Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Hanifin Loyalty blog.
The Location Based Marketing Summit held recently in New York blended strategic and tactical insights about location-based marketing techniques. Most of the speakers observed that the discipline is still in its earliest stages.
Ian Schafer, CEO for Deep Focus, considers the smartphone to be "the next generation loyalty card," with targeted deals and discounts being available upon check-in (or perhaps even without a digital check-in). By way of example, he highlighted ShopKick, which has a hardware platform that pushes reward currency to the consumer as soon as they enter the merchant's store (without the consumer even having to check-in or make a purchase).
Overall,
it was agreed that location-based applications can at least provide:
- People - other users who might have something in common with the user;
- Content - messages or offers based on what the user likes that is at/near her location;
- Time and Place - targeted, timely messages or offers based on where the user is right now;
- Context - communications based on prior behavior, as tracked
by the location-based device.
The potential of location-based data is that it can drive better business decisions by adding additional dimensions (i.e., time and place) to what is otherwise known about each consumer's behavior. One great example cited was the Microsoft Bing 'Home Turf Finder' for the World Cup, which identified certain bars in New York City as "home turf" for fans of a particular team. The determinations were based in part on editorial sources such as Thrillist, but were mostly derived from 'heat maps' of consumers who had checked in or tweeted their support as well as their location.
Several speakers also noted Google's recent announcement that 30 percent of mobile searches and 20 percent of all internet searches have local intent, and said that all of the major players (e.g., Facebook, Google, and even wireless carriers) were already focusing on local information.
There was also considerable discussion of Groupon, although some panelists expressed doubts that the "deep discount, deal of the day" model provides sustainable customer growth. Speakers agreed, however, that geo-targeting adds value by increasing both relevance and personalization.
Overall, panelists agreed that there is great demand for marketers to engage with consumers at "the right place and the right time, all the time." Mobile couponing, despite being a fragmented space, seems to have taken hold. As a result, one area in which technological developments are anticipated is indoor navigation, where GPS signals are sometimes degraded and are not designed to be accurate enough for navigation within a store.
Finally, the issue of consumer privacy arose in almost every session. John Nicholson of law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman concluded that "the more value a marketer delivers, the more information a consumer is likely to share," and that an application that seems to exist only for marketing purposes is unlikely to gain the consumer's trust.
Discussion Questions: What does the future hold for location-based marketing? What are the potential benefits for brands in understanding consumers' local shopping behaviors?