The New Age of Targeting: Real-time Location Marketing

Over the past year, we’ve seen dozens of publications tout “location-based” as their big 2010 trend prediction – we get it, there’s tons of fun things to do with them socially – but how can one squeeze the marketing juice out of it?

Until very recently, targeted advertising meant devising endless keyword lists in an attempt to serve banner ads where your potential consumer spent time online.

Yet guesswork is quickly diminishing – consumers progressively inform the world of their interests, activities and what they’re up to in real-time. What’s more, with the quick improvements of GPS technology, marketers can now look to serve advertising not merely on a site that fits their audience demographics but where each and every consumer is physically located in real-time.

As with anything social media, this growing trend can help your brand engage with your consumers as well as listen to them even more attentively. The key, as always, is to understand how these tools can help your brand add value to your audience’s lives.

Targeting Customers by Location

1. Hit Them Where it Matters Offline

Beyond targeting audience by keywords, brands can now access potential customers not only away from the computer screen – but as they’re mere feet away from their physical stores.

Your potential consumer may be browsing stores at a mall, strolling around bored, or vaguely considering buying new shoes. They may even be looking at a competitor store’s window nearby. Why not ping them with a potential reward for visiting your store – just around the block?

Special notification on Foursquare

GPS-based social networking phone applications allow you to do just that. Foursquare’s push notifications alert passersby of specials near them – thought of picking up coffee at your regular deli? Your phone may inform you that the deli next door is giving coffee out for free (and it could even become your new “regular”).  Moreover, proximity allows for time-limited promotions to create hype and increase the likelihood of impulse buying. “Come within the next 25 minutes and win a t-shirt!”

2. Hit Them Where it Matters Online

Location-based technologies have also increased expectations for relevancy of search results from consumers and upped the competition for targeted results. This means companies need to take advantage of ways to show up in search queries featuring specific locations – or their competitors will.  With Google Places, for $25/month, local businesses can buy “tags” which enable their listings to show up in local searches, including in Google maps.  Additionally, businesses can add real-time updates to their Places page and offer printable coupons to their customers.

Learn more about Google Places by reading this great post on Search Engine Land.

Understanding the value of geo-targeted search can also help businesses identify relevant local trends associated with their products or brands in order to optimize their offerings to what the local population craves.

And remember – search is no longer constrained to major engines like Google. As such, serving your audience location-appropriate information is just as valuable on Facebook and Twitter. On Twitter, this means tagging tweets with location-specific hashtags and, with the new Twitter Places, tagging tweets with specific places. On Facebook, targeting your Page’s status messages by language location will help keep your posts relevant for fans and make them feel like they’re being addressed specifically. Last but not least, Facebook’s ambitious new Search initiatives – including tailored recommendations to users – are also here in the name of relevancy. Making sure your brand pages are Search Engine Optimized (SEO) and that you have specified location within the Open Graph protocol is also a necessity for staying relevant. Check out our recent post on Facebook Likes and SEO for more info.

3. Welcome Visitors

Beyond luring distracted pedestrians and separating your store from the competition, location-based services also give brand the opportunity to make walking through their doors an event in-and-of-itself. Gowalla’s recent partnership with Eye-Fi could render you the lucky winner of a Wi-Fi card just for checking in to BestBuy.

With Foursquare, you can offer customers a reward for merely checking in with a discount code to present at the checkout counter.

Loopt, yet location-based social app, has its own rewards program called Loopt Star. Gap is currently offering a 25% discount to customers who check in twice to any of their stores using their services.

4. Reward Loyalty

Think frequent flier on Prozac. While collecting miles for future benefits is not all that exciting – and only feels rewarding upon the exchange for an upgrade after thousands of dollars spent – location-based services make the journey as exciting as the destination. On Foursquare, being the most regular customer to check in to a location earns you “Mayor” status – a position that allows for bragging on its own terms. Stores can also offer mayors “Specials” for being so loyal, such as discounts or freebies beyond the inherent feeling of ownership.

Perhaps the most quoted case study thus far in this realm is Starbucks’s Foursquare special offer, which greeted mayors with the following push notification:

Most of these services also enable the creation of branded virtual pins or badges that customers can get if they check in to your venue a certain number of times.

Foursquare badges

In fact, Starbucks has also partnered with Brightkite to offer engaged consumers branded badges and virtual goods, redeemable for deals and drinks.

5. Take Their Hand

Given we now have the opportunity to reach customers in their exact physical location, why not take them for a little tour á la your brand? If you own a sports store, perhaps your customers may be interested in running tracks, parks or scenic views nearby. If your brand represents the epitome of luxury, potential customers may be interested in the highest quality tea parlor around or your CEO’s favorite hangouts in the city.

Bravo, for example, leveraged its connection with celebrities and created “Bravolebrity Tips”  – a Foursquare guide to frequenting places their hosts and stars love. In fact, they took this a step further and created their very own iPhone app with Guides by Bravo, filled with guides to approaching a city like a real celeb.

Along the same lines, The Washington Post created short guides for nights out in DC using Gowalla’s Trips feature.

6. Be The Life of The Party

People love meeting others who share an interest with them – why can’t that interest be your brand or your products? Create a community for your fans beyond online social networks by organizing offline gatherings via location-based websites like Meetup.com.

These don’t have to be directly about YOU, but should cater to your target audience’s interests. If you sell vitamins, sponsoring local running groups could be a viable option, for example.

A useful tool for monitoring all your campaigns across the many applications available is Geotoko, a platform that aggregates campaign details and check-in stats from Foursquare, Twitter and Gowalla and Yelp and Loopt. (Thank you Michael Martin “@googleandblog”!)

Monitoring Buzz by Location

Whereas Twitter may let you converse with a specific customer via @replies and Facebook allows you to monitor customer service requests closely, location-based services enable indirect listening to your consumers where it matters. Brands may – and should – listen closely to what cuts can use these technologies to listen closely to what customers are saying about specific locations relevant to their stores or products in order to optimize performance and even join the conversation seamlessly.

1. Twitter Locations

With Twitter’s new locations-based trending topics, marketers can now identify important topics of conversation by community rather than merely broadcast general tweets. This means conversations will become increasingly accessible for brands to join, as we tailor our content to Twitter users’ interests, and that you can listen to what people in the proximity of your business are saying. Twitter’s Advanced search feature also allows you to include keywords and filter by location.

2. Advanced Google blog search by location

What are local bloggers saying about you? Make sure to include “either one of” various location keywords along with your brand or product keyword to find out.

Advanced Google Blog Search

3. Hyper-local blogger outreach

What local bloggers are saying about you may be easily influenced via targeted hyper-local blogger outreach initiatives.  Find out who is interested in your products by location and develop long-term relationships with them. For more information on blogger outreach best practices, check out this awesome blog post.

4. Yelp and Google Near Me

Yelp has long been specifically dedicated to providing information on businesses – submitted by consumers themselves. With the ability to sort by location and search for restaurants and stores within walking distance, it is an invaluable source of information for consumers on the go.

Google Near Me launched this year and works in a very similar fashion – make sure you’re listed and monitor reviews.

Find out what is being said about your specific stores, if applicable, as well as what the reputation of stores near you and other competing shops is in comparison. Use these comments to train a specific store’s staff for improved customer service or offer deals and products tailored to the needs of customers in that specific neighborhood.

How are YOU using location-based technologies toward your marketing strategies? Share your ideas below and let us know of any other cool examples we may have missed!

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