Geofence and Location Based Services are the future of Mobile Marketing

With little doubt, mobile marketing is the future of advertising to consumers. In large part because of the fact that more than 9 out of 10 adults have a mobile device. But not just any mobile device; a smart phone. With all cell phones quickly innovating into smart phones, advertising has also had to adapt to the digital times. Originally, the way you would receive ads on your mobile device was strictly via text message. But mobile phones are getting more sophisticated with cameras to scan QR codes, faster networks to download content, and GPS to find and be found. Which brings us to the current hot mobile marketing methods: Location Geofencing and Location Based Services.

As a business owner there is no better time to grab a customer’s attention than when they are literally right on top of you. That is what makes a Geofence and Location Based Service so powerful. How many times have you seen potential customers walk by your retail store or restaurant not even to turn their head to notice the sale going on or the lunch plate special? Apart from chasing the customers down or stepping in front of their path, there hasn’t been an easy way to get your valuable message to them, until now. Now, business owners can take advantage of the power of the mobile phone and GPS. So what is a Geofence and Location Based Service? St. Louis based Thumbvista Mobile Marketing views these two topics as the future of advertising.

A Geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area*. This could be a small or large radius around a desired location set and you are notified when a device enters or exists the area to send a custom message. A Geofence can be designed around a retail location, city block or a larger area. See example below of a Geofence established in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.

Geofence in St Louis Missouri

Location-based services access information provided by a mobile device to tell where a user is located, typically through a phone’s GPS. As such, location-based services (LBS) have a number of uses in social networking (e.g Foursquare or Facebook check ins) and mobile advertising today.  With smartphone and tablet sales on the rise, LBS have become more and more important. When the location-aware device of a location-based service (LBS) user enters or exits a Geofence, the potential customer’s device receives a generated notification, such as a message that a sale or special is happening nearby*. (*source: Wikipedia)

Foursquare dashboard

For more information on Location Based Marketing and GeoFencing click here  If you are interested in learning more about how these or other forms of mobile marketing can work for your business, please contact us.