Test, measure, and optimize your marketing strategy with location data
Did you know that a whopping 75% of retailers within the United States have already implemented location technology into their marketing strategies? The result, according to a recent Proximity Directory report, has been an average 9% increase in profits and an astounding 175% ROI.
How can marketers take advantage? Below we’ve outlined ten ways location technology can be used to optimize decision-making and improve marketing strategies.
1) Building Audiences
Connecting people with places
Using location intelligence to build audiences improves your targeting efforts because data derived from the physical world provides powerful insight into consumer interests and psychographic profiles.
For example, location technology can help you:
- Track visitation patterns. By looking at where your audience has been in the past, you can start to build a better picture of visitation patterns, which can help inform future patterns to build highly custom audiences for targeting.
- Get more from your OOH strategy. By geofencing your OOH assets you can begin to create audiences based on their exposure to your billboards and later use that information to retarget them across all their devices.
- Refine audience segmentation. Create groups of loyalists vs. competitive audiences, regular visitors vs. lapsed visitors, and so on. Are your consumers active gym-goers or visitors of local recreation areas? Are they often seen at natural food stores or big-box stores? This provides you with a way to get to a granular level on your audiences based on their habits.
2) Targeting
Personalize the marketing message
Use location technology to help refine or expand your targeting efforts based on audience insights gleaned from data. Do your consumers often visit GNC? Does this happen before or after they workout? Do they tend to frequent major discount retail chains or do they prefer luxury department stores? Each of these segments should be served a creative experience fine-tuned to their preferences based on when and where they shop. Keep in mind this isn’t solely for media – it can be used for push marketing, SMS, email, or any other marketing channel you are using.
3) Personalization
Create a memorable experience
According to recent research from Epsilon, 80% of consumers surveyed stated that they were more likely to purchase from a brand that offered personalized experiences.
Personalization is an industry standard, and companies that implement it within their strategies will be rewarded.
For example, SmarterHQ found that brand loyalty among the Millennial demographic increased an average of 28% when they received personalized marketing content. What better way to craft these experiences than with the use of location technology, which permits businesses to deliver highly personalized messaging in real-time based on where your consumers are, right when it matters most.
4) Competitive Intelligence
Simple tech, powerful data
Are your consumers frequent patrons of your competitor? How often do they choose their services over yours?
All of this information can be used to drive decisions about your marketing strategy. This is especially the case with regards to in-store competitive intelligence and brick-and-mortar retailers. It’s crucial that you know how your competition stacks up against you, so competitive monitoring with the help of location technology is a must. For instance, Burger King utilized geo-conquesting tactics and delivered mobile coupons for one-cent Whoppers when consumers came in close proximity to McDonald’s restaurants.
While the technology drives this capability, it’s the innovative use cases that drive the value…case in point.
5) Reduce Wasted Ad Spend
Know where, know who, know what resonates
Leveraging location-based services can help reduce wasted ad spend by giving you access to audience insights and location data that can help optimize 
your decision making, thus ensuring that your marketing efforts are more effective. Furthermore, you can use information on consumer behavior to drive decisions on the creative efforts you allot to certain segments.
For example, frequent visitors can be classified as loyalists and don’t need to be served coupon ads or other price discounts to encourage them to keep visiting (see: Refine audience segmentation). Instead, opt for tactics that incentivize in other ways: Think rewards points for loyal customers or similar value exchange benefits. On the other hand, if you’re finding a certain segment of your consumers often visit competitor stores, you know that this group may benefit from a different kind of incentivization.
6) Site Selection
Break new ground
Location data can also aid site selection efforts when building new brick-and-mortar locations. Having trouble deciding on where to construct your next site? Use location insights to find ideal spots based on metrics such as foot traffic density and audience profiles in the area. Location data can also help identify the demographic and psychographic makeup of nearby residents.
7) Wayfinding with Beacon Technology
Navigate the in-store journey
A recent 2018 IDC InfoBrief found that 59% of consumers deemed “useful and relevant” navigation results as an “important” feature affecting their in-store experience. This is where micro-location technology shines. Beacon technology gives you the ability to generate real-time indoor navigation for your consumers – a feature that has been statistically proven to be preferred by consumers. Gone are the days of aimless wandering and lost sales opportunities. With micro-location technology, you can deliver real-time indoor navigation to your customers and boost efficiency, sales opportunities, conversions, and the overall customer experience.
8) Map Visitation Dwell-Time Patterns
Know the value of time spent
Location intelligence also allows you to map visitation dwell-time patterns at and within your stores. This can give you greater insight into the most effective layouts, which aisles your customers frequent and for how long, which products they prefer, how long their average shopping experience is, and the average time to check out. This gives you the ability to hyper-personalize marketing efforts and deliver time-specific messages and promotions based on location insights right when your consumers need them most.
9) Attribution
Measure your marketing efforts
Footfall measurement can help you understand the complete impact of your advertising and marketing. Did you receive an uptick in visits after exposure to your ad? Did more people open your push message when they were within close proximity to the store? How did your location-triggered push marketing efforts stack up with your batch-and-blast strategy? What was the time period between exposure and conversion? These are all questions you can answer with the help of location data. Footfall data gives insight into the impact of different channels in the customer journey. Advertisers can then utilize footfall measurement to refine their target audience and create a feedback loop that helps them maximize their spend.
10) Insights
Unlock your why and what through where
Perhaps the single most valuable trait of location technology is the profound level of insight that it offers marketers and businesses. Location technology can be used to glean countless insights that can help you improve your marketing efforts.
For example, you can use location technology to calculate the average distance consumers are traveling to your location and then identify a “sweet spot” to deliver them marketing messages such as display ads or push messages for promotions, coupons or special offers. Other information – such as where your consumers go before and after they visit your location, how frequently they visit, and your foot traffic market share – can also provide valuable insight and facilitate optimized decision making.
Bringing It All Together
There are numerous ways you can leverage the power of location to gain greater insight into your consumers and improve your marketing decisions. However, a solid strategy is key in ensuring your efforts are successful. All of the aforementioned ways location data can be used to drive value for your customers and ROI for your business are interconnected: building location-based audiences allows you to create more personalized messages – across all marketing channels – which leads to more effective targeting and reduced ad spend waste. You can later surface measurable insights to fine-tune your marketing efforts. It’s the circle of marketing.
Looking to activate a location strategy for one, two, or all of the above use cases?