Brits and their mobile devices, it’s something of a love story. We just can’t get enough of them and for many, they are often the first thing we reach for in the morning and the last thing we put down at night.

Therefore, it was no surprise to me to read that that the average Briton was found to spend a third of their time awake glued to a phone screen.

But while the majority of sales (90%) still happen in brick and mortar stores, marketers need to understand the impact location based mobile marketing has on the ability to generate online and offline sales – as it links both worlds.

Essentially, marketers and brands, through the power of location can create stronger, more meaningful and timely campaigns and ultimately enhance their customer journey.

On the flip side of this, for the more hesitant shoppers among us who like to ‘have a think’ before making a purchase, location insights allows marketers to ‘check in’ with these customers and serve them ads based on their visitation history.

Power of location

Where we go says a lot about who we are. For example just because I searched for the latest BMW series on my mobile doesn’t mean that I am interested in buying a car of that calibre. However a search and social driven campaign might lead marketers to think I was in the market for one. But what if I was just interested in seeing what it looked like?

Interest in a BMW doesn't mean intent to buy

If marketers were to be fed the information that I was actually in, or recently visited, a BMW store – the level of purchase intent would be far higher than if I had just searched for it.

Similar to the retail psychology of ‘if you touch a product you are more likely to buy it’, serving ads to people in or around the store at the right time at the right place is far more likely to have an impact than serving an advert to someone searching for a picture of a BMW online at home, nowhere near from the location of the outlet.

Location technology has the ability to connect online and offline worlds and get consumers to a better place. While it may seem the world is becoming a 100% digital one in which we’d never actually have to leave our homes, this doesn’t mean we don’t want to.

That being said, it is important for marketers to link their consumers’ online and offline behaviours as they complement each other.

With the ability to identify key moments of intent, location gives context to what consumers are interested in. Recent research from xAd has shown ‘on the go’ consumers are 45% more likely to buy a research product offline within the hour of researching, than those at home.

Why? Because location-based marketing enables brands to capture people in the moment that matters, they are able to deliver a more valuable and effective experience.

Lay the ‘Brexit fear’ to bed

While the words ‘Brexit’ and ‘uncertainty’ seem to go hand in hand these days, what is certain is that the UK will continue to be a digital leader. So much so that Jon Webb, managing partner of WWP-owned Gain Theory expects the UK to invest twice as much in digital media in 2019 as France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.

The UK is a major investor in digital technology

For the 72.3% of UK agency and marketing professionals already using consumers’ real-time location to drive their campaigns, they can be confident in their abilities to connect with the right customer at the right time, delivering real value from ad spend.

To remain a leader you need to be the best, and because digital is the most measurable media, it will be a mainstay in giving marketers the confidence of attributed ROI.

As the world becomes increasingly mobile-first, it would be a wasted opportunity for marketers to not grab the opportunity location technology brings in collecting useful insights which can enable brands to connect with consumers who have clear purchase intentions – i.e. when they are in their store!

Yes, mobile marketing is crucial in the mobile-savvy world we live in today but it’s useless serving an ad for a retail store to a consumer on their smartphone while they are ‘on the go’ if they are miles away from the store.

Think about the places you physically and digitally shop, while we might switch it up now and then, it is often the same or similar stores – this information is golden to marketers and those that integrate their campaigns and harness the ability to link online and offline behaviours will ultimately win out.