There’s a new kid on the analytics block. Or, more accurately, analytics is now able to precisely locate new kids based on which block they happen to be in!
According to a study, 53% of enterprises say that Location Intelligence is either critically important or very important to achieving their goals for 2020. This figure has undoubtedly increased in 2021.
Location-based data is one of the most fascinating and valuable sets of information enterprises gather to feed into their digital marketing initiatives. The field has become much more functional, and use-cases have exploded as customers have become omnichannel. As they carry their smartphones everywhere while logged into many apps that span their desktop and mobile, brands now have access to a plethora of precious information about their interests. Once this information plugs into geographical data, it adds a helpful layer to your business’s data assets. This information is then worked upon in a process called geo-analytics. This data informs actions that influence people, events, assets, transactions, and more. It helps to unlock new insights and helps develop a deeper understanding of different processes and trends.
Benefits of Location Analytics
In simple terms, it helps to know where your customers reside for you to market to them efficiently. Knowing this can help you decrease business costs, locate new prospects, and implement data-driven changes. Location analytics is also highly visual and easy for non-experts to derive insights. These can be communicated to different stakeholders in the organization and help various departments and teams to make sense of this information. To put it succinctly, here are three main benefits:
- Real-World Context
When a person likes something on the internet, it’s not always authentically reflective of that individual’s authentic tastes and needs. But data based on location is potentially accurate to a higher degree. And unlike other sets of data, there is a touch of real-world authenticity to the information generated by this location analytics. From discovery and purchase to engagement and retention, location-based marketing has shown to be effective across customer lifecycles. This information answers questions related to ‘where’, giving a highly physical and realistic element to any other piece of information.
Once this information is collected, marketers can define how this information influences other data. That enriches the overall data insights, as data teams and end-users assess other data points along with this info.
- Hyper-Local Information
Going ‘glocal’ has emerged as an exciting trend in today’s marketing world. And hyperlocal marketing has always been important. That’s because more marketers realize the importance of collecting information based on location and targeting subsequent ads to prospects who live in those areas. This adds a touch of relevance and personalization to communications. It also helps connect with your audience on a much more “familiar” level. Brands and marketers can understand their audiences on a deeper level once they can assess various factors related to geospatial information. The information can reveal a person’s food preferences, media, shopping destination, and even preferred language.
Additionally, it’s easy to create beautiful visualizations for Geographic Information Systems (GIS). After doing so, marketers can communicate with business users, data scientists, developers, and more. That improves information management, aids in better collaborative processes across teams, and powers more informed decisions.
- Actionable Insights
Most importantly, this information can be used to create insightful geographical analysis, which can then be transformed into a plan of action using predictive analytics. Marketers can create comprehensive time-bound campaigns with all this information and feel more confident that their efforts will reap the results they’re hoping for. With this added element to their data set, they will surely be able to reach out to more people with higher efficiency, relevance, and effectiveness rate.
How Do Marketers and Brands Use Location Analytics?
At the most basic level, brands can use geo-targeting by tapping the power of Google. By doing this, whenever a person types into the Google Search Engine the name of a product relevant to that brand, Google will tap into the location data based on the IP address of the electronic device. It will then show that person shops for brands relevant to them in their geographic vicinity. For example, if a person types in ‘Art Shop’ into Google, they will be directed to a list of art shops in their area.
Marketers can use geofencing by targeting users who are physically near their stores. For example, if someone has been viewing a product online, they can get a push notification on their device that the product they’re looking for is available at a store near where they happen to be at the time. That gently persuades them to visit that store.
Beaconing is when stores place sensors in aisles in their shop to send customers various offers while they browse products. A grocery store can use beacons when customers are in the ice-cream aisle to send them special deals on ice-cream bars.
Mobile targeting is widespread today. Social media ads, SMS, and push notifications target users based on their location data. They help encourage visits to a store, a restaurant, or an event near to them. This is done using location-based marketing (GPS), in-app marketing, proximity marketing, and more.
Geo-conquesting is particularly interesting! A famous example is how Burger King uses this feature. Burger King encouraged all their customers to download their app. After this, whenever a customer would go 600-feet near a Mcdonald’s, they’re sent a notification for a Burger King Promotion. The app would send a promo for a 1 cent whopper, trying to navigate customers to the nearest Burger King instead.
Location analytics drive tactics that can increase the immediate foot traffic, deliver more relevant ads, help drive customers away from the competition, and help create a better user experience overall. This is the here and now of analytics.
