The wonderful world of GPS-based apps

GPS and location-based marketing has been described as “the final gold rush of Web 2.0 for SMEs”. Kevin Kevany reports.
With Twitter’s ‘tweet traffic’ tumbling by ten percent in February alone, attention may be turning from the trivial to marketers coming-up with the right deal to motivate those nearby to drop in and ‘try one’. Yes, GPS is evolving from where you might be headed in your car, to alerting your community of potential customers to your products or services on their mobile devices.
Companies like TomTom, Garmin and Navman, to name a familiar few, are continuing to upgrade both their in-vehicle devices and their add-on services. But, according to the experts and advanced players in the business, the value of knowing where would-be customers are at any one time is the new digital marketing nirvana.
Already GPS-based apps are helping to track dementia patients; check on teenagers’ whereabouts; ensure that the right amount of fertiliser has been spread in the desired area; find containered treasure (“geocaching”) – along with the now traditional fleet-management efficiencies and avoiding-traffic-holdup benefits.
(A globe-trotting friend of mine has taken to attaching his GPS to his airplane window to enhance formerly dead time and have a better idea of what is passing beneath him. Possibly the beginning of a new marketing opportunity for airlines?)
It’s the long-discussed – for nigh on a decade now – potential benefits location-based marketing services could deliver to SME owner/managers that we’ve focused on for this feature; leaving aside the real and perceived threats to individual privacy for now.
Call it “communities of trust”, “near-field communication”, “geo-aware services” or its better known term, “location-based marketing”. Many would have us believe that it could be – nay, should be – New Zealand’s next Big Thing. That’s especially if you spend an hour in the company of GeoSmart’s Luigi Cappel, a self-described evangelist for the cause (or ex-Londoner, Alex Erasmus, currently with BulletPR and PrecisionTracking’s Tim Yellowlees, seamlessly innovating amid the rubble of Christchurch).
It would seem that the traditional sellers of GPS devices are by-and-large content to focus on improving their current device-in-the-vehicle model, adding parking availability, hotel rack-rates and proximity, and service stations – plus petrol prices in countries not held to ransom by oligopolies. So when TomTom’s Australian marketer tells you that New Zealanders are regarded as relatively slow adopters of in-vehicle technology it’s clearly an opportunity for local SME entrepreneurs to grab.
But a cautionary note before I let the enthusiastic experts loose.
Independent research house, Ovum, which says it draws on 400,000 interviews a year with business and technology, telecoms and sourcing decision-makers, reckons one of the most important developments in mobile social networking is the emergence of location-based “check-in” services of the type championed by Foursquare and quickly being copied by rivals like Facebook (Yahoo’s Yazoom is the latest group-buy site locally).
“Check-in” services have the potential to drive revenues for social networks and this is creating a lot of excitement. But Ovum warns “the buzz is tipping into hype” and creating a bandwagon effect that could undermine check-in services before they have had a chance to really take off.
(Location-based check-in services use promotions as incentives to drive consumers to a physical store in their vicinity where they can collect a reward or redeem discounts and special offers – a “winning scenario for advertisers and consumers”, according to their punters.)
“What is so appealing about this concept is that it mixes social networking and advertising in a proposition where the value-benefit is obvious to consumers,” says Eden Zoller, principal analyst and author of the Ovum report. “It also uses location technology in a way that is simple, intuitive and, of course, social.”
The Foursquare (and other) models are similar to that of highly successful online social commerce provider Groupon, and this is feeding the excitement.
Says Ovum: “We are witnessing a mobile social commerce ‘gold rush’ but many of the companies coming to the market are doing so with ‘me-too’ propositions. The wide availability of such undifferentiated services and growing competition could create fall-out.”
You’ve been warned. That said, here are some imaginative success stories already being worked by intuitive local SMEs in tough and competitive – “me-too”, in Ovum’s terms – markets.
Foursquare is the poster child for mobile location-based “check-in” services, and is being successfully used, along with a panoply of digital services and a raft of traditional marketing ideas, by Gianpaolo Grazioli, the brains and energy behind one of New Zealand’s most successful users of social media, to promote Queen Street, Auckland’s “Giapo”, (next door to the Civic Theatre) and premium-priced organic gelato – all the while reckoning his real secret is “listening to the people”, according to Cappel.
Giapo draws on the CBD’s massive student market by day and theatre goers plus students in the evenings, as a desirable destination.
Techno-commentator Alex Erasmus believes SME operators need to first ensure they are offering a differentiated, quality product and have the back-up to support it (not to mention the personality of Giapo’s owner).
Erasmus points to the highly-competitive property market where his company recently assisted Realestate.co.nz launch its GPS-enabled mobile app – which essentially allows would-be customers see which houses are for sale, wherever they are in New Zealand.
But, as they say, there’s more. CEO Alistair Helm, a businessman with a career encompassing top jobs at Hoyts and Fletcher Building, amongst others, is determined to inspan digital communications. All employees are encouraged to blog, and the boss leads from the front in every format to “get ahead of the pack”, become a forum for communication across the industry (competitors are encouraged to use the Realestate website), and become recognised as a knowledge centre which can be trusted.

Built on trust

All the experts have pointed out that “trust”, in its broadest sense, is the most precious commodity where mobile communities form, morph and then decide whether to stay or move on.
“Achieve trust in this fluid environment and then maintain it – and you’ve got it made. But you have to be committed to bringing value in an ongoing basis,” says Erasmus, who believes that natural groupings – say all the businesses in a city suburb – should get together and divvy-up the cost of producing an app, and then cross-pollinate/promote their businesses. Rather than bearing the huge financial and time cost of going it alone.
What does Erasmus see as the next step?
“I jumped onto Foursquare in early 2010, used it for about three months and then abandoned it when I got bored of competing with colleagues to see who was ‘mayor’ of the office. Don’t get me wrong, I understand it’s like a digital loyalty card for discounts and freebies; I just can’t be bothered checking myself into places all the time and spamming my social network with my mundane movements.

 “If you look at how Facebook is now trying to get us to group friends into different categories (school, university, work, soccer team etc.), you’ll see the way the trend seems to be moving. Once I know I’m only sharing information within a certain group of like minded individuals, I’d happily let the service automatically check me in.
“I believe there will be a mini backlash to the current trend of extreme openness. And we will also start getting smarter about sharing information that has contextual relevance with a group that actually cares. This doesn’t mean we are hiding information; rather, we are respecting the limits of other people’s information storage capacity,” Erasmus adds.
Cappel is on the same page. “I would welcome personal location-based marketing, targeted on my location, time and interests. Tell me if there is a hot deal on a new guitar pedal or music software, as I drive past a music store on a Saturday. My girls would love to be told there is a 2 for 1 coupon on the latest winter fashion as they walk past a shop and especially that their colours and sizes are in stock.”
Relevance and context are increasing requirements to be successful.

GPS mapping

Cappel, wearing his GeoSmart sales and marketing manager’s hat, notes: “A successful [GPS mapping] product should allow people to do what they are good at. Retailers are good at running a retail business, providing their customers with the products they need when and where they need them; having specialist knowledge of their industry. Delivery is often a major part of that process,” he says.
“In an ever-growing complexity of road networks, they can’t be expected to be able to calculate the best order to do deliveries in. GeoSmart understands this network of one way streets, no right turns, dual carriageways and median barriers where a truck can’t do a U-Turn” 
“While route optimisation is nothing new, GeoSmart has been offering customised services to companies with large vehicle fleets for several years, those solutions required systems integrators and IT skills. We therefore built a web-based application for those companies without those skills; launched as Route2GO Lite.”
Tim Yellowlees and his eight colleagues at PrecisionTracking are the heroes Cappel and Erasmus are looking out for – and the New Zealand SME sector needs to mimic if we are to snatch this opportunity.
PrecisionTracking initially focused on the owners of on- and off-road vehicles with their GPS system, before adding a mapping process.
“Using our highly accurate GPS mapping process, we can verify your off-road activity and submit claims for you automatically. All you do is receive the RUC refunds we generate for you,” says Yellowlees. “Our system also provides you, free-of-charge, with up-to-the-minute key metric reports on every vehicle in your fleet. This is fleet reporting you can actually use and provides you with the action steps you need to take.”
But they weren’t content to just sit in their lucrative niche. Next came the world’s first online system for ordering, monitoring, measuring and recording the activities of fertiliser spreaders on farms.
“We now provide spreaders and their client farmers with online, live tracking, and a permanent day-by-day record of all of the work activities undertaken. We also measure and record fertiliser usage kilogram-by-kilogram. With exact hectares and spread rates known, your total fertiliser needs are calculated to the nearest kilogram for each and every job.
“Improved spreading efficiencies can save hundreds of kilos of fertiliser and possibly thousands of dollars a year. Unintentional double-spreading is eliminated. Seemingly little things like providing accurate paddock maps and spread rates, eliminate any confusion,” says Yellowlees.
That, you’d think, would be enough. Naturally, they’ve added mowing and spraying, not only on farms, but sports facilities and public areas. Next they’ll be in the property business, where their records of soil maintenance and improvement will give certainty to buyers and sellers of farms.
And as we went to print, a client of PrecisionTracking, sharemilkers Enda and Sarah Hawe placed third in the 2011 Canterbury North Otago Dairy Industry Awards. But more significantly, they scooped the Farm Environment Award, thereby opening yet another increasingly needed and lucrative package for a team which has more than soldiered on in the aftermath of the two earthquakes.
Just the Kiwi spirit and applied nous and initiative needed for New Zealand to grab the Big One.
Kevin Kevany is an Auckland-based freelance writer. Email [email protected]