BARCELONA, SPAIN — Pulling up to my hotel at Mobile World Congress 2015 (MWC 2015), I found myself just around the corner from the home of the world renowned “futbol” club FC Barcelona, Camp Nou. With every game, tens of thousands of fans pack the seats to witness their team play. This, however, isn’t limited to just FC Barcelona but to stadiums and events around the world.
It is difficult to imagine a more perfect place to market your product than at a sporting event. After all, people in the stadium are a captive audience with nowhere to go until the final buzzer. However, when it comes to sales, it still feels like hand-to-hand combat. Think of those large hungry crowds huddled around hot dog carts, those serpentine queues, and time lost while waiting. You no doubt are aware of how time-consuming and downright frustrating the entire experience in concessions can be for a consumer.
What if mobility could change all of that? Imagine mobility offering marketing at events, malls, or to retailers that could be fully customized with messaging to the entire audience of guests, attendees, or spectators at any given location? What if proximity was married to big data to create the most real-time, most customized messages possible? It would create a whole new dimension in the shopping experience for consumers. The good news is: mobile is already making this type of communication possible by enabling one-to-one marketing in a new and exciting way, one where geofencing and data cross paths. In fact, this was exactly what Mobile World Congress’ app atMWC 2015 did. It tied events, users and proximity together to make a better show experience. Another great example of the power of geofencing when combined with real-time data and analytics.
Patrick Moorhead, who is the president and principal analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy, shares his insights on geofencing in the video below, including how it can improve events, workplaces and shopping.
Geofencing meets data: What it means for businesses
Geofencing, a virtual way of geographically tracking customers within a well-defined area around a particular location, has been the subject of conversation over the past year as more and more companies begin exploring new possibilities in mobile commerce. We saw Dunkin’ Donuts leverage the power of geofencing last year when they sent coupons to mobile users nearby one of their competitors or their own stores, resulting in the chain attracting new customers. What is even more interesting is how geofencing can give companies an estimate of the consumption opportunity at a given event, allowing suppliers to manage economics in real time.
For instance, 4 million tons of perfectly good-to-eat food is wasted every year in the UK, which is worth roughly over $27 billion. What if we could predict that 200 hot dogs that were prepared to be sold at a ball park were going to be thrown away at the end of the game? You can imagine the amount of money that businesses could save simply by having a better understanding of how much of their product is going to be consumed. Big data insights, coupled with geofencing techniques, could offer real-time information and match consumers with products or services. It could help companies reduce costs by eliminating some of the risk of over-preparing and thus wasting product. Business have everything to gain by limiting production to customer demands and requirements. And when it comes to inventory management, businesses could find these insights useful as well.
How geofencing can transform user experience
Geofencing, along with big data, can also be leveraged to create real-time offers and recommendations to be sent to customers’ smartphones. There is a strong possibility that these offers could even suggest the exact product the consumer needs at just the right time. Imagine the advantage to businesses and customers if this technology is used to rearrange in-store layouts. It could easily be done by tracking which aisles are attracting the most customers and which items are in demand. Not only could this increase sales, but it will also lead to a better, more efficient in-store experience for the customer.
With geofencing, lines may soon be forgotten and wrestling through the crowds to grab that sought after item could become a distant memory for shoppers.
What are your thoughts on geofencing and marketing? Do you feel companies should be given access to this kind of data in order to improve the shopping experience for their customers?
This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. To learn more about tech news and analysis visit TechPageOne. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are my own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.
Photo: Creative Commons
