Kate Owen: targeting is key
Kate Owen, managing director Europe, Digital Element, explains why location-based marketing through mobile phones is a growth industry not to be ignored by eCommerce business owners.
Advertisers are devoting increasingly more resources to mobile marketing, with analyst firm Gartner predicting that mobile ad revenue will sky rocket to $20.6 (£12.7/€15.8) billion in 2015, up from $3.3 (£2.04/€2.5) billion over 2011– more than doubling each year.
Location-based mobile selling techniques will undoubtedly be a major factor fuelling this meteoric rise.
But when it comes to the difficult task of localising adverts over mobile, in order for hyper-targeted digital marketing content to reach potential buyers, in most cases mobile users must opt-in to GPS tracking applications on their devices.
What happens, then, to the many people who don’t opt in to GPS tracking mobile applications?
Instead of relying on GPS tracking, marketers can still successfully target those mobile users ‘on the go’ with IP address-based geo-location technology.
IP address-based geo-location technology automatically garners comprehensive information from a user’s IP address without the user having to identify themselves or contribute any information.
This information mainly consists of a user’s geographic location (right down to the postal code), but also includes other metrics such as connection speed, or whether that connection is private or corporate – all while complying with the highest standards of end-user privacy.
Further information such as currency and tax bands can easily be generated out of this IP intelligence and enhance marketers’ arsenal of targeting elements in a very useful way.
So how can this information be used to improve mobile selling techniques?
Firstly, it enables advertisers to target mobile users by location as they access wireless networks on their mobile devices.
Secondly, as mobile users are usually ‘on the go’, more than any other demographic of buyers, they tend to be time-pressured and have limited attention spans.
Content localisation is undoubtedly key to mobile selling, and any online seller hoping to gain mobile market share needs the ability to present users with customised content on the fly to help simplify and enhance the buying experience.
Finally, no selling process is complete without analytics. IP address-based intelligence provides enhanced information on top of online analytics applications.
Using geographical and other IP address data within analytics packages, businesses can segment and gain deeper insight into mobile buyers’ behaviours.
Marketers who take advantage of this approach will be able to protect consumers’ privacy while still reaching them where and when it matters most.
DigitalElement.com
