be in close proximity (virtually) of consumers at any point in time.
5 Perfect Strategies for Using Location Based Marketing
Here are five strategies that have been proven successful, time and time again, for location-based marketing.
- Blog posts: Considered one of the best ways to appeal to the local market because they are optimized with tags which can reveal the business or bloggers locality.
- Yellow Page Listings: Submitting profile data to various local directories such as Yellow Pages makes your product or service more accessible, which can only help your business grow
- Web Sites Optimized for Mobile Phones: It is critical to ensure your website is fully optimized for devices other than the standard desk computer. The popularity and dependence on mobile phones and tablets mean that it is highly likely that a person searching the internet for a product or service will be doing so on their phone. If your website isn’t designed to work with smaller screens and capabilities, you could lose customers. This way you don’t miss providing critical information to prospective customers, such as location, phone numbers and the working hours of the business.
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Local service providers can use this functionality to use keywords that are more location-specific.
- Coupon Apps: There are a number of applications available that draw customers in with the promise of great deals. By placing coupons on these applications, you can drive sales, brand recognition and increase the frequency of shopping. These are also extremely useful in bringing in new clients who may not have tried your business at full-price.
How Marketers are Making the Most of Geo-location Data
The capacity of a smartphone in tracking and reporting the location of an individual in real time with precise accuracy continues to grow with each new iteration which brings new technologies that further revolutionize the mobile landscape. Marketers can take advantage of these technological advances in new and exciting ways:
- Geo-Targeted Mobile Advertisements: The different geo-targeting services that Google, MSN and Yahoo offer helps advertisers in determining the places to post ads with the most potential return on investment
- Location-Based Marketing: Brands send their consumers push-notifications through promotions, coupons or any other targeted offer based on their real-time locations. This has been made possible through the Beacon technology taking e-commerce to a whole new level.
- Geolocation: Geolocation technologies give marketers access to information that helps them locate people online through their IP address (you can check yours here: https://nordvpn.com/what-is-my-ip/), which provides them with an advantage in understanding what today’s consumers value. When used in a creative way, marketers can work wonders in improving the experience of smartphone users, making it a win-win situation for both
- Micro-Moment Marketing: When smartphone users search for just about anything it creates what Google refers to as micro-moments. Those micro-moments give the company a view into the customer’s world which helps drive decisions on strategy and further enables them to capitalize on opportunities to interact with prospective buyers.
- Identify Actual Consumer Details: With the data retrieved from smartphones, they can now identify potential customer profiles that include useful data, such as what competitors the person may be considering, whether they purchase online or go to the actual brick and mortar store, demographic characteristics and cross-channel contact data, among other key insights.
The ability marketers have these days to gather data about potential and existing customers through smartphone data is an incredible leap forward in the attempt to personalize the advertising experience and convince people, in real time even, to choose your brand. It is an exciting time, and there are sure to be more breakthroughs as technology continues to provide everyone with more options through data.