But I also think that the definition of ‘location-based marketing’ has to expand beyond just the concept of ‘mobile.’ It also needs to address the often-ignored elephant in the room and that is accurately defininig the user’s location. Cell phone triangulation is spotty at best, very few devices have functional GPS and neither work well indoors or in urban settings.

So when we think about location-based marketing, it should never be attempted unless you can nail the basics:

First, make sure you can accurately and reliably determine the user’s exact physical location – and there are new technologies that are becoming much better at doing this on ‘standard’ devices. Most of us operate within a defined zones – my home/neighborhood, my work place, etc. but the technology has not, until recently, been able to consistently identify my location. Find out where I am and you can start to make educated guesses about my demographic/psychographic profile.

Second, deliver relevant content. Instead of pushing $1 off coffee or go to the other end of the mall now and get a free pair of socks with every pair of shoes you buy, think like a direct marketer: I know your location, I know the time of day and I have a good idea of the demographic profile of people in that zip 4 area during those hours. So here is content that is more likely than not to be of interest.

Once we nail the basics, we can then go after the real opportunities in LBM. Big, real, deep pocket companies spend billions to deliver targeted ad/marketing content via snail mail to zip 4 demographic profiles. THAT is the community we should be looking to serve and with the right technology/delivery vehicle and content we can.

LBM has the potential to be big-time…so lets stop thinking like coupon pushers and more like direct marketers.

And that is the largest sticking point… to all intents and purposes the internet and other traditional marketing channels are “free” while the mobile internet is definately not. Mobile operators are not likely to want to become simply a mobile ISP anytime soon so for the forseeable future we will be paying for data.

However if the perceived value of the service is greater than the cost to receive it then a mobile marketing campaign could be sucessful but I’m at a loss to know what services might attract a high enough response to be worthwhile. I look forward to the next part.

Susie

I’m not wedded to one technology over another, other than the fact it needs to be mobile. As such, in the short term, I don’t think Mesh networks provide the solution that I’d be looking for. Laptops aren’t mobile in that I don’t wander around an area holding my Laptop and PDAs are a dying market – which leaves wifi enabled phones right now – a tiny, tiny market.

So we need an interim solution, certainly for the mass market that marketers would be looking for.

In the future, mesh networks may well provide the tech solution, but that’s 5 years in my view.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that companies like I assume the one you work for shouldn’t be seriously looking at this and starting to run your own experiments.

Russell

Great article and one that will help us (Service Provider) pay for some of our Mesh Distribution network.

Jacomo