Understanding location-based marketing

The Continued Rise of Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing is helping a whole new generation of marketers understand how using data helps them better find, target and message to their best prospects and customers.

A report from Juniper Research estimates that revenues from the Mobile Context and Location Services market will reach $43.3B by 2019 almost 4x the current market valuation at this point.

But how should marketers leverage location to better understand and reach their customer base?

How to Leverage Location to Understand Customers

The first thing to take into consideration is the accuracy of your location data, or the location data of your ad provider. Paying for ads that are presented to someone who is nowhere near your location defeats the entire purpose of location-based messaging.

According to a study published by ThinkLinear in July of this year:

“The problem is that, on average, only 34% of ad requests that include latitude and longitude data are accurate within 100 meters of a user’s location. That means advertisers are paying to target a user in a specific location, but the person isn’t really there. Advertisers aren’t getting what they paid for, performance suffers, and the whole industry ends up looking bad.”

In these types of instances, providers like DMTI Spatial are able to bring their GIS knowledge to the table to help – transforming traditional address data into geocoded roof-top accurate locations to ensure that advertisers have a much more accurate data set to work with.

How Different Demographics Use Location-Based Services

The second element to consider is how people access and leverage location based services.  For example, a recent survey posed by the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) titled “The Internet of Things: The Future” found that:

Women are slightly more likely than men (54 percent vs. 47 percent) to share data from their connected car in exchange for location-based coupons or discounts.

Men are more likely than women (33 percent vs. 22 percent) to share data from their connected car if informed of potentially interesting locations along their route.

These behavior patterns mirror what we as marketers might expect from the non-location marketing based world, but are worth taking into consideration when considering the use of location-based marketing to reach out to your customers.  Who are you looking to target, and what information do they want to receive from you on their mobile device.

The combination of behaviour and location are quickly pulling marketers, particularly in the retail space, to focus on location-based offers.  The launch of the Apple iBeacon and Google Glass last year are heralding a new era of communications as customer visit retail locations.  Large brands, including the Bay, Lord & Taylor and others are leveraging the new iBeacon technology, along with location intelligence to message to potential customers.  And it appears that the public is interested too – 77% of us are OK with sharing our location information while we shop, and 81% of those receiving mobile messaging read those messages.

Does your organization have precise location data for your customers?  How will your organization take on the brave new world of location-based marketing? Click here to learn more about how DMTI helps marketers leverage location data to increase the ROI of marketing campaigns.