Location: The future of mobile marketing

Location is rapidly becoming one of the most important data points in marketing campaigns. No longer can brands and advertisers settle for âjustâ age, gender, and social characteristics information, but marketers are now focussing their attention on interacting locally with a progressively mobile generation of users. As a result, location-based advertising is poised to take the mobile medium by storm in 2011 and beyond, providing a channel that can engage brands with consumers in new and exciting ways. With the ability to tie mobile vouchers, coupons and promotions into a consumerâs real time location, location-based advertising is not only creating brand awareness; it is driving sales. Evolution time The evolution of mobile technologies, the growth of new platforms combined with our need to interact and consume information locally whilst on the go, makes it clear that the proliferation of mobile location-based advertising is just around the corner. Mobile handsets have become adept at serving a multitude of uses and unlike many other personal electronic devices, they are rarely switched off and never stray more than a few feet from their owners. In deploying mobile-centric, location-aware advertising campaigns, advertisers are tapping into the one device that matters. ABI Research predicts that businesses will spend $1.8 billion on location specific campaigns in 2015 as part of their overall mobile marketing budgets. Mobile phones are simply better positioned for storing coupons and vouchers as well as providing time sensitive location-based offers. In an age of countless irrelevant adverts, location is providing a clear differentiator to marketers by localising their campaigns. Mobile operators are of course an integral part of the mobile advertising picture as they have a wealth of valuable user specific information such as age, gender, and social characteristics not to mention the specific model of handsets that users own. Coupling all of this with live location data makes for a powerful tool in the advertiserâs arsenal. Immersive or intrusive? Although mobile rich media can be an incredibly immersive experience, it can also be considered intrusive by consumers if adverts are served at the wrong time or are of little interest. While the use of location in campaigns increases the chance of adverts being perceived as useful and informative, agencies are further increasing accuracy by allowing users to freely share their interests and even location. It may seem odd that end users are willing to voluntarily share this type of information with advertisers, but for a generation used to sharing their thoughts on the internet, this is a logical next step. Advertising campaigns that incorporate location-based information can provide advertisers with a better ROI through razor-sharp targeting. Campaigns can be highly targeted to specific mobile users, when they are in specific locations. For example, providing users with Burger King adverts and coupons for venues in their vicinity as they search for food and dining-related information. Location-based information integrated into an advertising campaign can also mean intelligent campaign management as campaigns can be flexible and adapt to changes on-the-fly. Campaigns can also be tiered and offer different experiences to different users. Location-aware advertising and marketing campaigns that also incorporate social media activity, such as tweets and check-ins on Facebook Places, are making for very engaging cross-platform promotions. Social media + location Full integration between location information and social communities can further increase the effectiveness of location-based advertising, weaving in word-of-mouth, viral effects, and recommendations from friends, all powered by the context of real time location. Projects of this type can be used as a launch pad to build brand-loyal mobile and online communities. A good example is a recent VisitBritain campaign, launched by the British Tourist Authority aimed at promoting tourism within the UK, building upon Facebook Places. The campaign runs a daily top 50 list of attractions in the UK using crowd sourced data, based on check-ins on Facebook Places. Not only is this organic, and entirely user generated it also encourages attractions to improve their ranking. It illustrates that location can be used in a variety of original ways, provide engaging content and intuitive campaigns. By using social media, the campaign has also been able to be extremely cost effective as users are the ones providing the data. The logical next step will be to include location-aware mobile vouchers that build upon the user-generated list. As mobile services become better connected and deeply embedded into our lives, Telmap predicts that location-based advertising is going to boom, and be perceived as useful, helpful information rather than just another ad.

For more information visit:

http://global.telmap.com