Recent marketing industry events have highlighted the coming wave of mobile marketing. Location-based marketing has had a particular hype. I wanted to learn more about it first hand, so I took to the road to test it out myself while on a short vacation this past weekend.

In advance, I researched some of the latest location-based marketing techniques and platforms.

• Twitter has integrated geotagging into tweets accessible by computer or on your mobile device. Marketers can target and communicate virtually, which makes it easier for marketers to find customers and quickly get in touch in real-time.
• Foursquare was the instigator of geotagging presented as the highly popular location based game/application, rewarding customers with ‘check-ins.’ In most recent news, they are close to 1.8 billion users and just raised $20m in a Series B investment.
• Yelp newly introduced a similar concept to Foursquare by adding badge features and ‘Dukedoms’ to their mobile application. Ideally, Yelp would like to provide readers with quality reviews since they will have the ability to track the number of times the reviewer is actually visiting the venues.
• Gowalla, also similar to Foursquare, has just rolled out five new local language settings for global users to actively participate.

An article last week from Noah Elikin on Media Post Marketing Implications of a Truly Mobile Internet, discussed the idea that frequent travelers were a prime target for location based marketing. I put the theories to test on my adventures to the Northwest and Canada. From Thursday to Monday, I utilized my social networks by checking into Foursquare and sending updates to Twitter. Being an avid user of social media and having a fairly sizable network of 1150 followers, I was curious to see if brands would indeed market to me as I was on the go.

On Foursquare, I made sure to check-in everywhere I stopped, including: airports, train/bus stations, hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, well-known tourist attractions, and tours. I logged over 20 check-ins and 15 tweets throughout the trip. Surprisingly, the results were underwhelming. Out of all venues I visited and tweeted about, I only received one automated response from the tour company, @SavorSeattle, thanking me for the follow and participating on the tour.

The only ’specials nearby’ notification I received was from @Starbucks on Foursquare. For the sake of my research (and being a frequent coffee drinker) I couldn’t travel all the way to Seattle without visiting the original Starbucks store. The company has quickly adopted location-based marketing on Foursquare. When users check-in to the store, a notification pops up offering incentives to “Mayors” (most frequent customers) discounts and free drinks. It is a program that drives increased customer visits and alerts to Starbucks near their immediate location.

Findings: Despite the location-based marketing hype, the practice has not become an integral part of the marketing mix. It will be interesting to watch brands roll out the efforts in the months and years. However, for the moment, there is not very much activity visible at the traveling consumer level.

Although I was not geotargeted by marketing brands, I did learn more about an interesting tool for travelers worth noting: @Boarding

The recently new idea was founded by Damien Guinet in France and seems to be leading in the developing an ideal platform for travel-based marketing. The concept is to find ’stranded travelers’ through online social media tools. Simply tweet #boarding followed by the airport code and moments later you will receive a message with a link to a map plus list of Twitter handles also in the airport. What I found most interesting about the concept is the ultimate end goal of the idea: Proposing specific airport service/product coupons plus tips to help occupy the time while waiting to board.

Traveling back to Chicago from Seattle, I put my research to the test myself. After reviewing the list of Twitter profiles in who were also at SeaTac International Airport, I came across @AirlineReporter, who I have recently started following. So I did what any other tweep would do - sent a direct message to see what terminal he was in! We ended up meeting at his gate and chatting about how we had just put social networking into practice. He had valuable insight for location based marketing. Airlines are finding creative ways to integrate social media into brand strategy. For instance, there is future talk of allowing customers to check into their flights via Foursquare, providing a quick, efficient way of flying. Incentives are also being created, such as becoming the Mayor of the airline terminal and given the chance to bump up to business class or win 5,000 frequent flyer miles. The tools seem to be a great starting point for airlines and companies to build up to specifically target the traveling customers.

My end result showed that many companies are buzzing around location-based marketing and hoping to roll out their innovative and creative concepts, although the ideas have not yet been fully implemented. After putting myself out there, one thing is for sure - thanks to social media and mobile apps, you can connect virtually with anyone, anywhere. How will companies catch up with real-time connection on the go? What examples have you come across in your daily activities recently that integrate location-based marketing?

Paladin would like to find out where location-based marketing is headed in your companies. Take our quick, one-questioned polls and results will be given next week on our social networks.

1. http://polls.linkedin.com/p/93828/jqvtu

2. http://polls.linkedin.com/p/93830/cmzdo

This week, Paladin participated in the Heartland Mobile Council’s MobileU101 conference. As companies awake to “the year of mobile,” this event discussed strategic approaches to mobile marketing.  But is this really the time of mobile?

Motorola’s Dana Warszona, a panelist, said the mobile tipping point for Japan came about 4 years earlier compared to the US. She and her fellow panelists Andrew Koven, President, E-Commerce & Customer Experience, Steve Madden Shoes and Julie Krueger, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Direct, OfficeMax felt that the US is just now at that point. They stressed that for retail companies, in particular, this is the time to pull the infrastructure together and to get smart on mobile and to do it quickly. Two-thirds of retailers are already doing mobile or in the midst of implementing it.

They advise moving away from simply the siloed campaign and to develop mobile as a part ongoing strategy and business operation. For consumers mCommerece is coming and it will mean that cash registers and credit cards will become obsolete. Krueger said that mobile will do away with kiosks and that the in-store experience will change radically. Warszona pointed to Best Buy as example of a company that was truly tying mobile into their business operations.

Koven said, “Mobile is the second coming and we’re [Steve Madden Shoes are] going to lead. We’re not going to wait and see.” 

How are these initiative being done? Krueger said that companies are not yet investing in additional human resources needed for mobile. Her current teams are adding it to their work load. But as the tide turns and mobile heats up, we will see companies ramp up the internal resources needed to manage this growth.

Staff, roles and ownership for mobile were reoccurring discussions during the conference. Which departments should own the mobile marketing strategy or execution? Will marketing generalist take mobile marketing on as an additional tool in their tool belt or is mobile best developed and managed by specialists? As Mobile Marketing emerges, we look forward to following this debate and the trends.  We would like your input on the topic. To weigh in, please take our poll - http://tinyurl.com/2bfolsr . We will be happy to share the results with you.

Here are a few recent articles and links related to mobile marketing:

 Mobile Marketers: Just Do Something

Chicago mobile event highlights opportunities of mobile marketing

Heartland Mobile Council

What Apple’s Acquisition of Siri Means for the Future of Mobile Search

Twitter Stream from the event

Last week I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak at the first Chicago Social Media Breakfast. SMB has been in existence in other cities since 2007 but this was the first one in here in the Windy City. The event was separated into different groups with specific topics to discuss. My group was focused on social media and personal branding in regards to the job search and career advancement.

As marketers we are seeing a wholesale change in how companies engage in communication with their clients and consumers. In addition, the ways we as individuals communicate are also changing dramatically. I think for the most part marketers (especially in the last year) are really starting to grasp the enormous changes going on within their space.

What has continued to be a struggle for people is telling the difference between “blowing your horn” in regards to your talents/expertise and “communicating your passion” to a wider audience than your existing personal/professional network. The ability to help people and in turn receive recommendation has never been more important.  It’s a very organic way of self development which also can help you gain recognition and ultimately a new job, a promotion or new business for your organization.

My Top 5 Takeaways from our group discussions were:

1)      “The golden rule” treat others the way you would like to be treated. This will ultimately be something that will come back around to you.

2)      When networking on LinkedIn or other sites don’t “ask for a job” use the tools available to create awareness for your expertise to gain a larger network of targeted individuals for potential career placement and/or advancement.

3)      Use social media to create an integrated marketing campaign around a helpful blog post you have written (become a resource). This is a post I wrote describing an initiative I created here at Paladin: 

       Paladins Marketing Ninja guide: The 30 Minute Challenge

4)      Don’t close yourself off to just blogging, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. One of the attendee’s was discussing his use of Tumblr something I am going to attempt to utilize.

5)      Nothing replaces face to face contact. Definitely get out from behind your computer and regularly get out to coffee meetings, association evening events and luncheons. This is a post I wrote regarding networking events in Chicago: Paladins Galaxy Guide to Networking in Chicago

 We are all hearing the constant chatter (no pun intended) around social media. Some of the discussions are valid and some of are based upon lack of understanding and experience. My recommendation is to continue to share openly with each other and pay it forward. It’s a great community we have here in Chicago and I’m excited to attend future Social Media Breakfast’s!

We have all felt the pinch in a tough economy.  Messages get jumbled and clustered together; marketers shifting campaign focus to lower cost mediums such as webcasts and social media outlets.  And emails, oh boy the emails… ping, ping, pinging away at your inbox until you cannot take anymore.  As marketers, we must refrain from jumping on the “buy from me now” podium and take a different stance in order to stand out in this challenging time. 

My message is not a novel idea by any stretch.  But why not make sure that traditional sales efforts are once again in sync with marketing - and truly integrated. If marketing launches an educational campaign, whether it be a download, a white-paper, or a prospect reach-out, companies have to make sure those leads are followed up with quickly—which means that sales communicates back with those contacts in a timely manner.  I manage marketing for an IT consulting firm and we have implemented “Marketing 101″ in a sense, where marketing provides awareness, then sales drives the client through the purchase process with the proper phone call and follow up steps.  Again, this is not a novel idea but a simple reminder in an environment where the next greatest technology has us running to catch up. 

Do not get me wrong of course, organizations and marketers in particular must stay on top of the latest technologies in order to maintain b-to-c and b-to-b reach.  But we cannot lose out on the opportunities to remain traditional in our execution. 

In a tight marketplace, it is more important to coordinate and execute marketing and sales efforts as well as you possibly can. Make it like a re-training exercise if you have to. Learn to sync up sales and marketing all over again, since opportunities are few and far between. You have to take advantage and maximize each possibility, and that means being more on the ball than ever.  Do not forget the basics!