Location-Based Marketing For Dummies®
Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/locationbasedmarketing to view this book's cheat sheet.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Part I: Putting a Little “Location” in Your Marketing Campaign
Part II: Location-Based Marketing in Action
Part III: Integrating Location into Other Channels
Part IV: Measuring Your Return on Investment
Part V: The Part of Tens
Appendixes
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Contact Us!
Part I: Putting a Little “Location” in Your Marketing Campaign
Chapter 1: Understanding Location-Based Services
Defining a Check-in: The Ultimate Goal
Understanding check-in behavior
The anatomy of a check-in
Understanding the Key Factors of LBS
Mobile technology
Digital platforms and media
Social networking
Physical locations
Digging into the Differences between Place and Location
Dealing with Privacy Concerns
Chapter 2: Surveying the Location-Based Services Landscape
Categorizing Services
Choosing Services
The main players
Photo-centric
Discovery-oriented
Utilitarian
Food and beverage
Deals
Planning
Distribution services
Chapter 3: Choosing Platforms for Your Campaigns
Defining Your Location-Based Marketing Goals
Engaging your customer
Building loyalty
Conducting customer research
Aligning Your Goals to a Platform
Creating Programs Built for Minimum Interaction
Choosing a Platform for the Short or Long Term
Presenting Timely Deals, Offers, and Content
Chapter 4: Checking In and Playing the Game
Searching for Your Business
Finding and Claiming Your Place
Yelp
foursquare
Gowalla
Facebook Places
Google Places
Checking Out Appealing Offers
Part II: Location-Based Marketing in Action
Chapter 5: Building a Location-Based Marketing Campaign
Creating Your Venue
foursquare
Gowalla
Yelp
Facebook Places
SCVNGR
Editing Your Pages
Integrating multiple social media
Integrating into Your CRM System
Measuring Your Campaign
Optimizing Your Campaign
Looking at the Budget
Defining Where the Responsibilities Lie within the Team
Getting the word out to your organization
Making sure your employees are prepared and aware of the rules
Aligning your technology and internal systems to facilitate an LBS program
Encouraging employee participation
Chapter 6: Creating a Relevant Offer
Determining Your Target Market and Rewarding the Right Customers
Understanding what motivates your customers
Discovering your loyal customers
Determining your customers' value
Rewarding the people who check in
Deciding on Offer Types: Paid versus Nonpaid Offers
Paid offers
Nonpaid offers
Understanding the Components of Offers
Rewarding the influencer
Creating a check-in special for everyone
Building a tiered rewards system
Unlocking better offers
Surprising people with badges and games
Answering “How Big Do I Need to Go?” with a Test-and-Learn Strategy
Placing multiple offers into the marketplace
Evaluating the ROI of an offer
Chapter 7: Using Location-Based Marketing to Enhance a Loyalty Program
Transforming Loyalty into Social Loyalty
Searching social data
Making check-ins passive
Collecting Customer Information for Your Loyalty Program
Aligning location with stream of consciousness and purchase behavior
Looking at Loyalty Program and Structured Data
Streams of consciousness data
Finding frequency, brand, and place loyalty
Purchase data
Implementing a Loyalty Program
Creating online punch cards
Creating applications
Part III: Integrating Location into Other Channels
Chapter 8: Integrating Location-Based Marketing with Other Marketing Campaigns
Understanding the Differences between Different Media
Paid Media
Earned Media
Owned Media
Integrating Facebook and Twitter
Integrating Your Website and Blog
Chapter 9: Using Location in Marketing Beyond the Check-in
Using Place to Your Advantage
Using Google
Google Places
Google Boost
Targeting with Twitter Places
Yelp
Bing Local
GPS-Driven Advertising
Part IV: Measuring Your Return on Investment
Chapter 10: Setting Up a Monitoring Strategy
Defining Your Monitoring Strategy
Deciding what to monitor
Setting your frequency
Finding insight in your searches
Choosing Monitoring Tools
Google Alerts and Google Trends
Social Mention
Twitter clients
Choosing a paid tool
Monitoring Check-ins with Twitter
Creating structured queries
Finding check-in data
Watching your competitor's traffic
Understanding When to Respond and How
Chapter 11: Setting Your Location-Based Key Performance Indicators
Determining Your Campaign Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Increase in monthly net sales
Customer satisfaction
Spending per customer visit
Customer loyalty
Finding the Value of a Check-in
Check-in value
Customer loyalty
Tying Check-ins to Sales
Chapter 12: Pulling Data from Your LBS Dashboards
Looking at LBS Data Categories
Visitor activity
Demographics
Offers
Sharing
Time
Activity
Check-ins over time
Your influencers
Choosing a Third-Party Dashboard
Geotoko
Valuevine
MomentFeed
GoodEatsFor.Me
Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 13: Almost Ten Reasons to Start with an LBS
Not Worrying about Maintenance and Scale
Leveraging Base Functionality
Integrating with Your Favorite Social Networks
Getting Extra Promotion
Alleviating the Technical Headaches
Focusing on the Data
Focusing on Your Own Business Goals
Tapping into Cross-Industry Knowledge
Chapter 14: Ten (Or More) Ways Location-Based Services Will Impact the Future of Marketing
All Loyalty Becomes Social
Knowing a Person's True Intent
Your Facebook Concierge
Coupons and Deals Feel like Recommendations and Content
The Destruction of Serendipity
Checking In Becomes Somewhat Passive
Everything Is Semantic
Tracking Is Social
Building a Game Layer
Personal Analytics Everywhere
Give to Get
Chapter 15: More Than Ten Smaller Location-Based Services
Ditto
GetGlue
Glympse
Instagram
Foodspotting
Localmind
Neer
Path
Zaarly
Geoloqi
Ten More Location-Based Services
CarZar
CrowdBeacon
Fwix
Forecast
44Doors
Groupon Now
Loqly
RunKeeper
Untappd
waze
Chapter 16: Ten Ways to Promote Your LBS Program Offline
In-Store Signage
Table Tents and Placards
Staff Training
Direct Mail
Outdoor Advertising
Yellow Pages
Flyers
In-Store Events
Print Advertising
Word of Mouth
Appendix A: Technology Overview: Phones, Operating Systems, and Geofencing
Cell-tower triangulation
GPS
Wi-Fi positioning
Audio signals
NFC
Point of purchase
iOS
BlackBerry
Android
Windows Phone 7
HTML5
Location-based ads
Location-based couponing
Appendix B: Getting Started with Location-Based Services: A Primer
Finding a venue
Leaving a tip
Adding a photo
Looking for specials
Creating a venue
Discovery
Venue details
Cheat Sheet
Location-Based Marketing For Dummies®
by Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider
Foreword by BJ Emerson
VP Technology, Tasti D-Lite
Location-Based Marketing For Dummies®
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John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2011935394
ISBN: 978-1-118-02249-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-13204-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-13205-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-13206-7 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
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About the Authors
Aaron Strout is the head of location-based marketing at WCG, a global agency offering integrated creative, interactive, and marketing communications services to clients in healthcare, consumer products, and technology. At WCG, Aaron not only focuses on helping customers with mobile location-based marketing and social media but also helps provide a social voice for the company.
In his current role, Aaron is a frequent speaker and blogger, podcaster, and social networker. Prior to joining WCG, Aaron spent time as the CMO of social media agency Powered Inc., VP of social media at Mzinga, and director of interactive at Fidelity Investments.
In addition to his knowledge of the interactive and social media landscape, Aaron has more than 17 years of online marketing and advertising experience, with a strong background in integrated and online marketing. Aaron is a founding member and former president of Boston Interactive Media Association (BIMA) and a member and former board member of the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX).
Mike Schneider is Senior Vice President and Director Digital Incubator for Allen & Gerritsen, ranked by Advertising Age as one of the Top 50 independent advertising agencies in the U.S. The DInc is an emerging technology lab responsible for building products and engaging digital experiences rooted in ROI while helping define “what's next” for the agency and the industry.
Mike has spent his career solving problems using technology with a focus on marketing and analytics. He began his career building enterprise-class, database-driven applications and data warehouses. Opportunities to get his hands on world-class technology projects and management consulting opportunities brought him to organizations like Ernst & Young and Oracle. In 2004, he took his CRM and analytics expertise to Hill Holliday where he built the database marketing practice and also ran the digital technology practice. His client roster includes: Cognos, CVS, Dunkin' Donuts, Fidelity Investments, Dell, Gillette, Georgia Pacific, Hannaford, Liberty Mutual, LPL, MFS, Murphy USA, Pfizer, Sears, Spike TV, xFinity, and WBUR.
Mike has crafted paid-, owned-, and earned-media strategies, built award-winning communities, and designed and implemented location-based, customer segmentation, content management, and customer relationship management solutions. He also writes for several blogs, including a technology and social media blog called Digital Before Digital. He was recognized in 2010 as a Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree. He is the host of a web show called Tech Interruption (http://techinterruption.com
).
Authors' Acknowledgments
Aaron Strout: They aren't kidding when they say writing a book is hard. But as the old adage goes, “what doesn't kill you can only make you stronger.” Boy, do I feel strong.
In completing this book, it is a good feeling to be able to look back and thank all of the people that made it possible. That list certainly starts with my beautiful and loving wife, Melanie, and continues right on through to my three wonderful children, Olivia, Benjamin, and Audrey, who may have thought it was cool when I first told them I was writing a book but by the end of the process were quite unimpressed. I'd also like to share the love with my mom and dad who did a bang-up job of raising me and taught me right from wrong, and to my brother John and sister Heather, who are as good a pair of siblings as one could ask for.
Then there are all the people that made this book what it is. First up is our acquiring editor at Wiley, Amy Fandrei. Without her, Mike and I would never have been asked to submit a book proposal. Equally important is our taskmaster/mentor/muse, Rebecca Senninger — also known as our project editor. Last but not least are Heidi Unger and Chris Banks, our copy and technical editors. This team collectively pushed us to create a better book.
Let's not forget to thank our foreword author, BJ Emerson. Not only did he do a fantastic job kicking this book off, but he is also one of the reasons Mike and I got into the LBS space in the first place. And then there are the men and women at the companies that make location-based services happen: foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, WHERE, Whrrl (now Groupon), Bizzy, MomentFeed, and Geotoko. Yes, this means you Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvardurai, Tristan Walker, Eric Friedman, Josh Williams, Andy Ellwood, Pia Burone, Jeff Holden, Heather Meeker, Seth Priebatsch, Chris Mahl, Rob Reed, Adarsh Pallian, Ryan Kuder, Natalie Kogan, and many of the other LBS masters.
Additional thanks go to the folks at Ben & Jerry's, Chris Baccus at AT&T, Cyriac Roeding at shopkick, Asif Kahn and his fantastic organization Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA), Simon Salt of IncSlingers for his insight and introductions, Scott Hampson, a.k.a. Agent-X for his awesome Batman cartoon (www.agent-x.com.au
), the folks at eMarketer, Kris Duggan at Badgeville, and fellow LBS enthusiasts Jason Keath, Wayne Sutton, Jill McFarland, Tim Hayden, Walter Elly, and Eric Andersen.
Let's not forget the kind gentlemen at WCG — my current workplace — Jim Weiss and Bob Pearson, who egged me on and supported me every step of the way. I also would be remiss if I left out Ken Nicolson, my friend and mentor at my former employer, Powered, along with my friend and three-time author, Joseph Jaffe (what has two thumbs, speaks a little bit of French . . . ). Also thanks to Barry Libert who taught me a heck of a lot of things about thought leadership; my good friend Jim Storer who schooled me on blogging and community management; my podcast partners Kyle Flaherty, Jennifer Leggio, and Greg Matthews, who I forced to talk about location-based services more than they would have liked; and friends/smarties like Chris Brogan, Bryan Person, and Doug Haslam who experimented with me back in 2007 on Brightkite. Oh, and Andy Kaufman for turning me on to foursquare in early 2009, and Jeremiah Owyang, Francois Gossieaux, Rick Calvert, and Mukund Mohan for believing in me starting back in 2007.
Last but not least, I'd like to thank my coauthor, partner in crime, brother in arms, and favorite imitator of Borat, @SchneiderMike. I'd call him by his real name, but he would just correct me. Thank you for pushing me, Mike, and constantly making me smarter about all things location-based. And thank you for always having my back.
Mike Schneider: First and foremost is family: I would like to thank my wife, Jaye, for her love and support in everything that I do and for making our family the first priority. Thank you Mom, Dad, Dan, and Matt (and to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins) for never correcting my stubborn desire to always find the next shiny thing and for always encouraging me to tell you what I thought about it.
Thank YOU for reading this book and for having the courage to pass it along to someone who needs it more than you. Tell them you are not calling them a Dummy; blame us.
I would like to thank Andrew Graff and the team at Allen & Gerritsen for endorsing this effort, for being a forward-thinking, quick, and nimble team, and for being the foundation that makes the things that I talk about possible. Thank you Aaron Strout for your friendship and for asking me to partner on this project. Thank you Melanie Strout for being his better half.
Thank you to my home city of Boston and especially organizations like the Boston Globe, Boston Business Journal, MITX, and The Ad Club for encouraging my behavior. Thank you Lisa Desisto, Lisa Van Der Pool, Kathy Kiley, Kate McCabe, Jaime Reynolds, Kiki Mills, Debi Kleiman, and Ellis Reavey. Thank you clients, especially those who have asked for our team's counsel on social, local, mobile, digital, and emerging technology efforts. Thank you for having the guts to innovate.
Thank you Gregory Ng for testing into this stuff with me and for always being way more than a sounding board. Thank you Alex Meyer for being Alex Meyer. Thanks Jiffanimal. Thanks Kevin Long for always checking in on everything.
Thank you to the innovators in the space, particularly Josh Williams, Dennis Crowley, Naveen Selvardurai, Jeff Holden, Seth Priebatsch, Andy Ellwood, BJ Emerson, Casey Petersen, Walt Doyle, Ryan Kuder, Nataly Kogan, Gadi Shamia, Jyri Engstrom, DJ Patil, John Kim, Matt Galligan, Mok Oh, David Chang, Dan Gilmartin, AT Fouty, Lenny Rachitsky, and Rob Lawson. Thank you Gary Vaynerchuk for constant inspiration. Thank you to all of the event organizers, promoters, and their teams who have given me a platform and for allowing me to plug the book, the agency, and whatever else I've been working on: Jason Keath and Social Fresh, Rick Calvert, Deb Ng, and the entire BlogWorld team, Bonin Bough, Josh Karpf, Xiaochang Li and the PepsiCo team for the sponsorship and stage at SXSW, Hugh and the gang at SXSW, Chris Barger, Mark Evans from Social Loco, Chris Valentine, Laurel Ruma, Brady Forrest, Tonia Ries, Anne Weiskopf, the WOMMA gang, Tyson Goodridge and The Eat Drink and Be Social team, Heather Meeker, Chris Brogan and Inbound Marketing Summit, Chris Pirillo, Geekazine, and everyone else past and future. Thank you Chris Thompson for your tireless work with AboutFoursquare.com. Special thanks to the Future of Local: Phil Thomas DiGiulio and Pamela Granoff. Thank you to Austin and Seattle who with Boston form the Triangle of Awesome. Thanks you Ginger Man American Craft, and The Half Pint.
Anyone who ever said that writing a For Dummies book was easy — was wrong! No dummy is a dummy; people who read these books know that everyone needs to start somewhere. Thank you to Wiley, especially our editing team Amy Fandrei, Rebecca Senninger, and Heidi Unger for keeping us honest, helping us establish our voices and pace, and for your patience. Thank you Rebecca Sullivan for being one of my biggest supporters. Thank you Russian River Brewing Company in beautiful Santa Rosa, CA, for Pliny the Elder — a product that constantly inspires me to be the very best. Last but not least, HUGE thanks to Eric Leist and Elizabeth Sklar for your contributions and for making coming to work every day awesome.
Now, get out there and manufacture some serendipity!
Publisher's Acknowledgments
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Foreword
You have in your hands a brilliant resource written by two of the best thought leaders and strategists in the industry. As an early navigator in this space, I've watched Mike and Aaron help lead the way, and I'm honored to be able to provide an introduction to what I hope will help propel you into the bright and promising future of location-based marketing.
I'm sure by now you've observed customers using mobile apps to not only locate and review, but interact with local businesses. Perhaps a client has inquired about them, you've seen a competitor advertise their use of one of these platforms, or you just want to reach customers where they are. Either way, you can see the potential for these applications in your business and don't want to miss out on the next wave of new social technologies.
Location-based services have allowed the “where” dimension to come of age and have taken the opportunities for customer acquisition and engagement to a whole new level. This new context of location has marketers everywhere scrambling for a foothold as consumers migrate in droves to smartphones, mobile devices, and applications that allow them to share their whereabouts with friends and followers. Many times these activities revolve around brand venues and local businesses, and these virtual endorsements are allowing customers to share their affinity for a product or business in real time within a community of their closest and most trusted friends.
Good news: there's a new metric in town. For years we have been limited to mere impressions and clicks. Enter the check-in, the confirmation of an actual foot-in-the-door visit to a physical location. The addition of this key piece of information unlocks a new world of opportunities. As well, if you've ever been challenged by the chasm that exists between the online customer engagement and the in-store experience, this is your chance to help bridge the gap.
Reaching consumers based on their current proximity to your business is no longer a futuristic concept. It is a present reality, and many are already reaping great benefits. For merchants big and small, location-based services have leveled the playing field when it comes to raising awareness and attracting and retaining customers as well as rewarding them for their loyalty.
You'll see in this book references to the Old West. Things are still a little wild in LBS, and there is much unexplored territory, with opportunities to pioneer new applications, solutions, and integrations. With this book, you have equipped yourself to do just that and be a part of one of the most significant movements in the history of marketing and technology. The possibilities are endless, and your potential is limited only by your ability to design and implement creative campaigns.
BJ Emerson
VP Technology, Tasti D-Lite
Introduction
For smart marketers and business owners, the goal has always been to know as much about your customers as possible. Unfortunately, one of the most relevant pieces of data about a customer is where the customer is at any given time during the day, which leaves marketing professionals wishing for information that they most often 'don't have access to. With the advent of location-based services (LBS), this wish is granted, thanks to platforms like foursquare, Facebook Places, and SCVNGR.
With one in every four adults in the U.S. owning a smartphone and the number of mobile users who reported “checking in” with a location-based service in the United States approaching 10 percent, the possibility of reaching a meaningful swath of consumers with location-based services — and more importantly, knowing where they are during the day — is becoming a reality. While it may still take another 12–18 months for location-based activity to hit critical mass, now is the time for you to tap into this exciting new marketing opportunity.
About This Book
Location-Based Marketing For Dummies is the first book to provide a pragmatic yet thorough approach for marketers, social media practitioners, and small business owners to tapping into the power of location-based services. Because this is still a relatively new field, very few blogs, books, and other resources help spell out the roadmap for a successful location-based campaign. And like other For Dummies books, this book offers a blueprint for which services to consider, how to claim a location, thinking through an offer, and then testing, measuring, and optimizing an LBS campaign. Location-Based Marketing For Dummies is full of tips, suggestions, and visuals to help anyone from the novice to the adept marketer understand the ins and outs of using LBSs.
Foolish Assumptions
We make a few assumptions about you as the marketing professional or small business owner in this book:
You don't use an abacus to do complex math.
You have a smartphone or tablet like the iPhone, Droid, or Samsung Galaxy.
You're familiar with basic computer concepts and terminology.
You have permission to run a location-based campaign for your company as either the owner, an employee, or an authorized agency partner.
How This Book Is Organized
We organized this book into five parts. Each part is comprised of two to four chapters. Each chapter offers recommendations on how to use location-based services to engage with your customers.
Part I: Putting a Little “Location” in Your Marketing Campaign
If you want to get started with your own location-based marketing campaign and understanding the basics like who the players are, which services they provide, how to chose the right services for your business along with the nuts and bolts of the game mechanics behind these services, Part I is a great place to start. In particular, we offer a matrix of the top players by type, what their unique value proposition is, and what business goal they might help you solve.
Part II: Location-Based Marketing in Action
In Part II of the book, we get into the nuts and bolts of building a campaign. We show you how to build, test, and optimize a campaign using location-based services. In this part, we also dig deep into the elements of a good offer as well as tell you how you can leverage your location-based services of choice to create a loyalty program.
Part III: Integrating Location into Other Channels
For anyone interested in the 201- or 301-level courses of location-based marketing, Part III dives deeper into how to integrate your campaign into other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Chapter 9 also dives into ways to think about location beyond just LBSs, including Google, Yelp, and Bing.
Part IV: Measuring Your Return on Investment
For all you measurement and analytics types, Part IV is a must-read. In this part, we drill down on key performance indicators, dashboards, and measurement techniques for location-based marketing campaigns. Even if your eyes glaze over at the thought of spreadsheets and anything measurement-related, don't skip this section — you'd be doing your campaign a big disservice.
Part V: The Part of Tens
For us, Part V, The Part of Tens, was the most fun part of the book to write. These are chapters that cover ancillary topics like 10 reasons why you would want to use a location-based service provider versus building an LBS yourself and another twenty LBS companies to keep an eye on over the coming months. The last chapter talks about ten additional ways to market your location-based campaign offline.
Appendixes
We also include two appendixes, which are purely optional but provide a little more detail about the technology that enables location-based services and a primer on how to participate in these services as an end user. The first appendix speaks to your inner geek and may help you sound smart(er) if one of your customers asks you a question about how/why this stuff works. The second appendix will get you up to speed if you haven't used location-based services before and help you better understand the experience from your customers' vantage point.
You'll also find a cheat sheet with additional content at www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/locationbasedmarketing
.
Icons Used in This Book
We use the following icons to highlight particular parts of the text:
This icon points out useful, but not essential, information regarding a particular topic.
This icon highlights information that's important and might even be worth writing down.
This icon — while used infrequently — notes things not to do when running a location-based marketing campaign.
This icon points to tips that only techies and IT-minded folks may want to use. If you just want the basics, you can feel free to ignore the technical stuff.
Where to Go from Here
You can start at Chapter 1 and keep reading until you get to the end or you can look up a topic that interests you in the table of contents or index and flip to the page you need and then put the book down until you need it again. Either way works for us.
If you've already launched a campaign or are well-steeped in how the technology works, you can skip some of the introductory chapters. In particular:
If you already use location-based services and have claimed a venue, you can skip to Part II.
If you want to focus on measurement and optimization, go to Part IV.
If you're ready to create a great offer, Chapter 6 is where you'll want to check in.
If you like doing things backward and you're more interested in understanding how to use location-based services from a personal perspective, hop right to Appendix B. It's a primer on using LBS.
If you have a pretty good sense of how location-based marketing works but want to know how to turn it into more of a loyalty play, you can fast-forward to Chapter 7.
Contact Us!
We want to hear from you. You can find us at the following places:
A blog devoted to location-based marketing: http://locationbasedmarketingfordummies.com
. We'll provide updates for where we're speaking, online and offline. We'll also cross-post the best of our location blog posts here.
On Twitter: Send us tweets. @aaronstrout
and @schneidermike
Our blogs: Aaron's blog is http://blog.stroutmeister.com/
. Mike's is http://schneidermike.com
.
Good luck with your location-based marketing program!
Please note that some special symbols used in this eBook may not display properly on all eReader devices. If you have trouble determining any symbol, please call Wiley Product Technical Support at 800-762-2974. Outside of the United States, please call 317-572-3993. You can also contact Wiley Product Technical Support at www.wiley.com/techsupport.
Part I
Putting a Little “Location” in Your Marketing Campaign
In this part . . .
So you want to know about location-based marketing? Buying this book is a step in the right direction. Now it's time to roll up your sleeves and dig into the who, where, and why of location-based marketing. In this part, we cover these topics:
The background of location-based services (LBS) and some of the privacy concerns that need to be considered
Which location-based services you should consider and why
The game mechanics and why people choose to check in