You can turn any individual into an ocean of metrics. It all depends on how deep you want to dive. Obviously, understanding users in depth is important. But some metrics are surely more important than others. And by focusing on the right metrics instead of the most metrics, app marketers form the closest connection with users.
Understanding this is important, but the hard part is identifying which metrics to follow. The subject has been covered exhaustively already, yet one important metric remains largely unsung – Location. It’s more revealing than you may realize. And when it’s leveraged properly, it can send app user acquisition through the roof.
Why Is Location Important?
The number-one goal of mobile app marketing is delivering the right impression to the right user at the right time. However, calibrating that perfectly is tricky. And having just one element off could mean the difference between a positive and negative impression.
Location, more than any other metric, reveals what is relevant to a specific individual at a specific moment. You know what stores they are close to, what the weather is like, whether traffic is heavy, and where they might be headed. Said differently, you know what the user might be looking for. And, crucially, you know what they are probably not looking for.
Those sorts of insights are gold for app marketers because irrelevant ads are the bane of the industry. In one survey, 85 percent of the respondents said that irrelevant ads gave them a poor impression of the brands and websites that utilize them. That means something meant to be enticing is really just annoying. Location tracking doesn’t eliminate this problem entirely, but it does reduce it significantly.
Using Location to Your Advantage
Location tracking is more commonly known as geo-fencing. It simply refers to the marketing strategy of monitoring where users go, then triggering ads/events based on their location. The concept sounds simple, but optimizing it isn’t easy. Here are some tips for reaching more users at the perfect moment:
- Use the Best Data – Some strategies track users in real time while others rely on location data provided by a third-party. Buying data may be an easy workaround, but the data may not be as high-quality as it needs to be.
- Make a Business Case – Location is often important, but not always. In truth, some campaigns should be driven by other metrics like age or gender. Before moving forward with geo-fencing it’s important to justify why it’s the right approach.
- Keep Users Engaged – Irrelevant ads are really easy to ignore, but just the opposite is true too. Keeping users engaged is all about understanding what they might want in any specific moment. That requires a certain amount of local knowledge. For instance, if there is a street fair scheduled, users in that vicinity might want to receive ads from companies sponsoring the event.
- Create Fences Carefully – It’s tempting to look at a map and then draw a circle or square around a popular destination. The better approach is to carefully draw out a geofence based on the specific details of the location. A little bit of care and caution ensues your outreach effort is impactful instead of scattershot.
- Guess the Direction – Tracking how users move through a space makes it easier to predict where they are heading. Next-generation geo-fencing plots multiple data points to infer more about a person’s motives and further refine what ads they see.
If there is still any doubt that location really matters, just consider some data. Location-based ads receive twice the click-through. Those numbers are hard to ignore. Luckily, geographic marketing is easy to embrace.
