C-Suite Marketers Struggle For ROI When Using Location Data

Cities connected with lines on a blue globe.

Blis has today revealed that 68 per cent of Australia’s marketing C-suite said that difficulty evidencing ROI is their main challenge when using location data, as part of a new global study into digital marketing preferences.

The study also highlighted knowledge gaps within the Australian marketing community, with 25 per cent of respondents stating that they do not know how to apply location data to their brand.

Titled “Real-world intelligence: Mapping human behaviour to effective mobile marketing”, Blis commissioned WBR Insights to conduct in-depth interviews with 150 CMOs, heads of marketing and agency directors across the Asia Pacific region, including 40 respondents in Australia.

Blis AUNZ MD Nick Ballard said that while location-based marketing continues to grow in Australia, there remains a sizeable knowledge gap among Australia’s most senior marketing leaders that must be addressed.

“Despite location data technology advancing in leaps and bounds over the last few years, what is alarming is the significant knowledge gaps that remain within the industry, particularly when it comes to measuring location data, which, if not addressed, will start having a major toll on digital marketing revenues moving forward.”

“We must in some ways go back to the drawing board and educate Australia’s marketing leaders about the established metrics involved in location-based marketing, and the importance of setting new KPIs and using powerful digital tools like Blis to effectively quantify ROI,” continued Ballard.

Addressing the knowledge gap

The study revealed that there is a lack of understanding of the applications and measurements of location data in Australia’s marketing industry, with respondents highlighting the following key challenges:

Lack of scale (55 per cent)
Lack of transparency into location data sources and methodologies (48 per cent)
Lack of established standards, metrics and guidelines (45 per cent)
Concerns around the quality of the data (35 per cent)

Many respondents (30 per cent) also admitted that it is not so important for third parties to be fully GDPR compliant, an alarming figure given the recent Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ‘Digital Platforms Inquiry’ report and growing concerns around data privacy and security.

Location data essential to marketing strategies

The study provides insight into how brands can utilise the power of real-world, location-based marketing to improve their marketing strategies, with:

60 per cent influencing shoppers with geofencing
53 per cent directly targeting competitor stores
53 per cent charting the links between store traffic and sales
40 per cent tracking the return on advertising spend (ROAS)

“Location-based data is the missing part of the puzzle for many marketers who want to focus on successfully understanding their consumers’ real-word habits,” says Blis APAC head of marketing Premanjali Gupta.

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