Exploring location-based social media intelligence

Location-based social media intelligence has become the go-to source for marketers and location planners.

This method uses geotagging data from social media posts alongside content from the post itself and pre-existing customer data to draw actionable insights that can be used for targeted marketing, customer service and location planning.

Here, we’ll explore location-based social media intelligence and how you can use it to enhance your business strategy.

How much location-based social media intelligence is available?

Around one-third of the world’s population (just over 2.3 billion people) now use social media.

On average, social media users have 5.54 social media accounts each. That means there’s roughly 13 billion active social media accounts globally. Such figures indicate the huge amount of data that can be gleaned from social media.

Most social media platforms now feature location data collection as standard, based on:

  • GPS tracking
  • IP address
  • Wi-Fi hotspots
  • Phone tower triangulation
  • Site registration details
  • Post text/images

This data is an immensely powerful tool, which can be used for marketing, customer service and location planning.

What can I achieve with location-based social media?

By using specialist software to dig down into this location-based data, you can launch highly targeted marketing campaigns and hone your location planning process based on real-world data.

Localised marketing

At its most basic level, location-based social media enables you to reactively reach out to potential customers with relevant offers or incentives based on their whereabouts.

Pair this with more in-depth customer persona info derived from social media — their likes/dislikes, daily routine, route to work etc. — and you can create a marketing resource that’s more insightful and relevant than any mailing list.

Using this resource, you can send out targeted messages to new or existing customers based on their personal preferences and geographic location. This optimises the potential effect and overall value of each marketing communication.

Customer service

Customer service and crisis management can be significantly enhanced with location-based social media intelligence. This offers insight into customer sentiment as well as location.

On an individual level, a customer who feels they’ve had a less-than-adequate experience can be contacted proactively and offered some form of compensation. This can be deposited digitally or sent to a local store for collection.

Collating this data and analysing it on a broader scale can help you quickly identify problems with specific stores and take action before your customers go elsewhere.

Location planning

Location-based social media intelligence can also be used by location planners as a means of assessing the suitability of potential store sites.

You can use this data to identify:

  • Whether people in the area match your customer demographics
  • Whether brand sentiment is high enough to warrant a new store (in conjunction with hard sales figures)
  • What customers’ personal tastes might mean for the types of products or services you offer

Location-based social media is the future for marketing and location planning, giving you access to a whole new world of insight that can fine-tune your corporate decision-making process. You just need a tool that can help you draw actionable insights fast.

Discover how Periscope® can help you use location-based social media to reach out to potential customers.