Recently I got an opportunity to attend the guest lecture given by Asif Khan – Founder, of Location Based Marketing Association. Asif is a veteran tech start-up and Marketing entrepreneur with more than 20+ years of experience. He also worked with leading companies like IBM, Baxter Pharmaceuticals, Molson-Coors, Communispace, BestBuy, American Airlines, and Scotiabank.
Let’s see in brief about Location-based Marketing & How it works:
What is Location-Based Marketing & LBMA?
According to (What-is.com) Location-based marketing (LMS) is a direct marketing strategy that uses a mobile device’s location to alert the device’s owner about an offering from a nearby business.
The LBMA (Location-Based Marketing Association) is an international community dedicated to fostering research, education, and collaborative innovation at the intersection of people, places, and media. LBMA’s aim is to educate, share best practices, establish guidelines for growth, and promote the services of member companies to brands and other content-related providers.
How does Location-Based Marketing works for Business?
Most business which has native apps uses location-based Marketing for sending location-based alerts to their customers who are available nearby by their business stores. The alerts are delivered to smartphones through push notifications from their native apps or SMS text messages. An alert may include information about a local business deal of the day or include a purchasing incentive or redeeming their reward points. When the end user downloads a mobile app and accepts the app request for using their GPS device current location allows brands to track their end users. The technology behind this location-based marketing takes advantage of geofencing, a software feature that uses triggers to send alerts when a device crosses a pre-defined geographic boundary. The important goal of a Location-based Marketing strategy is to bring all their end users and turn them into customers.
What are some successful Local based Campaigns from LBMA?
Here are some successful Location-based campaigns from Top brands:
Nivea “The Protection Ad”
In 2014, Nivea came up with an innovative campaign using location-based technology and it used Magazines as their medium where parents could tear out from the page in the form of a wristband for their children. This IOS app can be used to track how far the children walk away from their parents in places like beaches. The Bluetooth proximity beacon technology was used to embed in magazine ads.
Granata Pet “Snack Ball Machine”
The famous german based pet food firm Granate came up with an interesting campaign called “Snack Ball Machine”. Kiosks were installed in parks in the main cities of Germany. The kiosks were filled up with balls which have a beacon sensor in them, and the ball is thrown by the vending machine into the park. When the Dog brings the ball back fast enough (based on tracking the distance traveled) is deemed healthy and a bowl of dog food is dispensed from the kiosk.
What type of Technology is used in Location Based Marketing?
For most location-based campaigns Apple’s Ibeacon or Google’s Eddystone are used. Both technologies have similar features but the functionality is different.
What are the metrics which can be tracked from these LBM campaigns?
So far there are no platforms to track conversions from LBM campaigns for Marketers, but yes you can track the total number of reach, heatmaps, impressions, etc..,
How can anyone learn more about Location-Based Marketing?
For learning more about LBM you can follow Asif Khan’s weekly podcasts here – http://www.thelbma.com/podcasts/
