Location Based Marketing Should Be More Than Just Where You Are

Alex Franks, director at Blyk, looks at location based marketing and the huge potential this has to marketers if used intelligently…

Location Based Services, Proximity Marketing, Geo-Fencing – location marketing on mobile has many guises that may mean different things to different people – regardless it’s getting a lot of headlines at the moment, and rightly so. Identifying customers within a geographical area and pinging them an offer or coupon can be a very effective way of targeting potential customers.

Location based marketing is going to be big news, there’s no doubt, and I look forward to the launch of this service on Bright Stuff in the coming months. However, as with many shiny new products that hit the market there seems to be a rush to invest in location based marketing when location on its own may not meet the marketing requirement.

The same can be said when apps first hit the market; the world and his wife had to have an app whether it was actually useful for their business or not.

Let me give you an example, one close to my heart: if you want to sell a car do you think that targeting your potential customers as they walk past your showroom is the best vehicle, forgive the pun, for your advertising spend?

Is buying a new car really going to be influenced on an impulse triggered by your proximity to a showroom? Unlikely.

If you’re raising awareness of a new model of car hitting the market or trying to encourage people to take a test-drive then targeting potential customers by a cross-match of residential postcode and showroom locations will likely be more relevant than real-time geo-fencing showroom locations. But in either case, unless you’re using other profile information then you’re ultimately wasting budget.

The thought of knowing someone’s physical location is appealing to some advertisers but this targeting methodology falls short in understanding the real context of an individual’s needs.

If marketing messages are based solely on where someone is at a particular time, advertisers sacrifice the true relevancy that the mobile medium can deliver.

So, we need to evolve location-based advertising to go beyond the notion of where someone is standing or what showroom they maybe be walking past.

Understanding the context around someone’s location opens up a new door for mobile advertising – you can target an ad based not only on where someone is, but also who they are and what they are interested in.

This ability to target the right messages, to the right customer at the right time and place enables advertisers to leverage the carrier’s network in a way that adds real value to a customer’s everyday life.

Cheetan Sharma in his excellent piece The Operators vs. the Media Brands: said: “To be successful in the long term operators should focus on the unique elements that only they can provide, such as location, presence, user profile and device information.”

It is this intelligent use of network elements and targeting that will increase the value exchange between the consumer and service provider and will therefore ultimately drive higher engagement levels for the advertising community.

In conclusion, location is a powerful tool in delivering awareness in your marketing plan but it becomes what Sir Martin Sorrell calls the Holy Grail if you can add context and profile to where your customer might be at any given time.