What is Location-Based Marketing?

Whether it’s email marketing or push notifications, personalisation is a well-known trick used by marketers to boost your customer engagement. Recent studies have found that a personalised message can increase open rates by 27.5%! Location-based data is one of many ways to personalise your content and transform the way your users use your app. Chances are, location-based messages are already a big part of your day-to-day life and you don’t even realise it!

Isn’t it a blessing when you book an Uber on a night out and you’re not even sure where you are since everything is looking a bit hazy… but hey presto, your Uber driver turns up at exactly the spot you are at!

Or when Waze send you a useful push notification about the road closure that affects your usual commute to work...

OR (most importantly) when Tinder informs you that your chances of a match in your current location are 3 times higher… After all, Valentine's Day is fast approaching people! ❤️

Each of these apps makes very good use of location-based data and do so to enhance their user experience. This is all made possible thanks to the location-tracking abilities built into today’s smart mobile devices and is something that marketers should take advantage of, especially since 94% of millennials have been found to use location-based services.

What is location-based marketing?

Location-based marketing occurs when a brand reaches out to a particular group of customers based on their location. You might be thinking this is only really beneficial for apps that have a physical store, to offer a discount to someone within close proximity of the store, but the 3 examples used at the beginning of this blog show that this does not have to be the case. There is so much opportunity to personalise your content based on your user’s location which mainly comes down to enhancing the overall user experience. Consumers want personalisation and experiences that enhance and improve their day-to-day life. If your app gives them that then the chances are they are gonna stick around and become loyal users and advocates for your brand.

How does it work?

It’s a pretty simple process and you don’t require any other product or software apart from a marketing automation platform that supports location-based personalisation.

*Cough* Hurree…  

With this platform you simply select the location you want to target and decide who you want to target within that particular area, what message you want to send these users and when.

What Are The Benefits of Location-based Marketing?

In a world where 78% of people find push notifications irrelevant and unhelpful, it’s a pretty big deal to be able to provide your users with relevance. And what’s more relevant than your current location? One of the most effective ways to increase user engagement and customer loyalty is through giving your users valuable and personal content. Location-based personalisation helps you do just that by giving your users messages based on where they spend the most of their time and therefore makes the content feel more relevant to the people receiving them. It shows your users that you understand their needs and wants and don’t just send out the same un-personal, irrelevant message to each and every contact in your database. When push comes to shove, retaining loyal users is way more important than gaining loads of new ones that don’t stick around so building customer loyalty through high quality, valuable content should be a number one priority.

What Are The Challenges of Location-based Marketing?

As with most things in life, there are certain obstacles in place…

• The opt-in

The most significant source of location data is from your app user’s smartphones and tablets since most people don’t go anywhere without at least one of their smart devices in tow. They eat with them, sleep with them, go to work with them, go to the movies with them, even go to the toilet with them! Literally everywhere. Therefore us marketers know that this information is up-to-date and reliable. But, there is a catch...

Your app users need to agree to opt-in to share their personal information, such as location, with you. For some apps, gaining the opt-in is a requirement and without it, the app is rendered useless. For example, if a user did not allow Uber to access their location then they simply could not use the app. Gaining the opt-in can be a tricky process in itself, but by following the right guidelines you can increase your opt-in rate, ensuring the majority of your users are getting the most value out of your app.  

• Invasion of privacy

Having an app track your location at any point in time can seem a little creepy and put a lot of users off opting in to share such personal data. This is especially true for users who have never had an experience with such personalised content. That being said, once a user understands the value in how you use the likes of their location they will appreciate the personalised content. Your customers want to feel understood, not monitored. Demonstrate this and you’ll not freak them out by asking them to share their location with you.

With location, or even any personal data, you need to think seriously about the value it is bringing your user. Use this information wisely and you are sure to impress your users and increase your overall app engagement in the long-run.

If you have any questions feel free to get in touch with me directly via emma@hurree.co, and if you found this blog helpful you may also benefit from downloading our Dummies Guide to App Marketing.