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With the rise in marketing strategies, location-based marketing is taking personalized marketing to the next level.

According to BIA Advisory Services, marketers will spend over $26 billion in 2019 on geo-targeted campaigns.

What does Location-based marketing means?

It is a strategy that uses global positioning technology, to send geographic-specific business marketing to consumers over their mobile devices.

It is a huge opportunity for businesses. Just think, if a GPS system can give you the right direction when lost, what can it do for marketing?

Many expert marketers say, that ads which have customers’ location integrated on it generate around 10 times more leads than a generic ad.

Done successfully, location-based targeting improves response rates by up to 5 times the normal rate.

Industries that use location-based marketing

Nowadays, more & more industries are opting for GPS enabled location-based marketing systems.

Here are few industries to rely on location-based marketing a lot:

• Retail – Marketers for these brands use audiences seen at their locations the previous year & often use them to target their audience the following year. Seasonal stores often use GPS systems to create geotargeting campaigns. Even pop-up stores for that matter use these methods.

• Tourism – This one is a no brainer. The tourism industry highly depends on location-based marketing. For example, a bed & breakfast situated near Shimla, India will target audience mainly living in Delhi, Chandigarh.

• Restaurants–  Heavily based on location marketing, restaurants obviously caters to people mainly living near to that particular area.

Other than this, industries like hospital, event planners, Stadiums, Transportation also does location-based marketing.

Now,

How does GPS in location-based marketing works?

Generally, it can be done in three ways.

• Targeting customers within a certain area of business

This one is not new. To have a specific business show up in search results for a certain product because it’s nearby can help to give a leg up against the competition.

Mobile is itself a very convenient tool & using it for targeted mobile-based geolocation helps to user to get results while searching for a particular business.

• Targeting customers within a certain area of a competitor’s business

One effective way of utilizing geolocation-based targeting is to enlist your own company’s marketing near your competitor’s business area.

Let me give you an example. Say you own a Chinese restaurant, so your competition will be a restaurant that has a similar cuisine as yours.

Now, once you target your nearby competitors, when your potential customer searches for your competition, your business name pops up as well.

This is especially useful if your business has a promotion going on that would give a customer a better deal on similar products from your business.

• Search Results based on location

Now with mobile usage higher than ever, though this is a big deal for mobile marketing success.

According to HubSpot, 34% of the users search for “Near me” options while browsing for a particular product.

Now, people who are using their mobile for a product will expect the same kind of tailored result on their computer as well.

Being able to have content, store or restaurant locations, products, etc. show up based on their location makes for a much better, more personalized customer experience.

Now, to start using GPS for location-based marketing you need to follow a few tricks to use the technology effectively.

• Allow Customers to opt-in– Understand that not all of your customers will be comfortable to share their location. So they should have options to choose from.

• Transparency– Transparency builds trust. Provide your customers with all the necessary information about how you are planning to use their personal information.

• Option to opt-out– If your customer isn’t satisfied with your explanation, do not lock them into a program forcing them to continue.

• Do not sell their information– this is a terrible malpractice of personal information. You might get tempted to earn money to share information about your customers, but keep in mind your clients are your assets.

Hopefully, now you are well-accustomed with the idea of GPS based marketing.

Want to try out this new digital marketing technique? Contact our team at Skyram!

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