In marketing, the main challenge is always about delivering your marketing message and campaigns to the right target audience. To do this, you need to know where their locations are and this is made possible today through the use of smartphones.
Get to the heart of consumers
Like it or not, customers today use their smartphones (and other mobile devices) to ‘Check-in’ when they are on a certain premise like a restaurant, building or such. They also use smartphones to search for businesses around the vicinity. Google My Business, Facebook Places, Yelp and Zomato are perhaps the 4 most prominent names in this segment.
How this will affect your business?
The equation is simple. With location-based marketing, you get better and more efficient reach. And what more, you can measure how effective this marketing tool is for your business as well. With location-based marketing, your customers will find out about you, what you have to offer, where is your exact location and how to reach you. On the other hand, you can reach back and tell them about any special offers or limited-time promotions since they are already around your area.
The numbers don’t lie
Location-based marketing has been growing so rapidly in recent years mainly because consumers are relying on online apps to help them decide where to go in a certain location:
- It was reported that Yelp had more than 160 million reviews in 2018 of which it received more than 70 million unique visitors on the mobile platform.
- Facebook reported an average of about 1.5 billion active users daily in 2018.
How it works?
Location-based marketing is also known as geo-targeted marketing or place-based marketing where your marketing messages can reach customers (or potential ones) who are physically present around your vicinity. This is done through connection with smartphones (and devices) through services offered by location-based firms. These firms specialize in providing such information through GPS or other forms of data-enabled services. They include:
- Google My Business – The biggest search engine in the world, it comes with a short profile of your business and integrated through Google Map.
- Facebook for Business – The Check-in feature is among the most popular and renowned. When anyone ‘checks in’ to your business, you get more visits and increases your reach significantly.
- Zomato – Web-based service where customers give ratings and reviews mostly for food and beverage businesses. In every review, a page is generated by Zomato and this becomes the basis for customers searching for any F&B outlets around certain areas.
- Yelp – Like Zomato, Yelp works quite the same way but it covers more business areas like medical services, saloons, workshops, etc.
- Advertising.com.my/shop – A platform for all sorts of local advertising platforms.
Who should use and why?
The most suitable businesses that should use location-based marketing would be the small and medium enterprises that rely heavily on their physical stores to operate. This helps businesses in a lot of ways including:
- Economical – It is low-cost and at times even free of charge.
- Target audience – A great way to reach your target market as they are in the same location.
- Reviews – When your customers review your service, you can gauge what they are looking for and what they are after. Not all reviews are good and that is where you can improve.
- Leads – You generate new leads and create more awareness among people who are searching for similar businesses.
- Performance – You get to measure the success (or failure) of your listed business.
