Lost In a Box is Back
Last year we partnered with The Edge in their cool location based competition Lost In a Box. As we blogged at the time, it was hugely successful with over 3 and a half million page impressions over 3 weeks in over 200,000 unique browser sessions. This proves what we have been saying for so long, that people love location based competitions.
This year The Edge came back to us and said they want to do it again and we were delighted to partner with them on Lost in a Box 2. By the look of the map it is even more popular this time as they add new concepts, including hiding 2 people in the box instead of one.
We’ll be looking forward to seeing Lost in a Box 2 break new records for engagement and have enjoyed participating with this campaign.
So if you haven’t tried it already, why not go and check it out yourself?
If you have any questions about how to use location in your next campaign, please contact us.
Consumers are Checking In to Retail Stores
In my previous blog I pointed out that that retailers were not adopting strategies for check in location based marketing. In the blog prior to that I quoted Comstat research that shows that in the first 3 months of this year 16.7 million people check into locations using Foursquare and similar applications, representing 7.1% of the total mobile population. I don’t know what the statistics are for New Zealand, but I suspect the numbers are somewhere between 5 and 7% of the NZ mobile user population.
Comstat also came up with some interesting statistics about the demographics of those users.
Firstly a lot of people think this is technology for men, that they are the geeks, but of course women love to shop, they are social shoppers and as the graph shows, there are in fact more women than men checking in!
The predominant age group should be no surprise, we would expect 18-44 year olds to be the most tech savvy and of course having disposable income for Smartphones which are the predominant mobile used for check ins. Again from Comstat for the first 3 months of this year in the USA Android pipped Apple at 36.6% to 33.7$ of devices used for checking in.
The largest group of users were in full time employment 46.6% and the second largest at 23.3% were full time students.
Just as a footnote to my blog on Group Deals and Bricks and Mortar Business there was an interesting story in eMarketer a couple of days ago. The story contained statistics that from research by Cooper Murphy Copywriters in July this year, 82% of Groupon users expressed dissatisfaction with the level of repeat business they generated from their campaigns and 49% would not use them again. This is interesting when many companies use daily deal type promotions to introduce new customers to their stores.
Of course you know where I am going with this series and that is that Location or Proximity Based Marketing offers far more compelling tools for retailers and other destination businesses to entice people into their premises. Obviously a fundamental component of that is not just how to get them to come to you, but how to get them there when you want them and to have them purchase or consume products or services that achieve your goals. For a retailer that might be those same products you were quitting on a daily deal, but like the Auckland superette owner who has been selling milk at 10 cents below cost as a loss leader, part of the strategy behind that is the opportunity to merchandise other products those same people will buy with a healthy profit margin. If you have an aged stock problem, location based marketing can get people into your store and while they enjoy the low price of your distressed inventory, put something at eye level in from of them that increases the profit of your sale. Cherry pickers do not make you profit.
Likewise if you have a cafe or restaurant, don’t just offer a free coffee with $5 worth of food. Offer it only at times when your business is empty and not to the people who were coming in anyway, they are dealt with using your normal loyalty program. Of course loyalty marketing is also very important and fits into location, but you’re going to have to come back to a future blog for that.
Thanks for reading our blog. If you think this is of interest to people you know, please tell them about it or send them a link. You can also subscribe using the RSS feed.
Retailers are not flocking to take advantage of free check in marketing services
I did some research looking for New Zealand business success stories with check in marketing. I really struggled to find any. I went and visited a number of businesses in retail and hospitality and most of them didn’t know what foursquare was. One gentleman in a cafe told me he knew about it, but was too busy to learn how to do it. I pointed out that it was really easy, but he said he really didn’t have time and then sat down to have a coffee with one of his customers. I understand on further research that this is how he keeps a loyal clientele which is great, but he could always find a student or someone else to do it for him.
I spoke to a number of people in retail that gave me a similar story. It seems, as is often the case that most managers are too busy working on their business to work in it. This is a trap in my humble opinion. It’s common knowledge that businesses like cafe’s and restaurants to name a couple, change hands about every 18 months, a classic bell curve that starts with ambitions and energy, hard work, great service and develops cash flow. Then they get into a pattern or flow of how they do business, stop innovating, perhaps stop having fun and start telling themselves how hard business is. When they started fresh, people enjoyed the new business, new products and faces and the passion flowing from the owner and staff.
The thing is, we have an amazing opportunity to capitalise on location here. Remember the old rule of successful retail “Location, Location, Location”? Well it isn’t enough to stay fresh these days. As consumers we are spoiled for choices and sometimes we need a push to either stay loyal, or to try something new. Location Based Marketing is as simple as going to foursquare and claiming your business. To be honest, claiming your business can be a little difficult in New Zealand from a validation perspective if you are in a non residential street (where NZ Post do not deliver mail) and I have tried to contact them about this, but you should persist.
The great thing with foursquare for now is that they provide you with lots of very easy ways to set up promotion. You really don’t even have to be marketing savvy, it’s all laid out for you. Go and have a look and check out the Manager Tools. It is so easy. If you need more help, follow this blog and we will explain how to do it.
People are checking into your store and stores near you all the time, why not give them a reason to come into yours, unless you have more customers than you can deal with. The numbers of people using check in services is growing greatly.
Have a look at the bell curve above and imagine this is your business. How long have you been in business? Have a look at your financials, now see if you can plot them on the curve. Is business growing? Are you on the rise? Have you peaked, would you like to keep the rise going? If you are reading this, maybe you have made some time to work on your business, which is great. Know someone in business who could use a little help? Tell them about this blog. There is more information coming on how to do these things.
If you are already using check in services for your business, we would love you to leave a comment. If you are part of a chain or collaborative group and are not currently doing anything in this area, or and agency wanting ideas for your client, GeoSmart would love to help point you in the right direction. We don’t create loyalty applications, but we have business partners and clients who do. We also welcome questions.
I’ll leave you with a link to an article on BusinessDay News which suggests that Location Based Marketing could be worth US$6.2 Billion within a few years. Maybe there is something to it? Would you like a slice?
Crazy About Rugby
When Tango Communications and Air New Zealand came to us saying they were going to run another cool promotional campaign, we were delighted to have the opportunity to participate. Together with a number of other sponsors, Air New Zealand have put together a road trip in specially detailed Britz campervans, driven by Air NZ staff who won the opportunity to have an exciting road trip from Christchurch to Dunedin as outlined in this story.
The 10 campervans left Kings College late yesterday morning after a photo opportunity with Prime Minister John Key and are now on their way south.
The campervans all have GPS tracking in them and using GeoSmart Maps technology members of the public can view the current location of the vehicles in real time.
You can also view the route they took and read their journals, which are uploaded by mobile along the way.
Of course we are also keeping them up to date with AA Traffic Alerts to their mobiles, but fortunately so far the only possible problem has been a slip on the Desert Rd in the opposite direction to their journey.
The Air New Zealand Campervans Crazy About Rugby Tour is a great example of using location based services in a marketing campaign. We look forward to following their journey and invite agencies and marketers to talk to us about how they can also use our mapping tools and technologies in their campaigns.
Analysing Car Sales Using Web Map Part 2
Last week I blogged about analysing your car sales (picking an industry at random) from a dealership on a map. I looked at comparing sales between reps by looking at where the clients lived on a map.
The concept is that we have a rich amount of data about our customers, especially when it is large ticket items and their are warranty and other ongoing commitments, not to mention the desire for repeat business. I used examples such as gender, personal or business use, age group, whether there was a trade in and so on. There is of course a lot more information available and there are also of course KPI’s. Please note that in order to do the things I’m talking about, you do not need expensive GIS software or specialist engineers. You already have the people you need, although in some cases an external consultant may help you see things from a fresh perspective.
Selling high ticket items like cars, real estate, quality furniture and furnishings is a tough business, especially in New Zealand and Australia. It’s competitive and the industries also have high staff turnover meaning that personal relationships are likely to be lost. This means that business intelligence and the ability to data mine becomes a lot more important. But at the risk of playing a broken record, finding useful information from your CRM or accounting software other than basic information is difficult. Now most companies in these industries have done business a certain way for many years and often the sales people go from one company to the next, staying in the industry and reinforce the concepts that this is the way the industry does it and we know the industry.
Our focus takes a different tack. These industries have leaders who swim against the current and use whatever technology or new ideas they can find. Are the over achievers or sales champions working harder? I would argue that most of them are working smarter rather than harder. The difference is that they look for ways to work smarter, whereas the other 95% plus use what they are given. The fact that you are reading this blog puts you in the top 10%. I’ve been told that in the industries I’m writing about here, the Pareto Principle is actually way out. They say that the best business is actually done by less than 5% of the sales people.
So what can you do as a company to improve your odds? How about trying something different? Let us help you find the low hanging fruit that has been eluding you. Lets use some business intelligence and move on. Now ideally what I am talking about would start at Head Office with the Sales Manager, Marketing Manager, Financial Controller or perhaps all of the above. Who is motivated to increase your profitability and productivity? How can you make it easy for your branches or dealerships to improve their performance?
In the last blog we talked about measuring performance at the dealership level, by the dealership. I’ve been in those offices and seen sales people going through the accounting system looking for people or companies whose leases are about to expire, or who last made a purchase 3-5 years ago and making prospecting phone calls. I’ve seen them cold calling using Yellow Pages or other directories. I’ve attended some of the sales meetings as a guest and seen the white board which shows the branch budget by model, the sales to date for the month and the stressed looks on the faces of all involved whose income and livelihood depend on achieving those targets. It’s very seat of the pants and very reactive.
Imagine if at head office, you could provide the dealerships with business intelligence that increased branch sales nationally. If you could give them information that allowed them to increase productivity and profitability and at the same time increase your brand market share. Wouldn’t it be nice to achieve the KPI’s you or the manufacturers are setting? Selling the cars (or whatever your product is) that have the higher margins, or perhaps more accessories which carry that extra margin.
How? I’m sorry but I’m going to tease you here. Have a look through the previous blogs here because a lot of the information I have to share works across multiple industries. Bookmark this page because I am going to write Part 3 of Analysing Car Sales Using Web Map some time in the next few days and give you some specific examples. Where are your potential low hanging fruit? Do you want to pick them? Jump on the school bus and drive through the opposition.
Of course you can also contact us and discuss how we can help you or ask for a demonstration. You can also email me directly. We would also like to hear from business and franchise consultants looking to add tools to their toolbox.
Also please feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions here on the blog, we welcome your feedback.
Lost In A Box A Highly Successful Location Based Radio Competition using Web Maps
When The Edge radio station decided to put together a location based competition, they called on GeoSmart to help. The concept was that they were going to hide a girl in a box for 21 days and listeners had to guess where she was by going onto The Edge web site where there was a GeoSmart Map and place a virtual pin on the map to guess where she was. At the end of the campaign Emma (the girl in the box would win $10,000 as would the lucky person who guessed the correct location, based on daily clues and other radio activities during the campaign.
GeoSmart provided the web map and tools allowing people to place their guesses on the map.People were only allowed one marker each, but they were allowed to move it as often as they liked. The Edge Network promotion manager, Robert Dickey came back to us saying, “The mapping system was amazing, everything that we could have wanted. Listeners found it easy to use and I’m sure it had millions of hits.” He was also very complimentary of out Web Developer who “was great and always willing to help with any thoughts or changes I may have had.”
I think the metrics blew us all away, we had no idea how popular this promotion was going to be, but Kiwi’s took to it with gusto. The results? Robert Dickey said: “We hade over 3.5 million page impressions, over 200K UB’s who spent an average of 7:45min on the site.”
We have been saying for a long time that Location is the next big thing in Marketing and have been thrilled to have a partner in The Edge that shared our belief and helped us prove it. This was an excellent example of using location in marketing.
If you have an idea on how you could use location in your marketing or promotional activity, be it a launch, location based games, letting people know where your events are, or where they can source your products and services, why not have a chat with us and see if we can help.
-
Archives
- August 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (2)
- June 2012 (2)
- May 2012 (4)
- April 2012 (4)
- March 2012 (2)
- February 2012 (4)
- January 2012 (2)
- December 2011 (1)
- November 2011 (1)
- October 2011 (1)
- September 2011 (9)
-
Categories
- AA Maps
- AA Traffic
- Agencies
- Android
- Auckland
- Australia
- Australia Maps
- awards
- Business Analytics
- Business Intelligence
- Business Tools
- car navigation
- Car Sales
- carbon footprint
- cartography
- channel partner
- Check Ins
- competition
- competitions
- Data Mining
- Delivery
- Distribution
- driving
- driving directions
- education
- Fleet Management
- foursquare
- Freight
- Furniture Delivery
- Gamification
- Garmin Asus
- Geocoding
- geosmart
- GIS
- gps
- Hyves
- ICT
- Indoor Navigation
- iphone
- lbs
- lbs games
- location based services
- location innovation awards
- Loyalty Card
- map tools
- Mapping Applications
- maps
- Marketing
- Meetups
- Mobile maps
- navman
- new zealand
- new zealand maps
- Oil Price
- petrol
- Print Advertising
- proximity based marketing
- Radio Advertising
- Real Estate
- real time traffic
- Retail
- Retail Profit
- Return On Delivery
- Reverse Geocoding
- ROI
- route optimisation
- Route2GO
- Rugby
- Rugby World Cup
- SaaS
- Sales
- sales territory
- satnav
- school
- Social Media
- social networking
- software
- Sport
- Sustainability
- systems integrator
- territory management
- tomtom
- Traffic
- Uncategorized
- university
- universityschool
- viral marketing
- Web Map
- web maps
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS