Location-Based Marketing for Businesses Without Physical Locations

By now you’ve read our paper on the Three Best Practices for Driving In-Store Traffic with Location-Based Marketing but you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t have a physical location for my business”. Maybe you run your business out of your home, or utilize a delivery-only model, or provide digital services. Here are 5 reasons how location-based marketing can help you:

1 – Find Your Audience

All businesses want to get their products and services in front of their customers. What separates traditional marketing from location-based marketing is that the ads are more targeted. You’re able to get in front of real customers and not just by shooting the broad side of a barn. Location-based marketing allows you not only to get to the physical location of the customers you want but also to pinpoint certain times and customized messaging for each customer segment. In return, you’ll get analytics informing you on how to better retrieve those same types of customers in the future. It’s all about context and relevance, placing your goods and services in the right places, and in front of people who actually care about what you have to offer.

2 – Advance Your Reputation

With location-based marketing, you can get in front of your customers but you can also play defense against your competition. Ads can be targeted at or around areas where customers shop your competitors and you’ll be able to entice them over to your side and win market share. By targeting customers at the right place and time, you immediately have a leg up on the competition, you’re not trying to sell for the sake of selling, so your approach becomes one of care for your customers. Now that you’re more precise in your ads, you’re not going to be seen as an annoying salesperson, rather you’re a service or product made available to customers at their time and place of need.

Now we can address our Three Best Practices when it comes to not having a physical location.

3 – Centralize Your Administration

This practice focuses on creating consistency throughout your brand. For businesses with multiple locations, it means having all your business information clear and concise in each place. In the case of businesses without physical locations, this means that you can allow for your brand to be clearly represented on Google, Facebook, and other platforms, and in the case of your business having field operators, allows them the flexibility to manage their hours of operations, reviews, and promotions individually. You’ll be able to have a head office, without the physical office. You can deliver a better customer experience with optimized information now that you’re getting in front of your audience.

4 – Manage Your Reviews

People aren’t just looking for stuff close by. 7 out of 10 customers also consult reviews before making purchase decisions. “Social Proof” is now becoming more powerful than advertising because it builds trust for consumers. Having a plan to monitor and respond to reviews, especially when there is a need for resolution, is the simplest way to build trust and loyalty in customers. Customers want to know if the products or services they are looking for are close by and if they are a good fit for themselves, based on what other customers have said.

5 – Measure Your Performance

Now that you’ve set up your business with all of the above, you have to make sure that your efforts in location-based marketing are giving you the ROI you were looking for. WIth analytics and reporting you’ll be able to see exactly where and when your customers are engaging with your brand, check and adjust your plan, and continue to grow your traffic. You can spot trends, isolate areas that need attention and work, make necessary changes, identify the top and bottom-performing campaigns or platforms, get real-time feedback on your customer experience, and then rinse and repeat.