Location Marketing: What’s Real? What’s Fluff?

As a marketer, you know you must have a user-friendly, relevant mobile app. And all the buzz you’ve heard recently about location marketing has made you think, “Oh, beacons could be a cool way to show location-relevant messaging to our users.”

But, if you don’t have a clear strategy regarding location marketing — including clearly defined business goals — your efforts will be nothing more than fluff. Instead, curtail your location-based messaging to meet specific goals and offer delightful experiences to your high-value app users. Relevant and valuable location-based marketing will help you cultivate long-term relationships with your customers.

So, what types of valuable content can be served up with location-based technology? Well, that depends on what you have to offer.

Building Understanding
To determine what kinds of location-centric information will be most helpful to your users, start by analyzing how your app is being used. Take some time to really explore what users are actually using the app for — not just what you designed it for.

Next, apply a combination of analytics and common sense to issues of usability and messaging density. Think about your own tolerance in these areas when you use the apps on your phone. What would you do with an app that’s constantly downloading content you don’t use, bombarding you with push notifications, or asking to know your location? You’d delete it, of course!

You’d also delete an app that you never use — one that doesn’t show you enough useful content. That’s why it’s crucial to find a balance between these two extremes. Users probably won’t share their locations via apps they don’t find useful. However, if they’re fans of your brand — and especially if you’ve provided them with useful content in the past — they’ll be much more eager to give you their locations, trusting that you’ll use that information to provide them with enjoyable experiences.

The first and most crucial ingredient in effective location marketing, then, is leveraging location data to delight your users — rewarding them with great experiences they can only obtain by sharing their locations with you.

Beyond this, location marketing breaks down into two major components: micro and macro.

Utilizing Micro Locations
When people talk about micro-location marketing, they’re referring to beacons: tiny transmitters that emit low-power Bluetooth signals. A company can place the beacons anywhere, and nearby users can opt in to receive these Bluetooth signals on their phones. A phone’s GPS hardware isn’t involved at all.

Beacons are a big buzzword in mobile marketing right now, but they’re only as useful as the data you receive from them. Unless you can map specific opt-ins to specific beacons, all you’ll know is that somebody walked by one of your beacons, somewhere in the world, and opted in to receive messages from you.

If you have physical store locations, a useful tactic is to simply put the beacons in certain aisles. Home Depot, for example, uses beacons to give them real-time data regarding which in-store displays and services customers are most interested in — and which aren’t as engaging as they should be. This information can then be used to create more customer-friendly merchandising.

At Monterey Bay Aquarium, for instance, visitors can opt in to beacons not only to receive detailed information about each animal exhibit, but also to find out where specific exhibits are. For example, visitors who want to see the sea otters can use their phones to navigate directly to that beacon.

In both these cases, marketers are using beacons to provide users with information they actually want, at times and in places that are actually useful to them. This is beacon marketing done right.

All that said, it’s important to remember that many customers disable Bluetooth on their phones. In addition to depleting battery life, some users consider it a security risk. If a user doesn’t have Bluetooth enabled — or doesn’t know how to turn it on — all your exciting micro-location strategy will be for naught.

Leveraging Macro Locations
Whereas micro-location marketing depends on Bluetooth and beacons, macro-location marketing uses latitude and longitude coordinates synced with a phone’s onboard GPS and Wi-Fi hardware. When opted-in users cross one of the invisible geofences you’ve created, their presence triggers location-based messages on their phones.

The biggest advantage of macro over micro is the ability to tie messaging to any physical location — even if you’re unable to physically place a beacon there. Since the trigger is simply a set of geographical coordinates, you could theoretically create geofences anywhere on the planet for minimal setup and maintenance expenses.

Another upside is that — while many users disable Bluetooth — just about everyone keeps their GPS and Wi-Fi turned on at all times. Therefore, as long as those users are opted in and running the app, they’re essentially guaranteed to receive any location-triggered content you send them.

Putting It All Together
With this level of marketing power comes great responsibility. If you put geofences all over a city and bombard users with location-based marketing every day, it won’t be long before they opt out and delete your app — no matter how loyal they are to your brand.

By the same token, users will prevent you from tracking their locations if all they receive is marketing spam. It’s completely unnecessary to be so impersonal when location data can be leveraged so easily, allowing you to do so many useful things for your users. For example, Redbox uses location data to tell customers where they can find the nearest DVD-rental stations, and some banks use it to help customers find the nearest surcharge-free ATMs.

One of our clients — an amusement park — recently used location data in a new and particularly interesting and effective manner. They pinpointed areas of the park where cellular-network connectivity was poor and then brought in the phone company to fix those dead zones. So, they not only used location data to help their customers, but also to actively improve the overall customer experience in the park. While this use of location services was completely invisible to the customers, it certainly helped to create a more delightful park experience.

Whether you’re marketing a chain of retail stores, an entertainment venue, or any other product or service, location marketing has the potential to engage your customers in powerful ways. Stay away from the fluff and focus on the real upsides, and you can turn micro and macro location-marketing strategies into loyal, long-term, and absolutely delighted customers.

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