Real-world case studies reveal the power of location data (VB Live)

“We know that brands know more about their customer than anybody else when the customer is engaging with them,” says David Bairstow, VP product at Skyhook. “Whether customers are in the physical store, on the mobile app, or browsing the website, brands have an incredible amount of information about who these people are, what they like to click on, where they lose them, what they buy, all those sorts of things. The thing is, customers obviously are not interacting with the brand most of their day.”
Location data is a way to provide better understanding of those consumers when they’re offline, Bairstow explains.
“Mobile location data can help you improve both understanding of and engagement with your customers,” he says. “Location observations over time can provide you with rich segmentation, consumer journeys, and competitive insights, and location context creates enhanced mobile user experience.”
Location services rely on the signals emitted by mobile devices, which includes a device identifier, a time stamp, and a latitude-longitude coordinate, contextualized by verified venue visits. This second piece comes from an accurate, verified venue database, which allows you to confidently log a particular mobile device in a particular venue at a specific time.
Just this seemingly simple intersection of time, location, and consumer allows brands to study the behavior of their customers, and potential customers, in depth.
Once you capture devices that have visited a place, you can study their owners’ behavior over time, Bairstow explains. From there, you build segmentation and profiles and learn more about who these people are.
For instance, one client learned that their customers are much more likely to go out to dinner and actively be out shopping than the national average; another learned  that their customers tend to visit more upscale retail locations when out and about spending money.
Likewise, you can infer demographics by establishing the home location of a mobile device.  By observing where a device regularly rests in the wee hours of the morning, and connecting the home location to the census block, you can infer essential demographic information, such as income and education.
For example, a professional sports team in Atlanta used location data to understand where their fans come from when attending a game.
“Sports teams know a lot about season ticket holders, but they’re relatively blind to the other fans in their stadium,” Bairstow explains. “By capturing the mobile devices in attendance, you can start to build out rich profiles and understand more about the fans’ journey to and from the game.”
How foot traffic plays out over time can also be a powerful tool for teams to try to maximize the value of sponsorship packages. If they can better qualify the likes and interests of their particular fan base and where they tend to go, they have much more leverage with their potential sponsors.
Venue visit analysis can also provide insight into how you compare to your peers. Repeat customers, per-store visit volume, and other important metrics can be monitored on a near real-time basis. These can be tracked at a chain level, or you can drill down to individual stores or particular regions, allowing you to monitor the impact of marketing promotions that either you or your competition is running, and see the impact that’s having on your brand or on the competitor’s. That means you can build targeted campaigns about this and be able to measure the impact, as well.
Location analytics, when applied properly, is also a great tool for measuring the impact of marketing or advertising campaigns, he adds.
And location apps are another way to not just drive in-app experiences, but collect richer data on your customers, says Jay Graves, CTO at Possible Mobile.
He points to the PGA Tour app, which can offer very granular data around users that are on the course, from which hole they’re at to whether they’re near a concession tent — which gives you the chance to pitch an upgraded experience for a higher level of service.
JetBlue uses location data to locate nearby airports for easier selection when booking a flight, as well as show extremely detailed indoor maps for airports. Apple is rolling out that same level of detail across many different airports inside their own maps application as well, Graves notes. And indoor tracking allows places such as aquariums and museums to offer highly detailed floor maps that can accurately show the user what exhibit they’re in front of, or how they can get directions to the restroom.
But there are some pitfalls to be wary of, when you’re launching a location data strategy, Graves says.
“We’ve found the market is getting more mature, and users are getting more mature, more savvy, and more privacy-conscious,” he explains. “It’s harder to get the user’s trust to agree to push notifications and location tracking. Now there are multiple granularities in location tracking. Is it going to be always on, sending the location all the time I have the app on the phone, or only when that app is in the foreground and I’m using it?”
The key is creating a transparent onboarding process, he says. Accurately inform the user about what you’re going to use their location data for, and make sure it’s a good reason — i.e., a feature that’s going to drive them to want to turn it on.
“A real onboarding process and educating the user are key things we’ve learned over the years,” Graves says.
To learn more about what kind of location data you can leverage, more real-world case studies that reveal the power of location-based insights, the crucial privacy concerns you need to stay aware of, and more, don’t miss this VB Live event!
Source: VentureBeat
To Read Our Daily News Updates, Please Visit Inventiva Or Subscribe Our Newsletter & Push.