Location-based marketing is poised for growth

Executive summaries of industry research reports are not necessarily documents one expects to mine for great writing.

But I came across the following sentence good enough to “borrow” in a recent report by market researcher Borrell Associates:

“Mobile marketing is where Web marketing was in about 1996: plenty of excitement, lots of experiments, general agreement that it will be Really Big, but not much data to provide visibility into how it will all unfold.”

OK, maybe it is not Hemingway, but I thought it was spot-on.

Locating potential
I also thought this sentiment was particularly apt for location-based mobile marketing and advertising, which this publication and others has been touting as the next big thing in the mobile landscape for some time.

Now, with the news awash in reports of Starbucks and L’Oreal entering into a six-month trial with O2’s location-based mobile advertising service, it seems like location-based marketing is finally starting to unfold.

Starbucks and L’Oreal: that is big. But is it the Really Big that we are talking about? And if not, what will it take to get there?

The fact that these brands are gearing up to participate in location-based marketing is indicative of the strategy’s potential.

Certainly, this potential has driven interest in location-based marketing since technology first enabled the prospect of it.

Reaching consumers where they are most likely to commit to a purchase, at the precise time they are in the proximity? And circumventing the time and distance inherent to most traditional marketing and advertising which targets consumers mostly in the home?

Why would marketers not jump at that opportunity?

Continue reading here.