Location-based engagement with businesses is an incredible (and incredibly powerful) aspect of mobile marketing. While there are great apps like foursquare, and Facebook Places that allow geographical ‘tagging’ of businesses in posts and photos, there are other ways to use location to your marketing advantage. Chuck Martin, author of The Third Screen: Marketing to Your Customers in a World Gone Mobile, notes the transformation of location’s marketing value. Traditionally, he says, “if someone is near a particular shopping mall, they would have received an ad in their Sunday newspaper they saw about a particular store, but they have forgotten because maybe it’s Thursday now.”
With location capabilities on mobile phones, on the other hand, a business can now market to their customers at that exact moment.
Geo-fences, for instance, have been created so that when a person opts-in and arrives at one, a message will be sent to their phone providing information on a new product or a special deal just for them. There are a couple of new mall-mapping technologies in development (and some are already available), which map the stores inside- Google tends to stop at the front door at the moment. This clearly has marketing value.
Mall navigation app FastMall is currently in Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Spain, and thanks to your phone’s GPS, it knows the exact shopping level you are on. Commercial messages can be sent depending on your exact location. As Chuck says, “why would you want a message from a store on the first floor when you’re not there yet?” Locational engagement is definitely a flourishing marketing possibility and an exciting aspect of mobile marketing for small businesses. “Even in Australia, the foursquare app will send me notifications if I am near a great coffee shop, or one that friends have recommended, purely based on its knowledge of my history of having checked-in to coffee houses. That small business that will get my order may not be one that was on my radar. The delivery of real-time marketing is a powerful opportunity for small business to capture additional business. “ – Suzi Dafnis, HerBusiness. This article is based on an extract from the Marketing Goes Mobile webinar.
