Where are your customers?

Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing activity is a fundamentally important job for every business, but there has always been a danger that anecdotal evidence and long held opinions can undermine proper data and analytics. Even companies that religiously track the source of every enquiry can have their figures cast into doubt by the simple fact that some staff and customers will always just tick the first option on the list of enquiry sources.

The internet and, more specifically, Google has helped to dispel a lot of myths in this area by providing proper analytics on visitors to your website, but in doing so, it has also created a myth of it's own; "the website is where we get all our customers, other marketing doesn't really deliver much."

Consider your own actions as a consumer: If you see or hear an advert for something of interest, do you immediately phone the company or do you go the website to find out more. Do you use the special URL on the advert or do you just Google the company name. If you decide to call having looked on the website, do you go back to the advert to get the number or do you use the one on the website. We often oversimplify the customer journey assuming that direct action has resulted from a single marketing medium.

It may have, it may not, but our ability to gain insight in this area is about to change with the arrival of the location aware web browser. In the recesses of Google Analytics is the ability to map the location of visitors, a great idea that has thus far been poorly executed because of the difficulty in establishing the exact location of a computer. The latest versions of Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome browsers include a Geolocation API which allows websites to know your location. Geolocation is part of the latest specification for HTML (the language of the web) which means it will become a standard feature that can be used on any website.

We have already seen plenty of innovation in location aware applications on mobile phones (see our previous posts on Zillow's iPhone App and Layar's Augmented Reality) and Geolocation will help to deliver a better web experience on your desktop or laptop too by automatically delivering content that is relevant to your location.

In improving the user experience, Geolocation will also improve the analysis. The browser effectively tells your website where you are when you access a page, and by collating this data and examining it, you will be able to determine what is driving traffic to your site in the real world as well as the online one.

You will be able to overlay leaflet distribution data with the location of website visits. You will be able to see if For Sale boards cause interest from the neighbours. You will be able to track where interest in a particular property or development is coming from and then adjust your marketing activity accordingly. You may even be able to pinpoint specifc properties that have read your web pages on 'selling your home'.

With better understanding of where your customers are, you will make better decisions on how to market yourself more effectively. There will no doubt be privacy issues to contend with as this technology gains interest, but the benefits of providing relevant content based on location will surely appeal to the majority.

Comments

[James Dearsley]

Hi Dan,

Interesting post and something that I am sure will educate a lot of people. I hadn't thought of this rather finite application of the Geographical information from Analytics as i currently use it on a more grand scale.

I use it to calculate where I need staff or where I should be setting up new European Countries based on the hits my company website receives (www.atlasinternational.com). It also tells me, on a slightly more finite basis where I should perhaps hold local exhibitions or run advertising campaigns.

However, your point is excellent when talking about UK Real Estate. It is incredible to be able to plot geographical information like this so that it makes your campaign that much more informative in terms of feedback.

Very interesting.

James