Location-based mobile marketing not only creates opportunities for businesses but benefits your consumers. Mobile is part of our lives today and with the effectiveness of location-based marketing programs it is important that businesses leverage the tools available at their disposal.

Location based marketing brings context into the marketing equation and is the perfect tool to leverage time and place. With a little planning prior to your mobile application development and the proper communication with your iPhone app developer or Android app developer and you business will be able to communicate personalized communications with your customers at just the right time and in just the right place. Using geo-targeting, geo-fencing and beacons you will be able to enhance your customers’ experiences and improve your revenues.

Geo-targeting, geo-fencing and beacons can enhance customers’ experiences | Photo: CAFNR (Flikr)

According to Cisco, 61% of mobile application users have an improved opinion of a brand when it offers a good mobile experience. They also found the impact was highest when utilized location-based programs.

If you are not familiar with the difference between geo-fencing and geo-targeting or don’t know what a beacon is here is a quick overview.

Leveraging customer records that customers are generally willing to opt-in to in order to improve mobile experiences, businesses are able to dramatically improve relationships with their customers. This data allows businesses the ability to deliver a personalized message based on a user interests. Geo-targeting involves delivering specific content based on the location of a user. This location is easily determined based on the location of their smart phone. Imagine you run a chain of sporting good stores and want to increase the effectiveness of your marketing. Geo-targeting allows you to deliver content that will likely be of interest to users depending on their location, for instance you might want to showcase sales on surfboards in California locations while sending out push notifications to Arizona users highlighting hiking boots and mountain bikes.

These marketing efforts can be augmented with a geo-fencing program that allows notifications to be sent whenever users are withing 5 miles of one of your locations or perhaps withing 5 miles of your competitor. Studies have shown ads to be delivered within 5 miles of a retail location to be highly effective due to the contextual relevance.

Once customers are in your retail location beacons are tremendously effective for delivering content while with the store. Beacon technology allows you to be notified who a customer is when they walk through the door. While this customer walks through your store notifications can be delivered based on their location within the store and data regarding their interests, making for a truly effective engagement program. Customers will appreciate that you can anticipate their needs and deliver the content they are looking for without even asking for it.

This all leads to a scenario where a customer researches a product via your app one day and then receives a notifications from your business when they are driving by your location attracting them in. Once that customer enters your store your store manager can great them by name and your mobile app could remind them of the product they were looking at a couple days ago.

Remember that customers will not be engaged if you messaging is not relevant and that location is an important factor in relevance. The better you can engage your customers with relevent data the more likely they will be to use your application on a regular basis.

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Technology has transformed marketing. Yet, in a world of what seems to be boundless possibilities it is important to to remember that technology is a tool and that it must be used to improve the customer experience if it is going to be useful.

In other words, if you are just using technology for the sake of using technology with no real plan how to improve the customer experience, you run the risk of turning away customers.

Your approach should keep the consumer in mind | Photo: Vincent Lee (Flikr)

In the mobile age, it is more important than ever to take an approach that starts with the consumer. What are your customers’ needs? Work towards addressing those needs with your iPhone application development or Android application development project.

Don’t get so caught up in what you want to accomplish that your app fails to resonate with users, the app stores are full of apps that are rarely used that were created to drive corporate agendas.

Popular applications that engage users understand consumer behavior and fulfill the needs consumers have.

Be customer centric

Make sure you build your application to improve your customers’ shopping experiences, a key component of this is personalization. One of the greatest opportunities with mobile devices is personalization. Consumers are generally more willing than you may expect to give you access to some personal information if it is used to improve their user experience. In fact, these days consumers basically expect that your are tailoring the experience and messaging to them and their preferences. Apps should offer unique personal value, recommendations and in general, improve service to consumers.

Improve the in-store experience

Physical stores have had a similar feel for years, but now you can improve your customers’ in-store experience with mobile. Consumers now expect to be able to find answers instantly and on the showroom floor is no exception. Analyze the in-store experience you offer can compare it to what mobile savvy customers expect to find areas you can improve in-store shopping. Modern consumers use mobile to read reviews, compare prices, check availability and more. Mobile is the perfect medium to deliver personalized content to consumers at just the right time in the right location.

Have a coordinated program

Evaluate how your in-store program relates to you web site and mobile apps and how they all fix together. Remember that the path to purchase has changed and that consumers now follow a path that could be both online and offline. A coordinated effort is needed to makes sure consumers have seamless experiences. Consumers may start shopping on your app or in your store and complete the transaction later. Make sure that you have the systems in place to allow consumers to do this as this is how people shop now.

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