Current and Future of Location Based Marketing

            Location based marketing is just another useful tool for businesses to utilize that exists because of emerging technology. It would have been the dream for advertisers decades ago to have access to the information of the where abouts of their potential customers. Now, with all of the services and tools that are experimenting with location based services, it made the tracking of consumers possible. The one thing about location based service is that people might shy away from the option to ‘actively check in’ into the service, without a huge incentive for them to do so, it’s useless to simply ask people to turn on the location option. What does seem to contribute to the success of location based marketing more is the act of passive check ins. Passive check ins include when people tag themselves in a location on a picture or video they post to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc.

            Looking at current trends, it is a must to invest in location based marketing as it has a promising future. According to statistics, nearly a third of the world’s population will own a smartphone in 2017. Plus, 80 percent of all social media is happening through a mobile device, and social media platforms are the easiest ways to encourages users to geotag their content.

Above all, mobile commerce continues to become more prevalent for companies. B2C businesses are serving localized ads to nearby customers, localized ads can raise the conversion rates threes times more than regular ads. Author Aaron Strout lists the four important areas that are key to grasping the value of location based marketing currently:

1.     Sensors: Technology such as Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, sensors allow near-field communications between a user and their smart device. This allows the ability to wake up in-store apps. Both Samsung and Apple has included NFC chips in the past two generations their smartphones.

2.     Geo-Fences: These are fences that use GPS, Wifi, electromagnetic fields or RFID technologies for companies to trigger and collect data when the user enters them. This technology needs to be paired with a mobile app with location service turned on or by a geo tagged post on a social media platform.

3.     Context: The right context is crucial to location based marketing. To market to the customer, knowing where they come from and where they are going is a must. So, it is critical to map functionality to location, since with location based marketing the experience the customer is getting is happening in real time.

4.     Ad tech: $100 billion is expected to be spent on mobile advertising this year, it’s clear that marketers understand its’ importance. There is great leverage for retailers to adopt location based ads besides social and in app.

              So what does the future hold for location based marketing? As we have concluded it’s significant to the future of advertising. Strout suggests in the article that more and more sensors existing in smartphones and now fitness bracelets will increase context for marketers. Secondly, augmented reality; even though as of now, more augmented reality apps are entertainment based, there is a huge opportunity in this field for location based marketing. Strout envisions every major retailer to use smart bots and augmented reality to create personal shoppers or concierges for the customers. In conclusion, there’s much room to grow in the department of location based marketing. It would be valuable for retailers to keep in mind. 

Rose Yin, Yauheni B. 

Source of article: http://marketingland.com/location-based-marketing-going-195732