Recently, my take on the emergence of location-based marketing appeared in a Gloves-Off feature in DM News--Is location-based marketing a 'must have'?. As I mentioned in the piece, our team at Fusion92 is continually excited and motivated by the potential of this evolving practice. That said, on a daily basis we still ask ourselves—“Is location-based marketing (or any marketing technique for that matter) currently a necessity for every brand that we work with?” The answer is no, not necessarily. Of course, some brands (mostly B2B) don’t have much of a purchasing environment or any sort of “location” to speak of in the first place. But as I insinuate in the piece, for all other brands ready to dive in and build lasting relationships with customers by leveraging the mobile channel to reach them right at the point-of-purchase, the emergence of the practice and the location-based networks is significant. With that in mind, regardless of your client base, all marketers should have a fundamental understanding of the strategies, channels and practices involved with proximity marketing.
Along that vein, I was pleased to see that Sarah Hofstetter of 360i agreed. Recently Sarah put together an Ad Age blog that described why her agency considers location-based social networks, regardless of their size, into all client engagements.
Sarah’s blog was written as a response to Forrester Research’s claim that location-based startups are too small for marketers to leverage at this point in time. Again I agree with Sarah—not only are location-based social networks growing, but adoption and mastery of the associated marketing techniques continues to emerge and evolve. As I’ve said before, utilizing channels, whether new or traditional, is not as important as understanding your client’s business in the first place. But that said, holding an understanding of the emerging channels and how to leverage them is essential once the opportunity presents itself. Even better, if you can push deployment sooner than later, both brand and marketer can shake the perception of laggard and emerge as an innovator.