Location data can be an invaluable resource for marketers. Visualizing where customers are — and how their location may impact purchase decisions — can make ad targeting and marketing decisions much more effective.
Location intelligence allows marketers to understand how geography may impact their target audience and spot locale-based patterns in marketing data.
Recently, businesses have begun using artificial intelligence (AI) to support their location intelligence operations. AI makes it possible to extract unique insights on the relationship between site and customer behavior that can be used to make much more effective marketing decisions.
What Is Location Intelligence?
Location intelligence (LI) is the visualization and analysis of geospatial information. Layering multiple data sets over a geographic representation of an area, like a map, provides decision-makers and analysts with valuable context to help them identify new patterns.
The movement of people around a store, traffic in a city and weather patterns across a continent can be visualized much more easily with the right tools. Location intelligence makes it easier to see how variables like traffic, weather and demographics are distributed in geographic space and influence each other.
For example, a sociologist may use location intelligence and mapping software to more easily parse the relationships between crime, job access and health outcomes in a specific city or neighborhood.
A business may use location intelligence to better understand how different audience segments are distributed geographically. It can determine how factors like local population density, availability of retail outlets and demographics may impact customer behavior or lifetime value.
How Businesses Use LI to Make Better Decisions
Businesses that want to use location intelligence may leverage various solutions to do so.
Business mapping software is often a key component of location intelligence. It may be used by companies that want to more accurately map out sales areas, customer locations and points of interest relevant to their audience.
Many large tech companies are already using point of interest (POI) information from the AWS Data Exchange (ADX) platform to improve customer experience. They utilize location intelligence to create searchable maps that provide more information and utility to clients.
One example is the social networking app Nextdoor, which uses POI data and other location information for onboarding and user verification purposes. Users are assigned to neighborhood or community boards based on their real-world address, ideally connecting them to neighbors.
Emerging Applications of AI in Location Intelligence
Businesses have recently begun using artificial intelligence and machine learning to support their LI operations.
Analysts can use machine learning to identify hot spots, cold spots and other points of interest in geographically distributed data. This often includes points of interest that conventional means of analysis would not have discovered.
Applying AI and LI to information like customer or sales data allows businesses to unlock patterns and trends that may make understanding their market much easier.
For example, deciding where to open a new retail location can be a challenging decision that will have significant, long-term consequences for a business’s success in a region.
AI and LI allow companies to create data visualization and analysis tools that will highlight potentially successful store locations.
Information on current store locations and customer demographics can help analysts uncover subtle relationships between where shops are placed, their success and their overall impact on the business’s customer base.
Applying AI and LI to Marketing Campaigns
Marketers can use a similar approach to inform key decisions on ad geotargeting or geofencing, marketing campaign content and overall brand communication strategy.
Marketers can use GIS data and AI algorithms to identify relationships between customer location, mobility and purchase patterns. AI could make it possible to uncover correlations between where people live and how they shop.
Personalization is becoming much more important for businesses. Its use in sales and marketing can help companies tailor products or services to the unique desires of specific customers — increasing the likelihood that someone will make a purchase or become loyal to a brand.
AI with LI can help drive and improve marketing personalization. Identifying how customer needs and preferences differ based on subtle patterns in behavior and geographic location lets marketers geotarget campaigns, ads and offerings more effectively.
Rather than using geotargeting to serve ads to customers based on location alone, LI and AI can transform it into a powerful personalization tool. Insights on the relationship between customer location and preferences may allow marketers to anticipate customers’ needs without directly gathering information on their behavior.
AI May Help Transform Location Intelligence in Marketing
Location intelligence allows businesses to better understand how sites may relate to variables like store performance or customer behavior. An AI algorithm can help businesses uncover subtle insights using location data and other types of information.
Marketers can combine AI and LI to learn more about their customers and how location may predict certain behaviors or interests.
