Zooming In On Location-Based Data: From Mapping to Action
Location intelligence has seen quite a phenomenal innovation and adoption in recent years. From the category creation by ESRI ArcGIS to plug-n-play UI-UX first Carto to developed friendly Mapbox, the industry has seen through stages of tech maturity. The majority of these are an application of first-party business data and relevant insights on the same.
However, in recent years, due to the mass penetration of smartphones, it is possible to use the location traces of anonymized users to figure out the visits, patterns, customer segments etc. This in turn could be potentially used for marketing, sales, operations among many endless possibilities.
Essentially, location data is simply information about people and places they visit. This data is collected via a software development kit (SDKs) integrated into 3rd party apps, wi-fi access points, geo-located cell towers, Bluetooth beacons, IPs etc. A lot of background efforts such as location smoothing, MAC address collapsing, stationary detection, de-duplication, geofencing etc. are carried out before the data could be put to use. Lastly, privacy is of utmost concern and therefore de-anonymized opted-in sensors are only used in this entire process.
Some of the use cases of this 3rd party/Alternative data i.e. location intelligence in this case are through:
- Foot traffic measurement, trend analysis, duration of stay, seasonality for your stores.
- More detailed insights on customer segments, prospects and industry at large.
- Gain competitor insights from geo-conquesting.
- Improved conversion by delivering personalized and location-specific content.
- Unprecedented accurate customer targeting.
- Figure out online to offline attribution.
- Gap analysis based on the customer journey (before and after visiting your stores).
- Home, office and frequented visited the location of the customer cohort.
“It’s not the data points themselves, but the relationship between them where we’ve seen people get the most value.
People at Skyhook published an excellent primer on location intelligence.
This is just scratching the surface of the huge possibilities from the location data. How do you use the location for the benefit of your business?
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