Tweak Your Biz » Technology » Location Based Mobile Marketing: The New Reality

Location Based Mobile Marketing: The New Reality

by Mick O'Dwyer on April 14th, 2011
8 Comments



By 2014 there will be more smartphones connecting to the Internet than desktop computers, so what will this move away from the desktop environment mean for your business?

For a start it will mean you should already be looking at how your business markets itself towards a far more mobile audience. It’s already estimated that half of local searches are done on mobile devices. Mobile tags that can serve up coupons are a growing phenomenon, much in the same way that traditional discount coupons helped businesses attract customers and build loyalty. This rise in mobile marketing is set to increase rapidly over the coming years, and first movers into this marketing arena will be hard to displace – as long as they progressively build on their presence.

With the rise of smartphones and GPS comes the potential for an always connected audience, one that can be reached at any location and not just at their PC desktop. Geo-Location focussed companies such as Where.com, Gowalla and Foursquare have been leading the way with location based services and, of course, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter have the brand recognition and installed user base to push things on further.

The always-on mobile consumer deserves serious consideration, connect with them via local proximity-based marketing and you connect with their social groups. Within those social groups there are usually a subset of connections who, aside from the social network, also inhabit a similar geographical  space. Proximity based marketing can help businesses build reputations not just on referrals, but on their location.

Have you thought about how to maximise your business’ location in a mobile world?
Do you see proximity marketing as something worth exploring?



Category: mobile technology, Modern business, social media, Trends

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

The Author:

Mick O'Dwyer has been working in creative environments since the late 1980s, as a graphic designer, photographer, creative director in an advertising agency, and senior frontend web designer. In 2002 he co-founded www.Nexus451.com, a web technologies company with a strong focus on building integrated Cloud & SaaS systems, efficient business process web applications, and Salesforce CRM development solutions. http://www.nexus451.com

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  • http://twitter.com/fredchannel Fred

    Mobile marketing and location based services have a huge potential indeed. As everything new, there are only a few early adopters trying it (compared to the big amount of companies that prefer to stay in the comfort zone).nMany see location based as something that purely applies to retail, however it’s go several different uses. We came up with a short screencast showing for example, how to do business networking with Foursquare http://youtu.be/RfEk4W-nMH8 . nWe can also say that check-in services are still making its first steps since the badges and points are just a game. I would love to see soon, mobile check-in for useful stuff (yes, it’s possible!) We came up with a few good ideas in a post called: “How would you add simple value to mobile check-in?” http://bit.ly/bfFFXu

  • http://www.tweakyourbiz.com Niall Devitt

    I read somewhere that bringing the internet to the developing world is and will be done exclusively through the use of mobile technology, which very much ties in with what you are saying in this post. The potential is already big but as you point out, but it’s about to get truly enormous!

  • Roisin Bell

    It would be great to hear the experience of a business which is already using proximity marketing (via a smartphone as opposed to a sandwich board! See Anne Perez’s post: http://tweakyourbiz.com/marketing/2011/04/07/place-and-time-promotions-in-2011/ ) here in Ireland. Does anyone have any experience to relate?

  • http://twitter.com/nexus451 nexus451

    I was talking to a guy who’d been involved with telecoms in Tanzania and his impression was that they’ve almost skipped ahead of developed countries in some regards. His anecdotal views were that they pretty much use mobiles for everything, especially payments – restaurants, bus tickets, yadda yadda.

  • http://twitter.com/nexus451 nexus451

    Obviously proximity marketing will be big, and tailoring local advertising to mobile users profiles (and preferences) will be another step towards targeted marketing – knowing 75% of mobile users in a specific area at a specific time are male rather than female could trigger one type of advertisement to be displayed on active billboards. These are all logical progressions, the technological obstacles are already being R&D’d by various companies.nnPersonally, as far as my own interests go, I think mobile gaming using real-time real-world gps feedback and augmented reality will be massive. You won’t be playing games on your smartphone, you’ll be using your smartphone’s camera to gain access to an alternate reality layer that sits on top of what you see around you.

  • http://onlineretailmarketing.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/location-based-marketing/ location based marketing

    I appreciate the ideas on the advance marketing skills. Getting the local customer is an easy task but they need to be aware of the services available to them, for this location based marketing is a good approach. Thanks for sharing the post.
       

  • http://www.couponconnections.com.au/ coupon code

    Hey This is some great thing never tought that it could work like that, good job! 

  • Kelly Jones

    Fantastic post. Here’s a tool that lets your create location-based applications such as Distance Search, Map Mashups, and Automatic Geocoding without coding http://blog.caspio.com/web_apps/create-location-based-applications-with-caspio/

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