Marketing InfographicsMobile and Tablet Marketing

Location-Based Marketing: Geo-Fencing and Beacons

While I was up at the IRCE in Chicago, I spoke with a company that described to me their platform that bridged online and offline customer interaction.

Here’s an example: You walk into your favorite retail outlet. As soon as you walk through the door, the sales manager greets you by name, discusses the product you were researching earlier in the day on the Internet, and shows you some additional products you might be interested in.

What is Location-Based Marketing?

Location-based marketing is the ultimate tool for nailing time and place: allowing businesses to promote their products and services in order to find the right market placement, and for their customers to receive tailored treatment based on their interests and needs. These include geo-targeting, geo-fencing, and the newest player on the field, beaconing. Through push notifications and promotional pop-up messages, these services allow businesses to leverage their strongpoints to enhance their consumers’ experience and boost their revenues.

It’s here. Companies are building unified customer records that match the mobile device you use with any browser you open and are logged into on their site. Combining proximity-based strategies with mobile applications and robust customer data hubs is resulting in some amazing technology that will transform the online-offline relationship between customers and retailers.

Sales are down at a nearby store, so they target advertising across social and mobile to reach you with some offers. You click-through on the store site and do some browsing and see a couple of products of interest. You put them in the shopping cart, but you don’t make the purchase.

A few days later, you drive within a few miles of the store. Up pops a text message or mobile push alert letting you know there are no lines at the store and since you’re a great customer, you could stop by for an instant discount.

What Is Geo-Fencing and What Are Beacons?

The mobile application on your phone has Bluetooth beacon technology and the store’s app installed. As you near the front door of the store, the system identifies you and instantly sends a notification to the store manager. The retailer opens up their mobile application and sees your photo, your browsing history, your purchases, as well as your latest social engagements. The relationship was just taken to a new level!

So… you were geo-targeted with advertising, geo-fenced with a text message, and then connected in the store through the beacon technology. Pretty cool stuff!

Here’s a great infographic from Apps Builder that describes the differences, along with some benefits and results.

Location Based Marketing Infographic

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is CMO of OpenINSIGHTS and the founder of the Martech Zone. Douglas has helped dozens of successful MarTech startups, has assisted in the due diligence of over $5 bil in Martech acquisitions and investments, and continues to assist companies in implementing and automating their sales and marketing strategies. Douglas is an internationally recognized digital transformation and MarTech expert and speaker. Douglas is also a published author of a Dummie's guide and a business leadership book.

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