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#BizTrends2018: Location strategy's new role in the marketing mix

8 Jan 2018

Back in 2014 at the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), the business focus was always on location-based marketing, but admittedly the local newspaper market was never very sexy even though it always delivered on geography. The question we often heard from multi-location businesses (any business that has more than one physical location), is how to execute good local marketing when you're a national business.

This question led to the massive further digital evolution of what at the time NAB and the Caxton Group were looking at, and it was a personal interest of mine, so naturally I dived right in.

More recently, I had the opportunity to engage with KFC’s digital marketing team and their approach is that their location strategy is as important as any of their marketing strategies, and that, I believe, is the entirely correct approach to marketing moving forward. After all, what could be more important than marketing to the customers who have physical access to your stores or brands?

Tourism Marketing: Location strategy for your business

Mike Saunders 24 Jun 2014

I don’t think any marketing manager can afford not to have a location strategy in place, particularly given the explosion of mobile technology and accessibility within South Africa. It’s a crucial part of any brand plan, whether you’re a company with 300 locations or a national insurance brand with no physical stores, location strategies are relevant today and next year.

What really hit home for us is when we engaged with real estate agents and we asked them what their three most important marketing rules were. Their answer: 1) location; 2) location; 3) location. Most or nearly all industries understand that the physical location of a business is of the utmost importance, but why aren’t marketers following suit?

Geo-segmentation as a tool and stand-alone strategy

At Spark Media we’ve always stressed the importance of geo-segmentation, but as a tool, and we believe that now it has evolved from being simply one tool within a strategy to becoming a stand-alone strategy within a brand’s marketing plan, because it’s far too valuable to consider only a part of the whole.

In my opinion, having a location strategy should take preference over preferred media types. With the correct application brands can use location strategies to engage with consumers within their physical environments that they’re familiar with and with their own culture in mind. Marketers are still unsure how to use this specific strategy at scale though. How does a brand stay localised whilst still engaging throughout the city or province?

That’s the beauty of location marketing.

Brands can be as hyper-localised as Brakpan or go as wide as they like. However, it still remains an area that not many marketers consider, despite the plethora of case studies that shout its favour.

Our retail clients understand the value of location-based print and have been using these for years, and more and more are starting to complement their strategies with our location-based digital platforms.

Locations can be pinpointed based on the physical location of that phone, and we can even deduce where smartphones are at night, and therefore assume where people live based on the amount of time their phone has been in the location.

We are massively excited about the application potential of location strategies specifically, but also marketing over the next few years in general. Global marketing trends all point to knowing your consumer on a personal and a local level and a well-thought-out location strategy is a major step in the right direction.