The future of mobile communications is context

The best communications is the content that reaches the right audience. You’re probably not going to sell many fatty fast-food meals if your advertising is going out to mostly health and fitness obsessives. A coupon delivered at the wrong time of the day or in the wrong place winds up ignored or deleted. It’s just more noise. When it’s delivered at the right time and place, it’s viewed as something of value, and it enhances an experience.

That’s kind of obvious though. Everyone knows that basic marketing / communication principle. However where the industry is headed now is more exciting.

It’s all about context. What is your audience doing when you’re talking to them? What are they thinking? How do they feel?

Targeting the right person is so much better than targeting the wrong person. Add to that targeting them in the right place, rather than the wrong place, and you’ve got a whole new ball game.

Where someone is gives us insight into their mood, the information they might be seeking and consequently, what they will respond to.

Most people travelling in and out of London Waterloo are likely to be commuters, so might be in a hurried (even stressed) mood and possibly looking for ways to relieve that… (fast or relaxing services).
Many people travelling in and out of an airport, however, are quite possibly tourists and holidaymakers in an excited mood. Alr, they could be travelling for business (if not pleasure). Whatever the case, they are ALL trying to get somewhere.

So you see the power of simply knowing where someone is? But there’s an additional layer that blows all that out of the water. When people are there.

Maybe most the people travelling through Waterloo are commuters. But probably not the many people who use the station in the middle of a weekday or at the weekend.

In fact, the same person might commute to London during the week and then go on a family trip to the Zoo at the weekend. Exactly the same person but in a completely different mood, thinking about different things and who will respond to different messages.

So you now have these three layers of targeting, each exponentially boosting the power of your communications.
The right person.
The right place.
The right time.

Most communications channels can do number 1. Some outdoor stuff can do 1 and 2. Some TV and radio can do 1 and 3. But there isn’t really anything that does 1, 2 and 3.

Until now.

iBeacon solutions, like Live Beacon, can do all three. They send communications to people based on their location (right person and right place) and they are dynamic so you can change the message they send at any time (right person and right time).

You can really take advantage of the context in which your audience are see your communications like never before. At Waterloo, you can show stress relieving products on a Monday morning, attraction ads on a Saturday, bar suggestions on a Friday evening. Or you can advertise the same product all week and simply adjust your messaging depending on the mood your audience is currently in.

The potential power of this level of context is incredible and more and more brands are turning to this solution because of it. This really is the future of communications.