People are much more comfortable learning about a business or brand via their phone than they are from a website. If you reach out to someone via email or social media, chances are you’ll follow up again. So following up over and over again could be a waste of your time.
But this validation process can be done virtually as well by using store location data.
Store location data has been used most often to track people in retail contexts such as retail stores and theaters. Leveraging it for one-to-one marketing is not impossible. But we need better ways to create customer segments. Those segments should be dense clusters of unique customers with similar patterns.
According to an IBM survey, 75 percent of marketers believe mobile location data will have a greater impact on their business in the next five years than mobile apps. Here are five ways you can use it to boost conversion rates:
1. Use store inventory sharing to increase foot traffic and conversion rates
To increase the probability of customers making a purchase, share what’s available with them and do not have to be present in order to incentivize a purchase. Additionally, by sharing what’s available and what isn’t, it increases the probability that they will buy something.
This is especially true if there are limited or only certain versions or styles left that they might want. Instead of a push notification that says, “Hey, come on over! We’ve got that jacket you want.” This could be used in combination with social media ads and localized text messaging to trigger the user to come over to the store and buy.
2. Use Wi-Fi data to offer personalized location service
Wi-Fi is another way people access the internet — they download content on their phones. It’s another way people are interacting with the physical world around them, so if you have Wi-Fi signals, you can use that as a proxy for what kind of stores are nearby or where those individuals are hanging out at any given time.
If someone’s standing in line at a coffee shop, you can use that information to advertise to them once they get into the store. You can also use in-store Wi-Fi signals to detect whether or not customers are at the front of the line or standing around waiting for a sandwich.
A brand could then send a push notification through an app like iBeacon, saying, “Hey, you guys have been waiting in line for 45 minutes. We know that you’re excited about this new sandwich, but we wanted to let you know we have other sandwiches that take less time, and we’d love to sell more of those and cater our food more according to your tastes.
3. Leverage mobile data to deliver personalized location-based offers
The same as above, you can use the Wi-Fi data for this as well. If someone’s standing near the checkout counter, they could receive a push notification from a new loyalty program or rewards program saying, “Hey, we know that you just purchased our new s’mores bar that’s been out for a few days. We just released our new chocolate bar and would love to have you try it. We really appreciate your business and want you to do more shopping with us.”
That’s a way of updating the customer that’s at the front of the line.
4. Return-on-investment calculation for advertising
With GPS, you can go back and forth between a map of where people are and a list of coupon codes associated with those locations. You can use that data on an ROI basis for shopping locally to see whether or not the consumer is really going to use those coupons at that location or not.
If they’re using them, you can stick with your purchasing decisions — change the products, change the price points, change your advertising messages to be more relevant in real-time to what consumers want. It’s a great way to use store location data on the backend of the advertising process.
5. Use mobile data to target groups
There’s a lot of activity in the marketplace about whether or not people are on their phones while they’re in a store. If you’re giving coupons to say, women, age 18-24 don’t fit that mold, and you can use demographics information to reject those individuals from receiving the coupon.
That way, your marketing is more effective for your customers, and it doesn’t waste their time.
Final Thought
As mentioned in the article, don’t worry too much if you can’t see the data. “There is no way of knowing the percentage of mobile marketers that are using location on a mobile device. It’s likely because most people don’t have the solution installed to recognize where they are.”
Factors that influence consumer buying decisions include impulse purchases, advertising strategies, and consumers’ access to various types of information. The use of location-based marketing and store location data can trigger certain offers for impulse purchases. Imposing geo-targeting allows marketing departments to send precise messages to potential customers based on their location at specific times.
