Tag: location-based marketing

Location based marketing used by Unilever through iBeacons

| February 11, 2015

The massive corporation is using this offline shopper data collection to target mobile ads.

Unilever is now using location based marketing techniques to be able to better understand how appealing shoppers find its brands while they are in store, so that they can later send mobile ads that will be relevant to those individual consumers.

The company will be using iBeacons to be able to glean the information about the smartphone using consumers.

The idea is that while this type of location based marketing could encourage purchases at the point of sale, it can also be used for a broader purpose. This is primarily to use the technology to lower the consumer acquisition cost by providing each individual with content that has been customized to a consumer’s individual interests, wants, and needs.

Unilever entered into a location based marketing partnership in order to be able to test this concept.

Location based marketing - PartnershipIn this geolocation technology using effort, Unilever is working with Glimr, a data specialist firm, and Mindshare. This strategy steps away from the “traditional” use of beacons, which have been conducted by other companies and that have focused nearly exclusively on driving performance, in favor of an effort to build the company’s brands.

In the pilot in Sweden, consumers who visited a food truck that was Knorr branded were given the opportunity to sample its latest flavor of soup. Those shoppers were then retargeted with a mobile ad the next time they launched the Aftonbladet Swedish newspaper app. The typical display ads that had been displayed within that app were often replaced with coupons that were designed to provide shoppers with a reminder of the campaign, and to underscore the idea that Knorr is a brand that is modern and that is keeping up with the things that people care about the most, right now.

At the moment, the company hasn’t revealed any intentions to expand the location based marketing program to other regions, such as the United Kingdom or the United States. However, Unilever has indicated that it will be moving its tests using iBeacons into major supermarkets, over the first half of this year.

Mobile marketing in some forms is appealing to 81 percent of consumers

| January 6, 2015

A recent study has shown that shoppers think that the idea of offers over smartphones is attractive.

The results of a recent survey that was conducted by Vista Retail Support, a retail tech firm, has shown that 81 percent of consumers would be willing to accept a mobile marketing offer that was sent to them from a retailer, while an individual was shopping in that store.

Four out of every five consumers would be willing to take advantage of the opportunity those deals could present.

That same study determined that 40 percent of participants would be interested in receiving price comparisons that a retailer would send to their smartphones while they were shopping within that store. This shows that there is a certain willingness among smartphone owners to embrace the type of opportunity that location based mobile marketing has to offer them.

Still, retailers have not yet adopted this type of mobile marketing technology, despite the appeal to consumers.

mobile marketing appealing to consumersAccording to the Vista Retail Support sales and marketing director, Richard Cottrell, “Retailers are not utilizing technology to make personalized offers to their customers, yet the survey shows shoppers are open to this form of interaction, giving retailers a wealth of new opportunities.”

The survey also determined that, on an increasing basis, consumers are looking to chances to be able to buy over their smartphones and then simply pick up their purchases at the store. Among the respondents to the survey, 30 percent – nearly one third – said that they used a service of that nature in order to be able to avoid the Christmas shopping crowds within the stores themselves.

There are clearly many opportunities presented over m-commerce and mobile marketing that are becoming very popular to consumers. It is now up to retailers to identify the technologies that will work best for their offerings, and to make sure that they are keeping up with the expectations of their customers, as they become increasingly reliant on mobile devices for various parts of their daily activities. Those that fail to keep up could end up losing customers to competition with more convenient smartphone based shopping features.