Every business is looking for a way to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing so as to not get lost in the sea of other businesses who do the exact same thing as you. Being able to reach out to your customers and offer them your services has also never been so easy, especially with mobile putting you at their fingertips much of the time. One of the things smartphones allows is location based marketing, a tool that is invaluable to businesses and is expected to become much more common in the new year. Here are some ways you can profit from using location based marketing.

Using social media

Conversion rates are nearly triple when using location based marketing advertisements on social media. The basic idea is that you have advertisements ready to go, and then kickers put them up on user screens when they are near your store. People are much more likely to stop in and shop at your store if they are already close by and see something in an advertisement that interests them. And since people are on their phones using social media a good majority of the time they are out, it is a really easy way to grab their attention in a place they are already spending a lot of time.

Text marketing

Another form of reaching customers through their location is through text marketing. The basic idea is that you are able to ping your customers that come within a certain distance of your location and then send them a promotion of sorts through a text in order to bring them in. This works very well because customers who have signed up for text marketing usually already like your product or service, and a gentle reminder of your business offerings when they are already nearby might be just what they need to determine what they want for lunch that day or where they are going to stop for shoes. Being able to reach out to them while they are nearby is a great way to beat out all the other competitors nearby and is especially helpful to the customer that might remember they needed to stop by sometime anyway.

It is also important to remember that while a customer may be looking at social media and come across your ad, they are pretty much guaranteed to see your text marketing advertisement to them within just a couple minutes of the text being sent, giving you much more exposure. Plus, customers may skim over ads they see online given the number of ads constantly being pushed but will most likely open and read your entire text message.

Why does location based marketing work?

We’ve reached a point in society where location based marketing is making a huge surge. It became popular a few years back and then died off. So why will it be successful this time and why is it expected to stick around? According to Marketing Land, over 80% of social media is now happening through mobile phones, and over a third of the world’s population currently owns a smartphone. With so many people using smartphones and social media, the ability to use a person’s GPS location to advertise to them has become easier than ever.

Source: Marketing Land