Location Based Services – A Marketer’s Dream

It took a few years for some consumers to adopt location based services but nonetheless it has taken the social media world and marketing world by storm. Google latitude, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, just about every avenue of social media has some version of recording where you are when you post a message or check in to an event or at a certain location.

According to an article I found on Mobile Marketing Association’s website they believe location based services “are advertising or marketing services that use specific location information for delivering the right message to the right person at the right place AND time.” (http://mmaglobal.com/articles/location-based-services-%E2%80%93-marketer%E2%80%99s-dream)

Marketer’s have utilized these services and it is paying dividends by the boat load. With nearly every household having at least one smart phone, people are using location-based services whether they know it or not… thank you Google.  The problem however is many people with these phones do not know what location based services are or how to utilize them. Another article I found did a survey to find out exactly what people thought about these services. The results are quite stunning.

“Most smartphone users are unaware of these apps or do not know what they do, according to the survey. About two-thirds of the smartphone users in the White Horse survey do not use LBS (60.1 percent, or 266 of 437 respondents), and 72.6 percent of this group either ‘don’t know about’ any of them or ‘know about them but don’t know what they do.’” (http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/9531.html)

Look for marketer’s and location based services to continue in creating awareness of these services and how users can utilize them to make life easier and fun. Foursquare as easily had the lead in these services and they offer deals at certain locations, a point system with quality check ins, mayorships when you have been the most frequent visitor that month, etc.