How To Profit From The Future of Mobile Marketing - The Next Wave of Innovation Has Arrived
Location services are on the cutting edge of social media and small business marketing.
But what lies even further beyond the frontier? New technology is reshaping how people can engage their customers and convert store visitors to sales more effectively.
The next level of location based services could completely uproot how businesses make sales to their customers in the future.
Enter Digital Wallets.
While you won't hear many people talking about them yet - largely because there are a lot of consumer behavioral patterns and security issues that still need to get resolved (and I think they definitely will) - Digital Wallets are the ultimate direction in which the mobile market is heading.
The ability to pay wirelessly and without a wallet is a huge convenience for people.
Imagine effortlessly swiping your phone to make a purchase.
It's even easier than carrying around a credit card.
On top of that, this type of technology could have a big impact for location based services, similar to something like shopkick where customers check-in automatically.
The Wall Street Journal describes a digital wallet as: "Meanwhile, wireless carriers are looking to turn phones into digital wallets.
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA formed a joint venture with Discover Financial Services in November that will someday let consumers wave their phones in front of a scanner to pay for purchases.
Coming next: Purchasing on mobile phones takes off.
It can be clunky, but shoppers will get used to it as smartphone penetration increases.
IE Market Research estimates cellphone purchases in the U.
S.
will jump from $1.
61 billion in 2009 to $6.
74 billion in 2011.
" The rise of digital wallets has two big impacts for location based marketing.
FIRST: Check-ins - a digital wallet solves the problem of consumers having to physically check-in, which is often sited as one of the barriers to more adoption of location based services.
Instead, when a customer makes a purchase with a digital wallet, that can automatically count as a check-in, easily solving the problem of freerider check-ins and giving customers credit for when they shop.
In essence, this becomes a loyalty program.
SECOND: Social Point of Sale - I talked about this in an earlier post, but the social point of sale would benefit dramatically from a digital wallet.
Customers can automatically sync in when they walk into a store, unlocking all the benefits of a social point of sale and being able to pay seamlessly.
This may seem far fetched but I think that we are moving towards mobile integration like this with our location based services at the forefront.
This creates a compelling value proposition for both customers and businesses at the end of the day.
While digital wallets may be far off in the future, location based marketing is here today and is a real way for people to build more foot traffic in their store and convert people to paying customers.
To learn more about how to use location based marketing for small businesses, read on.
But what lies even further beyond the frontier? New technology is reshaping how people can engage their customers and convert store visitors to sales more effectively.
The next level of location based services could completely uproot how businesses make sales to their customers in the future.
Enter Digital Wallets.
While you won't hear many people talking about them yet - largely because there are a lot of consumer behavioral patterns and security issues that still need to get resolved (and I think they definitely will) - Digital Wallets are the ultimate direction in which the mobile market is heading.
The ability to pay wirelessly and without a wallet is a huge convenience for people.
Imagine effortlessly swiping your phone to make a purchase.
It's even easier than carrying around a credit card.
On top of that, this type of technology could have a big impact for location based services, similar to something like shopkick where customers check-in automatically.
The Wall Street Journal describes a digital wallet as: "Meanwhile, wireless carriers are looking to turn phones into digital wallets.
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA formed a joint venture with Discover Financial Services in November that will someday let consumers wave their phones in front of a scanner to pay for purchases.
Coming next: Purchasing on mobile phones takes off.
It can be clunky, but shoppers will get used to it as smartphone penetration increases.
IE Market Research estimates cellphone purchases in the U.
S.
will jump from $1.
61 billion in 2009 to $6.
74 billion in 2011.
" The rise of digital wallets has two big impacts for location based marketing.
FIRST: Check-ins - a digital wallet solves the problem of consumers having to physically check-in, which is often sited as one of the barriers to more adoption of location based services.
Instead, when a customer makes a purchase with a digital wallet, that can automatically count as a check-in, easily solving the problem of freerider check-ins and giving customers credit for when they shop.
In essence, this becomes a loyalty program.
SECOND: Social Point of Sale - I talked about this in an earlier post, but the social point of sale would benefit dramatically from a digital wallet.
Customers can automatically sync in when they walk into a store, unlocking all the benefits of a social point of sale and being able to pay seamlessly.
This may seem far fetched but I think that we are moving towards mobile integration like this with our location based services at the forefront.
This creates a compelling value proposition for both customers and businesses at the end of the day.
While digital wallets may be far off in the future, location based marketing is here today and is a real way for people to build more foot traffic in their store and convert people to paying customers.
To learn more about how to use location based marketing for small businesses, read on.
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