Geolocation Technology: Practical Usage (@glennbanton)

When you bring up the topic of Geolocation (GL), most folks immediately think Foursquare (4sq), Gowalla, Whrrl, SCVNGR, or one of the dozens of other platforms;  Talk about it a bit further and the common viewpoint is they are all somewhat game based and that there is no practical use (yet), especially for businesses. 

I had the pleasure yesterday of sitting down with Aaron Strout (@aaronstrout), CMO of Powered Inc, and we would both beg to differ.  While Geolocation as technology does have a cloudy future and a multitude of possibilities, there is an immediate benefit for businesses. The technology it its’ current state is especially beneficial to the small and medium-sized businesses.  In the most basic of uses, all of these technologies provide real-time qualified leads for your business.  As a bonus, the hard part, cultivation, has automation potential with available APIs.  Sound too good to be true?  Here are a couple examples Aaron and I discussed.

The Valiant Failure

Aaron was the 4sq ’mayor’ of a Starbucks in Westlake Hill (Austin, TX).  In short, this means he went there very often.  At one point, a local coffee shop opened across the street, noticed the frequency in which Aaron went to Starbucks (thanks to manually checking 4sq) and messaged him.  They asked what it would take to get him to check out their shop.  Aaron replied back, that they would need to offer a great Cafe Americano and the same 10% discount he was getting at the time and he’d be happy to switch.  Except the new shop didn’t stay engaged.  Lack of follow through really killed them.  Instead of gaining Aaron and anyone he recommended the shop to, they got nothing. 

The point here though, is that the information for qualified customers is available.  Use it and, unlike the local shop here, follow through.  If you own a small shop of ANY kind, especially ultra competitive niches like coffee or sandwiches, get plugged into all the main GL platforms.  You should be automatically monitoring every other shop within a defined radius, then reaching out and engage you future revenue.  These days, all anybody wants is a reason to switch or try something new.  Give them permission, welcome them to try something new and make it easy to change. 

Destination Experiences

Another interestingly competitive arena is vacation destinations, especially destinations with many similar activity options like Napa Valley or Lake Tahoe.  While certain aspect of a vacation will be set, such as the hotel accommodations, often dinners and the day trips are not firm until arrival.  How can a business capture these vacation nomads?  You guessed it!  Geolocation monitoring.  But how? 

Let’s focus only on Napa and imagine for a moment we run a vineyard.  The majority of the incoming tourist will land in one of four airports, SFO, OAK, SJC or SMF.  These airports are also are major check in spots on all of the GL platforms.  Let’s monitor these four airports non-stop for check-ins that mention wine, tasting, wine country, or Napa.  The moment someone lands and makes known their sommelier intentions, we sent over a tweet, Facebook message, any note, to first let them know we are listening, and second let them know how we can make their vacation experience better.  But don’t forget the hook.  Think something simple: “We see you are en route to the valley and we would love to have you for one of our evening tastings.  If you are able to RSVP with us within the next 12 hours we would love to provide you with a complementary bottle of wine”. 

Simple, effective, easy to manage.  For those, including myself, screaming about ROI, that’s also easy to compute.  As with about everything covered in my posts though it comes down to committing to the conversation and following through 

I’d like to challenge any small business to try out these ideas for a couple weeks.  Please let me know of any success stories as well as any challenges and we can use it in a future post.