Why we care about location marketing

What for those who might tailor advertising and marketing messages on the granular degree, primarily based on the place your customers are, in actual time? 

For instance, by sending an opted-in textual content message to supply a reduction on a services or products when a buyer enters a pre-defined location, similar to your brick-and-mortar retailer? Or by reminding your prospects that it’s completely happy hour — and that you just provide two-for-one appetizer specials — after they’re close to your bar or restaurant throughout a particular time of day?

Delivering related content material to focus on prospects is a key profit that native or location-based advertising and marketing brings to the equation.

It’s a vital technique to look into, particularly when you think about that advertising on mobile devices captured the most important share of the market in 2022 at $34 billion. (Total, spend on digital advertising and marketing was a staggering $77 billion.) 

On this article, you’ll study the significance of leveraging knowledge from customers’ cellular units to create content material (ads, provides, and so on.) that can drive enterprise. 

We’ll go over precisely what location advertising and marketing is, stroll by means of just a few totally different location-based advertising and marketing strategies and clarify why it needs to be a part of your digital advertising and marketing efforts.

Desk of contents

Estimated studying time: 5 minutes

What’s location-based advertising and marketing?

Location-based advertising and marketing is primarily a technique that makes use of a cellular system consumer’s geographic location to ship notifications or content material tied to that individual place. There are two methods to outline places as they check with advertising and marketing: 

• By GPS coordinates on a cellular system.
• By deploying Bluetooth-based “beacon” know-how to set off adverts or alerts when customers are in locations (i.e., shops) that GPS alerts can’t at all times attain. 

You may come throughout the latter described as proximity advertising and marketing, however the main distinction is in how location knowledge is generated. (Beacons are bodily put in and determine places inside a brief distance, similar to a retailer aisle.)  

When you consider the advantages of location advertising and marketing, one aspect rapidly rises to the highest of the pile and that’s relevance. 

As a substitute of pushing generic adverts throughout channels and hoping that a few of it resonates, location-based advertising and marketing lets entrepreneurs ship extremely focused messages that attain customers as they go about their each day actions. 

Usually, location-based advertising and marketing works finest for manufacturers or companies with retail places. For instance, a furnishings retailer may ship Presidents’ Day reductions to prospects who’ve pulled into the parking zone of the mall wherein the shop is positioned throughout the vacation weekend. 

It’s price mentioning one other vital sort of location-based advertising and marketing that’s inbound and doesn’t rely upon cellular knowledge. Websites like Yelp will present ads and promotions primarily based on consumer conduct, together with the places and sorts of companies explored on the location.

Location-based advertising and marketing strategies    

There are three main strategies of location-based advertising and marketing, which goal prospects primarily based on the place they’re, the place they’ve been and the place manufacturers would like them to be.

Geofencing

Geofencing makes use of a wide range of location companies to pinpoint the place customers are in actual time and is deployed by software program that’s contained inside cellular apps. It’s vital to notice that geofencing have to be opted-in by the app consumer — that means, potential prospects should share their places with the app. 

The geographic space has boundaries (fencing). An instance could be a radius round a retailer, restaurant, neighborhood, and so on. When individuals enter or exit the boundary, advertising and marketing actions happen.

Starbucks makes use of geofencing to ship rewards program members reductions on drinks they commonly order when these prospects are close to cafes.

Geotargeting

Whereas geofencing makes use of real-time location info, geotargeting creates content material that targets customers primarily based on location. 

So for those who’re an area restaurant that wishes to advertise a brand new brunch menu, for instance, you may construct your marketing campaign to focus on these prospects who’ve been in your restaurant inside the final 60 days to drive return enterprise. 

This helps entrepreneurs ship focused content material to particular demographic teams or those that have engaged in particular behaviors. 

Geoconquesting

Geoconquesting is a location-based advertising and marketing tactic that delivers notifications to prospects close to a competitor’s enterprise. 

In a single well-known instance, Burger King created a marketing campaign referred to as the “Whopper Detour” to focus on customers inside 600 ft of McDonald’s places.

This intelligent — and well-liked — advertising and marketing technique used geofencing to ship coupons for one-cent Whopper sandwiches to customers of the BK app, which was by the way downloaded 1,000,000 instances over the course of a pair days throughout the marketing campaign, Adweek reported.  

The advantages of location-based advertising and marketing

For entrepreneurs, there are a lot of causes to implement location-based methods. 

Companies primarily transacting in individual can attain prospects when and the place they’re most probably to be receptive to campaigns:

• When they’re in shut proximity to your retailer.
• When occasions are taking place.
• And so forth. 

This will simply result in elevated foot visitors and better gross sales. Customer experiences are improved when focused, related content material is delivered at precisely the appropriate time. This additionally helps with buyer retention and loyalty. 

Entrepreneurs responding to a survey mentioned that improved engagement was one of many main advantages of location-based advertising and marketing. However maybe most significantly, the technique provides a window into what prospects need utilizing insights gleaned from what they spend their time doing and, in lots of instances, how a lot time they spend doing it. 

Whereas web site visits can reliably predict client conduct, entrepreneurs nonetheless should make assumptions. However location advertising and marketing may be thought-about extra dependable as a result of it’s primarily based on retailer visits, live performance venue attendance, restaurant visits, and so on. 

Plus, it may possibly rapidly present entrepreneurs whether or not their campaigns have been profitable: Has foot visitors elevated or decreased? Have app downloads elevated or stagnated? 

All that mentioned, there are some drawbacks. First, entrepreneurs should solely use knowledge from cellular customers who’ve opted in to permit their telephones to trace their location and the apps they use to entry it. 

Privacy concerns are very actual and entrepreneurs should take nice care to deal with the information sensitively and guarantee it can’t be traced again to any particular particular person. Federal and state legislation defending client privateness is at all times evolving and types could be effectively served to not solely hold monitor of the laws, however observe them to the letter. 

Carried out proper, nevertheless, location-based advertising and marketing may be an efficient a part of any digital technique. 

However wait, there’s extra! 

Beneath are some sources if you wish to do extra studying on location-based advertising and marketing: