Question: what is the one thing that marketers always strive to improve?
Answer: their understanding of the target customer.
As a business, understanding the customer should always be one of your primary concerns. It’s what makes or breaks a marketing strategy; and in that sense, it’s the key to winning more business.
Today, we’ll discuss a topic that is often slept on in the marketing world: location intelligence.
Whether it’s done to attract new clients or to provide more services to your existing customers, learning how to use location intelligence software is an extremely effective way to ensure marketing success.
What is Location Intelligence?
Location intelligence is the key to knowing what the consumer wants. It’s usually obtained using geographical information system (GIS) tools; and it provides marketers with useful data that can be used across a wide range of activities.
To find location intelligence for your business, you’ll use a process called location analytics, which is using location data from your customers to visualize and identify trends in the market.
The ways to use location analytics for marketing are endless and can be applied in any business. In this specific article, we will focus on location analytics for marketing purposes.
How Does Location-Based Marketing Work?
Location data is usually pulled from a spreadsheet of your current customers, or perhaps your business locations. By using a special tool to visualize and analyze the locations that matter to you, your customers, and your business, you can gain a better understanding of your target customer and what they want.
When really big companies use location data, it’s usually pulled from the mobile devices of their consumers. The entire process is completely anonymized, so there’s never any personal details shared. Sensors are utilized to pinpoint the devices; and, with a combination of sensors in place, there’s generally a high level of accuracy and additional scalability.
Taking Marketing to the Next Level
With location intelligence software, you can learn more about your customers than you ever imagined. Here are a few ways to use location analytics in your marketing strategy.
Location-Based Segmentation
Every business should put effort into segmenting their audience to maximize their advertising budget. If you are throwing out too large of a net, you are going to waste money. Instead, you want to make sure the right message gets to the appropriate audience. Up until now, a lot of this segmentation required testing and hypothesizing.
Having location data allows you to build accurate segments, which can become a critical element in your advertising plan.
Let’s say you want to find out where to place a billboard for your company. Instead of simply placing a billboard where you think it might do well, you can put addresses from your past and current customers to work.
By plugging this data into a program like Maptive’s heat mapping tool, you can remove the guesswork and see exactly where most of your customers live. With this intelligence, you are better equipped to make an informed decision on where to place your billboard.
This is just one of the many uses for location analytics tools. When marketers start incorporating location into their strategy, it quickly becomes one of the most valuable resources available.
Location-Based Targeting
While having location data is vital to your marketing efforts, it becomes even more powerful when you have the information in real-time. This data allows you to market at the moment, especially with mobile users. Imagine how much more of a conversion you could see when you reach that prospect during the time that they are already considering a related purchase.
For example, with mobile data obtained through an iOS app, you can alert a user when they get within a certain radius of your location. Send them a message with a CTA telling them why they should stop in at your business.
You can deliver this message through a push notification with a third-party app, or feed the data into media buying tools that offer the ads through programmatic media. As long as you reach your audience in real-time, you catch them in a relevant moment.
Furthermore, you will be able to analyze the engagement and conversion rates to have a better understanding of what works. With this insight, you will be able to optimize your future marketing efforts.
Personalization with Location Data
Spatial analytics also allows you to personalize your content with greater accuracy. You want to create a relationship between your brand and the user. When you have location intelligence, you have a better, more well-rounded understanding of your target audience. With this data, you can customize your message and make it entirely personal.
More than half of consumers expect personalization from businesses. It’s time for you to give them what they want and pull ahead of your competition.
Winning with Location Intelligence
In 2020, technology will only continue to grow and become more innovative. To make the most of it for your business, try mapping excel data with tools like Maptive. You will likely learn some exciting information about your consumers. With the right tools in place, you can manage massive data sets with ease.
Then, take a shot at implementing some new marketing strategies with the help of location-based intelligence. By bringing everything to one central examination point, you can glean insights faster than ever before. With a little effort, you can engage with your consumers at the right time and in the best location.
