The Retail TouchPoints Network

Your Location-Based Marketing Playbook

Photo courtesy: Digby

If you were at NRF’s 2014 BIG Show, you know that location was a hot topic.

More retailers are recognizing that to successfully engage cross-channel shoppers, they must understand their entire path to purchase, and provide relevant offers and messages along the way – especially while they’re in store.

Implementing a location-based marketing strategy can present many benefits. Using timely, relevant mobile marketing while consumers are in or in proximity to a store can help increase foot traffic and optimize in-store engagement. In addition, retailers can have a better understanding of shopper behaviors and overall store performance, which can help them improve store operations strategies.

Although many retailers may know of these benefits, most still don’t know how to get started.

A new resource provided by Digby, titled: The Location-Based Marketing Playbook,outlines four steps to achieving a successful location-based marketing strategy.

Plan: First and foremost, establish goals. Determine why you’re creating a location-based marketing plan, and be sure it integrates with your general marketing goals. Then, identify locations that are important to your brand to set up geofences. Geofences created around stores enable brands to engage shoppers as they embark on their shopping journey.
Listen: Compare stores that have implemented geofences. Analyze traffic patterns and in-store customer engagement based on geofence entires and exits, time of day and even day of week. Understand which stores attract specific audiences, and segment messages based on these different consumer types.
Execute: Once you have an understanding of specific locations, their traffic patterns and target customers, you’ll be able to further refine campaigns to make them more relevant and compelling. Try to align location-based marketing campaigns based on other initiatives. Evaluate your content calendar for email, SMS, TV, radio and other campaigns and see how location-based marketing can complement or enhance these communications (and vice versa).
Optimize: After campaigns conclude, it’s important to analyze the results. As you go through this process, compare analytics based on campaign type and location type. This will allow you to improve your campaigns and further personalize messages based on individual customer profiles.

So what are you waiting for? Get started! This playbook offers a great foundation, offering best practices and exercises to help you make the most of your marketing investments!