Continuing on my theme of what to look for in marketing, let’s take a look at proximity based marketing.   The concept is that as you travel through the world, vendors, stores, and consumer products companies will recognize that you are at a specific place and send you various types of marketing right to your phone, or laptop.   This concept is now being used in the early stages to deliver coupons as  you walk through a mall for instance.  Stroll past a Gap store, and a coupon for 30% off gets sent right to your phone.

What is much more interesting, and useful frankly, will be the next step.  These marketers have the ability to run your profile through any number of data providers to learn about various pieces of information that is stored on you.  At the point that we can set our phones to advertise who we are in a wireless way, or authorize the phone networks to publish this data along with our geo location, then marketers would know specifically who is in a location.  The result would be the ability to do targeted, proximity based marketing.  This will change everything…

Let’s look at some practical examples.  When I am at the beach in South Florida and the temperature is over 95 degrees, Coke would know about that.  Now their marketing engine could apply simple rules and notice that it might be a good time to send some coupons to me to buy Coke products, with a map that shows the closest vendors.  How about a situation where I am walking through the airport and American Airlines notices that my flight is delayed for two hours, and I am walking through the concourse – so they send me an automated text message with links to some choices for fixing the problem.  The mind boggles at what Wal-mart can do with this concept.  As I pull into the parking lot, a list of specials hits my phone so I can look at them on the way in.  Not just any specials mind you, but items that I have purchased in the past so they know that they are hitting the mark on what I might buy.  Think about restaurants using proximity and time in combination.  It gets to be 5:00 in the afternoon and I am driving around Cleveland, one of the places I eat at frequently (which they know because I pay with a credit card) sends me an invitation and quick map for the closest location in case I am looking for a meal.

This list could go on and on – and will.  In the past, marketing had only a couple of variables to play with in order to try and get to a willing customer.  Now they will have profiles full of data on what we like, where we live, what we do, and will also know where we are at that moment if we choose to let them.  These 2 new variable will dramatically change the concept of marketing as we know it.  This is information you can use if you are on the selling side because you need to be testing out concepts like this.  If you are the consumer, welcome to the new world (being sold)…

Scott Klososky
Scott@Klososky.com