Smartphones are now a key part of the shopping experience for many consumers, and not just for online shopping while sitting at home on the sofa. According to research from Forrester, more than 50% of all consumers use their smartphones when they're actually out shopping: to look for money-off coupons and offers, compare prices at competing retailers, read product reviews, or check the location and opening hours of the nearest shop.
Target your customers based on their location
Using geolocation you can turn that to your advantage, by using your knowledge of exactly where customers are right now – based on the location information provided by their smartphones – to automatically tailor the information they see and the messages you send them.
The trigger for those messages is typically a customer crossing a geofence or virtual perimeter set up around a physical location, such as a shop. The beauty of a geofence is that it can be as large or as small as you need it to be: you can even create a geofence around a single shop display, using a bluetooth beacon, allowing you to tell shoppers about the specific items on display and where to find them in the shop.
How can you use geomarketing and Google Maps to in your mobile apps?
Used correctly, geomarketing and Google Maps can:
- double the ROI of your marketing campaigns, by sending customers tailored messages about events and special offers, letting them know an item they were looking at earlier in the week is in stock, or helping them navigate through the store to find it.
- allow you to engage more effectively with customers, using location services not only by sending them more relevant messages but by greeting them by name on a digital billboard as they arrive or thanking them when they leave.
- help increase brand awareness, by providing something extra alongside your product or service that differentiates you from your competitors, such as a map of running or hiking routes for a sports and leisure retailer.
Working with a Google Maps Premier Partner
A Google Cloud Partner like Ancoris can help you apply the power of Google Maps to solve current business challenges and develop new digital models using location-based services.
We’re not only a Google Maps Premier Partner but have achieved Google’s Location-Based Services Partner Specialisation. This means we’ve demonstrated both technical proficiency and proven success in building and managing applications using the best of Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud Platform in both web and mobile environments.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you, why not take a look at some of our customer success stories or talk to the experts in our Google Maps team.
Article updated January 2021
First published September 2017