Battleship Marketing
Ever wonder how Facebook knows to serve you Red Sox ads when you are in Boston? Or how about Dunkin Donuts sending ads to your phone after you grab your morning coffee? The reality is location-based services (LBS) have revolutionized the marketing world for companies across every industry. Cutting edge technologies allow marketers to pinpoint consumers based on detailed geographic coordinates, not too different from those of the board game Battleship. A recent article on The Digital Nirvana explores this new concept, dissecting the social media and mobile device components that allow it to reach the levels of prominence the practice has today.
One of the primary features of LBS is the GPS feature seen on smartphones. Unbeknownst to many users, this technology does a lot more than tracking your route to Foxwoods Casino. When paired up with location-based social media sites like Foursquare and Facebook Places, LBS kick in to deliver key information for marketers on the backend. Once the consumer has established their geographic presence via these sites, businesses can target them with location-specific discounts, promotions, and advertisements. What the consumer sees as a form of entertainment adds up to so much more for marketers. Participation in games with LBS provides businesses with unprecedented, unbounded, and immediate access, virtually revolutionizing the relationship between the company and the consumer.
At bfsdaniels | copycop, we have found location-based services to be highly valuable in more avenues than one. Foursquare is a perfect platform to communicate with the customers of our four copycop stores. Understanding that each individual store is unique in terms of both clientele and atmosphere, we can easily create marketing material that is specific to each. In addition, customers can use mobile GPS technology to easily send printing projects to the nearest copycop store, all done painlessly from their smartphones.
Undoubtedly, location-based services have changed the way businesses interact with their consumers, and vice versa. When partnered with engaging social media sites, LBS are mutually beneficial—the consumer trades their location to the business for a special deal. The “trade-off” architecture of this concept is what makes this technology so effective and increasingly popular. Having said that, we think LBS is definitelyhere to stay.
Source: http://thedigitalnirvana.com/2011/04/location-based-services-whats-it-all-about/?utm_source=whattheythink&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WhatTheyThink+Daily