Instead of increasing web traffic and hoping that customers will visit and make purchase, location-based marketing directly helps your business increase foot traffic, bringing consumers closer to your physical point of sales.

However, with so many different location technologies like Gowalla, Foursquare, and recently Twitter and Facebook Places, location-based marketing has become a complex issue for business owners and advertisers.

(1) As advertisers, we first have to identify the campaign’s goals and define our target audience. (2) Second, we have to decide which location-based technology is best to reach our target audience. Advertisers usually just pick one location platform because it can be quite a challenge to manage multiple platforms. (3) Third, we have to understand how the technology works to ensure the campaign idea can be performed, tracked and analyzed. It’s a hell load of work and this complexity hinders the adoption rate of location-based marketing.

Geotoko, a location-based marketing platform, has simplified the process. Using Geotoko, advertisers are able to manage, track and analyze multiple check-in technologies, all on one platform. You’re just 6 simple steps away to create your very own location-based marketing campaign. If you have all the details sorted out, it will take you less than 5 minutes to create one. Step-by-step explanations below:

Step 1. Key in campaign details

This step is mundane but crucial. Information keyed in helps your consumers to learn about your location-based campaign better. Geotoko ensures you don’t miss a single detail necessary for them to take action.

Step 2: Set up your locations

For businesses with multiple store outlets, this step allows you to enter all the addresses involved in your location-based marketing campaign. Once a location is keyed in, Geotoko stores it in your address list for easy retrieval for your next campaign.

Step 3: Set up prizes

Businesses usually provide prizes to motivate customers to check-in and visit their stores. It can be quite a challenge to explain what the prizes are, how they can be won and the frequency that the prizes are given out. This page will help you get your prize details right.

Step 4: Choose your location-based services

Most of the major location-based services are available on Geotoko. Facebook Places is coming soon. Earlier, we briefly discussed the difficulty in identifying which services is best for your business. With Geotoko managing your campaign, why not pick all of them and let data surface the most appropriate location-based service for your business? Geotoko makes trial and error simple. As location-based marketing is new to many, I believe trial and error is a needed step to better learn how these location-based technologies work.

Step 5: Confirm and publish

This page summarizes all the details you have keyed in so far. Do a final check before hitting the publish button. Geotoko allows you to backtrack and edit whatever information that is entered wrongly.

Step 6: Promote your campaign

Need some advice to promote your location-based campaign? From a campaign page to spreading your message on Facebook, Geotoko has set up everything to make promotion simple. Most impressively, Geotoko automatically generates QR codes, which allows smartphone users to receive details about your campaign with a simple scan. All you have to do is to print the QR code and place it at places visible to customers. Even if no one scans it, it will at least intrigue your customers and spark off conversations.

The screen capture below shows a page with all the details about your campaign. It even has a timer to countdown the campaign expiration date, which usually spurs visitors to take action. Geotoko provides a one-stop landing page that clearly and concisely explains your campaign details to your target audience. It isn’t just about how creative your campaign is. Communicating your campaign to your target audience is equally important to trigger action.

If you wish to present a more consistent brand design, Geotoko provides custom design services for your landing page too. Below is an example of a customized Starbucks landing page:

All-in-one location-based analytics

The ease of setting up a location-based marketing campaign is just one of its core competencies. Geotoko also has a comprehensive analytical tool that tracks and analyzes the performance of your location-based campaign. The analytics dashboard shows the total check-ins and the breakdown numbers from each location-based services. It also shows the prize winners to ensure you don’t miss them.

Dig deeper, Geotoko’s heat map analysis helps you visualize where most of your check-in are coming from. Besides understanding the check-in location pattern, this data also surface the best places to execute your print ads or even guerrilla marketing gimmick. With Geotoko’s analytics, you can also track check-in and location statistics on a real-time basis too.

Analytics Dashboard:

Analytics Heatmap:

Via | Penn Olson