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Location analytics is a relatively new concept that is making huge waves among the research community. Business intelligence relies on multiple streams of intelligent information, and location data makes up a significant portion of the data that drives invaluable insight for future growth. The truth is, businesses use location data for a whole host of operations, but location based analytics is often overlooked by those who haven’t yet discovered the power behind these harder to navigate datasets.
Geospatial Analysis With Location Analytics
Location data is essential for targeting niche audiences and understanding the realities and norms that are experienced by those people. One particularly interesting and timely use case is in tracking the spread of the coronavirus or damage from other natural disasters in relation to other data points. Obviously, location data is essential to understanding where local preventative measures are most needed, but coupling a traditional caseload ‘heat map’ with other insights can help create strong policy to help people cope with the hazards faced in real time.
Utilizing data regarding unemployment, for instance can help local governors target communities that are hit with a double barreled problem set in the form of high Covid-19 outbreaks and extensive job losses at the same time. Similarly, polling data around election time (while flawed once again) helped researchers understand where the coronavirus response was most important to voters, and where assistance was needed most as a result. Pairing geographical analytics with other slices of data sources provides a robust reading of correlation between trends and can help inform policymaking decisions, economic relief goals, and public health rollouts.
Location Analytics for Retailers and Advertisers
Location analytics isn’t just helpful for government analysts. Big business is finding the insights gained through the study of the spaces we occupy to be incredibly helpful in targeted ad buys, retail marketing, and even location expansion procedures. Just like in the public sector, a cross of data sources that come from the physical world and bottlenecks with data surrounding customer experience, focus group reactions, or demographics is essential to helping business entities increase foot traffic, digital buzz, and sales, as a result of the combination.
The ad industry is particularly interested in the use of physical location for tailoring customer experience. Many advertising firms have been tinkering for years with the dichotomy between nationally running and locally targeted advertising campaigns. The national spots can play throughout the United States, but they lack the staying power inherent to an intimate and locally relevant production with buyers. Location analytics solves this problem by helping advertisers to target pockets of a cross section of communities where the ad campaign will yield the best results.
The city of Philadelphia, for instance, is one home to almost six million people of all stripes. If background research tells you that your target audience is Black fathers between the ages of 21 and 29, then location data can help you hone in on communities within and around the city where this type of individual is likely to be found. This way, retailers' advertising can be delivered directly to the spaces where their message is most likely to resonate and skip over other areas. This saves retailers on their advertising budget over the long term and can help drive sales even higher due to the nuanced analytical approach to customer acquisition that sees a greater turnover rate than a blind toss at the dartboard.
Geographical location analytics represent a powerful toolbox of data manipulation abilities that can help you drill in on the exact spaces and communities that you are looking for. In any sector these insights are absolutely invaluable and lend themselves to highly efficient operations from top to bottom.