Mobile marketing has become a highly targeted environment in today’s interconnected world. What started as simple text messages to customers offering money-off coupons, has evolved into a personalized, real-time content delivery system.
As mobile phones become a more essential part of people’s daily lives, it is important for businesses to look at ways of delivering more effective and targeted mobile marketing. This is where geomarketing comes in.
What is geomarketing?
GeoMarketing (or location based marketing) uses geographic information to gain a better understanding of how people in a certain area act or spend their money. This method of marketing creates maps all around the world and within each map there is information specific to how consumers act in that that area.
While geomarketing’s definition is the association of data and maps in the traditional sense, the emergence of social media, mobile marketing and new technologies also make it an extremely powerful marketing tool in the digital arena.
Geomarketing and Mobile Marketing
In existing mobile marketing strategies, marketers have been utilizing event-triggered notifications. For example, customers who have downloaded a retailer’s app will receive notifications in the event of a sale or upon making a purchase. Customers who have subscribed to a mailing list receive text messages with money-off vouchers, promotional codes and notification of sales.
Location-based marketing, (which is made possible by the GPS capabilities inherent in smartphones and tablet computers), have added another strategy to this attack - the ability to trigger messages based on a customer’s proximity to a specific location.
Case Study: Google & Geomarketing
One of the trailblazers in the geomarketing arena is Google. By leveraging information about customer behaviors history and preferences in conjunction with contextual location data, they are leading the charge in creating new ways to reach their customers.
A prime example of this is their Google Now program, which proactively delivers information to users, based on their search habits - for all means and purposes, it is an intelligent personal assistant.
Say for example, that you have been emailing or texting back-and-forth about your son’s soccer match. As the time gets closer, a reminder will pop up on your phone with driving directions to the soccer ground.
Google Now will also keep an eye on your inbox and recognize flight confirmations, hotel reservations and concert tickets. It will take that knowledge and give you a relevant message when appropriate — such as giving you your hotel information when you land, or letting you know when it's time to leave for a concert.
Google Now is a flagship example of a contextual, geo-targeting campaign that helps users in their day-to-day lives. Platforms that can process the sheer volume of data now available to companies will z the mobile experience by combining location with consumer context. Contextual geo-marketing is the art of knowing why customers are at a location, not just that they’re there. And, as Google have shown us, when you know the “why,” you can better serve customer needs on an individual basis.
