Enhancing Customer Insights with Public Location Data
The increasing availability of location-based data presents marketers with more intricate opportunities for customer service. Integrating location information with social media posts can help firms better understand consumer journeys and also address consumer needs in the moment, provided that consumer privacy and security concerns are adequately addressed. For example, following 100,000 customers on Foursquare can inform a brand when customers visit specific stores and complain about wait times or products that are out of stock. The company can then open a new checkout counter or activate an inventory transfer between stores. Tracking social media posts from customers can augment existing reports on store performance and help better forecast customers’ likelihood of delivering negative or positive word of mouth. To use this type of location data most effectively, companies need to monitor business locations for shared social media content, identify topics of conversation and the sentiments expressed, follow temporal patterns, and either promote positive remarks from customers with the help of PR teams or enable targeted recovery procedures with customer service teams.
The pervasive adoption of mobile devices has driven an explosion of contextual user information, including geolocation data, which has become a valuable resource for marketers. However, a lack of technical skill sets among marketers has made it difficult for them to use this data (when they have access to it) effectively. Plus, changing regulations mean it’s more important than ever for marketers to understand what data they have access to and how to properly leverage it.
Currently, most brands, agencies, website publishers, and other marketing entities use location data to engage in a variety of marketing applications, such as proximity marketing, among shoppers with the brand’s app. Many retailers and proximity marketers have deployed beacons inside stores that have resulted in up to a 15% lift in retail foot traffic and a 73% increase in the likelihood of purchase among shoppers. Beacons are battery-powered wireless sensors installed in retail stores or event venues that detect nearby consumers who have opted in to alerts through Bluetooth or other technologies and that relay information to consumers’ mobile devices. For example, a store like Macy’s can build its presence on a beacon platform that can be downloaded by shoppers as a mobile app. After that, each time shoppers with the app enter a beacon-enabled store, they can receive promotional messages or deals on their device about products in the aisles they are browsing.
Brands also use geo-fencing, or creating a zone around a business for advertisement targeting, in different locations for targeted promotional offers on mobile devices (via any digital platform the firm as access to, such as social media, email, or text). For example, Whole Foods developed geo-fences around its stores, as well as its competitors’ stores, to target relevant audiences and achieved a post-click conversion rate that was three times higher than the national average.
Some brands are using location data for improved attribution analysis to assess marketing effectiveness. This entails identifying whether exposure to a certain promotion, ad, or specific touchpoint (such as a sales encounter) for a demographic can generate future sales. For example, Placed is a firm that provides in-store attribution analysis representing consumer visits to physical store locations. It measures both promotional tactics and audience characteristics of targeted audiences who have opted in. It uses customer location data to ascertain which promotions work, and for whom.
It’s important to understand that this type of increased monitoring warrants a corresponding increased attention to privacy needs.
