From The Editor | March 17, 2016

Location-Based Marketing Tech Spending On The Rise

Erin

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Location-based technologies continue to help retailers build brand advocates and deliver contextually relevant messaging to customers. Indeed, The Location Based Marketing Association (The LBMA) just released its Global Location Trends Report, which is based on the findings from an online study conducted in the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Owners/co-owners, CEO/Presidents, CMOs, and Marketing Managers participated in the online survey to share their current usage and investments in location-based marketing as well as future goals on implementing this technology. 

Here are some of the findings:

Executives agree that location-based targeting is valuable, actionable, and accurate.

  • 47% – 84% of companies (depending on the country) are currently using location-based data to target their customers.

Moderate investment in location-based marketing is common.

  • 25% + of marketing budgets are allocated to location-based marketing.
  • “Ability to target consumers” and “drive POS sales” top location-based marketing benefits.

Location-based marketing growth is to be expected in 2016.

  • With the exception of the U.K., countries expect to shift more marketing dollars to location-based marketing in 2016.
  • Countries look to deploy more NFC technology in 2016 (currently deployed technology is heavily Wi-Fi- and GPS-based)
  • “Social location services” and “location-based advertising” are top areas of interest for the year.

• Non-marketing location-based topics will gain added attention over the next 12 months.

When asked, “How do you feel about the current data available for location-based ad targeting,” 73% of American respondents stated the data is accurate and 73% also stated it’s actionable.

So what does this mean for retailers? I caught up with Asif Khan, founder of The LBMA and Innovative Retail Technologies editorial board member to get his thoughts on the findings. “The report clearly illustrates that retailers are beginning to value location-based marketing as a must-have tool,” explains Khan. “Closing the gap between social and location and also investing in non-marketing uses in a customer service framework will help make these services both useful and pervasive.”

Boston Retail Partners corroborates the message. In their 2015 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey, 53% of retailers plan to have the ability to identify customers when they walk in the store via their smartphones within five years. That’s an 883% increase over the 6% who indicated they could already identify their customer in this way. Whether it's GPS, Wi-Fi, RFID, NFC, and Bluetooth, retailers are looking to increase their engagement with location-based technologies in 2016.