5 Ways To Create More Relevant Brand Experiences In The Era Of Social Location Marketing

In this opinion piece, director of Evolve Social Australia David Wesson takes B&T through five ways a new era of social location marketing can help event organisers and retailers create more relevant brand experiences to shape the consumer journey.

Social Location Mobile or SOLOMO was the term that had marketers buzzing a few years ago where the ‘check-in’ was the order of the day with new location-based apps like Foursquare, Gowalla and Groupon.

Fast forward to 2016 and with the huge shift from desktop to mobile the check-in has been replaced by the tagging of posts via location on social media platforms as opposed to apps like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It is this trend that is currently driving the growth of geosocial data, both as a source of customer insights and potential engagement. It represents a unique opportunity for marketers and brands to respond to and interact with visitors in real-time while at their location to create more connected contextual social brand experiences which can shape the consumer path to purchase.

We call this new category social location marketing and see it as the next wave of opportunity for brands and marketers alike to fully leverage the data from the social cloud.

1.Social Location Insights

Nowhere is this more relevant than for brands running events or operating bricks and mortar retail businesses who now with geo-social data have a powerful way to understand the conversation at a hyper-local level to engage users in real-time at a specific place.

This new location-based social data set via tools like Geofeedia, Mapkats, and local measure offers the opportunity for brands to analyse how, where and when customers are engaging with brands at specific locations, examine trends and drill down to uncover, what content topics are promoting the best engagement and act upon this information.

For multi-location retailers, also have the opportunity to explore of a wealth of data which can provide a neighborhood view of each of their stores and gain insights growing trends, who the social influencers are, and the comments and the social discussions growing around them.

Imagine the implications for nearby shops and restaurants to find out not only what people are talking about but over time start to build a database of these people to target with offers and promotions.

2. Advanced Location Targeting & Reach.  

Reaching and targeting your audience at a hyper-local level just got a whole lot easier thanks to Instagram advertising on the Facebook Advertising platform where it is now possible to create a series of hyper-local ad campaigns to reach your audience down to a 1K radius if required simply by dropping a pin as in the example below and adjusting the distance.

These types of advanced location target ads on Instagram are perfect for:

• Driving purchases during sales
• Leveraging traffic from local events
• Attracting walk-in customers

Set up a geo-targeted area over your local catchment area to promote your local café or restaurant as the perfect lunchtime destination. Target your audience in the lead-up and during lunch time and include a call to action to get 10 per cent off the lunchtime special for Instagram fans.

Run ads that promote the event in the lead up to and on that night. Include a call to action that includes ‘book tickets now’ or a photo contest at the event.

3. The Ability to run location-based promotions.    

Having done the hard work getting your audience to your location engaging your audience with your brand and share their experience is easy now thanks to tools like Mapkats which can help set up an  Instagram photo contest at the location.

For example, in order to help launch their new sweet potato flavour Red Rock Deli ran an Instagram promo at their Melbourne Cup Day brand activation which resulted in over 300 photos being posted on the platform and then cross-promoted on their own Facebook page with a huge organic reach uplift as entrants jumped on the brands Facebook page to find out if they were a winner.

4. Driving on-site conversions through social media  

The sweet spot for any brand is when you can convert your audience into paying customers as part of the consumer journey where you have used your social location insights and have created an engaging promotion that has attracted your potential customer in-store.

During the 2014 Soccer World Cup Evolve Social in conjunction with Mapkats ran a promo for Rebel Sport that tapped into fans passion for their country to ‘Show their Colours’. We did this by asking fans to go in-store and purchase a jersey, hat or scarf of their national team and post a selfie of themselves on Instagram with a campaign hashtag to go into the draw to win a $1,000 gift voucher every week of the world cup.

These pictures were then pulled in and posted to a photo album on the rebel Facebook page via the Mapkats Marketing Platform for their fans to vote on and one winner was picked each week from those photos with the most likes. Utilising the user-generated content from the contest created a huge uplift of brand reach and engagement where the winner and finalists each week became advocates for the brand and most importantly the campaign helped drive record sales of merchandise.  See the full case study.

5.The Power of Social Sharing & User-Generated Content

The power of social sharing and the amplification of user-generated content should not be underestimated in the process to take your consumers along the path to purchase. It is at its most effective when combined with creative location run promos the organic reach it provides has the ability to target new audiences who in turn share the content with their friends.

Quite simply authentic content created by raving fans is the best type of advertising any brand can get, however, to promote onsite sharing It’s important to create the right environment -If you want your customers to post and create content about your brand, you have to provide the right conditions for a content generation. The most obvious thing is not only to make sure your brand is visible, but you also have to create something to talk about.

For more info see the full article here.