Tech­no­log­i­cal advances and our hyper­con­nect­ed lifestyles have led con­sumers to expect instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and per­son­al­iza­tion based on loca­tion at every turn. As a result, here are five loca­tion per­son­al­iza­tion trends mar­keters should­n’t ignore.

1. Content Gets Local & Personal

Think about how many times you’ve told a busi­ness exact­ly what you want and their land­ing page con­tent sim­ply did­n’t match your clear­ly stat­ed intent. For exam­ple, you search for 20-inch Pirelli tyres in Leeds. The search result that you click on then takes you back a brand’s home page. You then have to nav­i­gate anoth­er three clicks to find the Leeds loca­tion in the store loca­tor, the Pirelli brand, and then the 20-inch tyres vari­ant. Only then can you see the pric­ing and choose to book an appoint­ment in store to get the tires fit­ted. This is a deeply frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence. After all, you told the brand exact­ly what you want­ed! Man­u­al­ly cre­at­ing thou­sands of per­son­al­ized and local­ized con­tent page vari­ants is uneco­nom­i­cal. So don’t do it man­u­al­ly, use some of the tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions that are at hand. Your con­ver­sion rates will also push 30 per­cent.

2. The Consumer Journey Is Getting Shorter

Increas­ing­ly, the com­bi­na­tion of our demand for instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and smart­phone-enabled loca­tion func­tion­al­i­ty have col­lapsed the con­sumer jour­ney for many brands. For instance, accord­ing to Google, near­ly half of con­sumers try­ing to decide on a restau­rant do their local search with­in an hour of actu­al­ly going to eat. Equal­ly, many short­er cus­tomer jour­neys are a result of a dis­tressed “need it now” moment that could be for lock­smiths, shoe repairs, phar­ma­cies, and so on. For busi­ness­es, this means tak­ing your nation­al brand down to the local lev­el. If a cus­tomer can’t find your prod­uct or shop near­by when they want (or need) it, then they will find it some­where else.

3. Google ‘Near Me’ Autocompletes

Google is encour­ag­ing this faster con­sumer jour­ney by auto­com­plet­ing our search­es in both brand­ed and non-brand­ed cat­e­gories. Google is antic­i­pat­ing that when users enter words such as “accoun­tants,” “banks,” “toy store” or “Viet­namese food,” chances are that they intend to find some­thing near their loca­tion, regard­less of plat­form. As a result, we’ve grown to expect our smart­phones to serve rel­e­vant, local results. “Near me”, “clos­est”, and “near­by” – key­words that bare­ly reg­is­tered just a few years ago – are begin­ning to dom­i­nate the bil­lions of queries every month. In fact, “near me” search­es have near­ly dou­bled in the last year.

4. The Introduction Of Google My Business API

Google ele­vat­ed the impor­tance of loca­tion data man­age­ment with the roll­out of the Google My Busi­ness API to cre­ate and edit loca­tions in Google My Busi­ness. The API auto­mates the man­age­ment of loca­tion data rang­ing from store hours to name, address, and phone infor­ma­tion, mak­ing it eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to man­age their loca­tion data across the search ecosys­tem, from Google Maps to search engine results. Google is telling us that man­ag­ing loca­tion data as a scal­able asset is crit­i­cal for busi­ness­es to be vis­i­ble when peo­ple con­duct those “near me” search­es. Accu­rate loca­tion data shared with major pub­lish­ers, such as Google, is the key to vis­i­bil­i­ty. The Google My Busi­ness API makes it pos­si­ble for busi­ness­es to meet the need that Google has facil­i­tat­ed.

5. The Integration Of Digital & Physical Worlds

Google research shows that 88 per­cent of mobile searchers call or vis­it the busi­ness they have found inside 24 hours. Cor­re­lat­ing these touch­points online to sales in store, often referred to as ROPO, are mak­ing ROI attri­bu­tion even more of a headache for brands. There is no sil­ver bul­let solu­tion, but this hot top­ic for retail­ers is inspir­ing some sig­nif­i­cant moves toward a solu­tion. Foursquare recent­ly unveiled an offline sales attri­bu­tion pro­gram pow­ered by a vol­un­tary, non-incen­tivized pan­el of 1.3 mil­lion Foursquare users who have agreed to leave their loca­tion-shar­ing fea­ture on at all times, mean­ing Foursquare knows every store they vis­it — even if they don’t open the app or the com­pa­ny’s sis­ter app, Swarm. The rel­a­tive­ly big pan­el appears to be a dif­fer­en­tia­tor when it comes to oth­er emerg­ing prod­ucts. Mean­while, the Good­way Group has launched Val­i­date 360. In the case of restau­rant trans­ac­tions, let’s say a user pays for a meal at a restau­rant with his or her cred­it card. This user also logs into her cred­it card account both through her desk­top brows­er and an app on her phone. Her account is now linked with those devices, so when­ev­er she is served an ad on any of those devices, we can link that expo­sure back to a trans­ac­tion.