Location, Location, Location!

While skimming through yesterday’s daily email from Advertising Age Digital I came across a great article by Garrick Schmitt on the “Future of Geo-tagged Marketing”. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, it refers to the method of marketing where location-based services are offered through GPS-enabled devices like the iPhone, Blackberry, and recently released Android from Google. As mobile marketing becomes more advanced it is likely that this type of marketing will become more widely accepted among consumers, providing a new field of opportunities for marketers to communicate with them.

If you thought the constant barrage of updates via Twitter and Facebook gave you too much information about your friends’ daily routines, you haven’t seen anything yet. According to Schmitt, the concept of geo-tagging is gaining ground as marketers are beginning to gear up for this new revolution in mobile marketing. Diving head first into deploying this tool are companies like Google who has recently launched the “What’s Nearby” service which locates the 10 closest places of interest based on the GPS location of a user’s mobile phone. Google also offers Google Latitude, another location-based service that is tied in with Google Maps and allows a user to share their physical location with friends via a map.

Even though location-based services like Google Latitude are beneficial to the consumer, the idea of geo-tagging unleashes endless possibilities for brands to develop them as a way of micro-targeting consumers. For example, being able to reach consumers who are within a certain distance from a retail store and target them with mobile promotions could aid in driving consumer foot traffic into the store and increase sales. Restaurant chains could provide a branded location-based service that looks up and lists restaurants within a certain distance of the mobile user based on cuisine or price while also providing a sample of the menu. The possibilities are just as exciting as they are endless.

As with most emerging media, geo-tagged marketing will be an exciting addition in the world of mobile marketing to be watched and experimented with early on. Having said that, even though consumers are likely to love the convenience of these services, there are also privacy and safety concerns that will need to be considered and addressed before they will receive widespread adoption. Speaking from a consumer standpoint, while I would love to have the ability to use these services, I wouldn’t necessarily want to be broadcasting where I am to the world 24/7. As far as mobile marketing is concerned, the early showing is that the future will be all about “location, location, location”.

To read Gary Schmitt’s article in its entirety, click here.