Takeaways from LBMA Event on Marketing from the Desktop to the Aisle

The Location Based Marketing Association held a very informative event Wednesday night in downtown Atlanta to discuss how to leverage geolocation data “From the Desktop to the Aisle.” I was honored to be a panelist along with John Carrarulla from TapAd and Dan Israel from SapientNitro.

A good mix of marketers attended, from agencies to carriers to corporations, making for some genuine, interactive and productive conversations. We spent the evening focusing on how brands can replicate the customer experience across devices, using the Internet’s new currency-information.

If you weren’t able to attend, some key takeaways from the event:

• Brands need to focus on replicating the customer experience across devices, delivering relevance at every touchpoint to create seamless-yet meaningful-interactions as users make their way through the sales funnel.

• Geolocation plays a key role in today’s Internet economy where information is the new currency. It offers a first-touch advantage where marketers can non-invasively offer consumers relevant information (whether it be content, coupons or promotions) based on their geographic location without requiring them to opt-in to any location-based services.

• The ability to distinguish between WiFi and cellular network connections will become increasingly useful for adding more context around content delivered to mobile devices. For example, a home improvement store would want to deliver two different messages if one consumer is connected to WiFi on a plane and the other connected at a Starbucks around the corner.

Additionally, John Carrarulla discussed the need for brands to develop an “anytime, anywhere and any device” strategy while Dan Israel talked about how much more consumers are in control of a brand’s message (more than you think) and how the advent of earned media is changing the marketing landscape.

Attendees were especially interested in the types of contextual overlays that could be built around location, for both web and mobile. Of course, I could go on forever-and ever-on this subject, so if you have specific questions, feel free to reach out.