It’s easy for brands to upset con­sumers by inun­dat­ing them with loca­tion-based offers. And once they opt out, it’s high­ly unlike­ly they’ll opt back in again. That means it’s incred­i­bly impor­tant for brands to pro­vide util­i­ty to said con­sumers when tar­get­ing them with loca­tion-based con­tent. Brands have to think about what kind of con­tent will make con­sumers will­ing to use up some of the pre­cious bat­tery life on their mobile devices.

Cit­ing brands like Levi’s Sta­di­um, Dunkin’ Donuts and Dis­ney as exam­ples of effec­tive loca­tion-based adver­tis­ers, pan­elists at “Loca­tion Mat­ters – Cre­at­ing Immer­sive Expe­ri­ences for Fans and Cus­tomers” dur­ing New York’s Adver­tis­ing Week dis­cussed how to man­age cus­tomer rela­tion­ships when incor­po­rat­ing loca­tion-based tech­nol­o­gy and offers.

Here’s their take on best prac­tices for brands.

Lesson 1: Don’t Interrupt, Provide Utility

Elisa Padil­la, senior vice pres­i­dent of glob­al mar­ket­ing at Brook­lyn Nets/Barclays Cen­ter, said her brand has mul­ti­ple apps that are very much focused on the guest expe­ri­ence. That includes the abil­i­ty to upgrade seats direct­ly from the app, as well as to access infor­ma­tion such as where to find a short­er line to buy con­ces­sions. It also includes video con­tent that allows fans to go back and watch a great play if they missed it when it hap­pened live.

In addi­tion, Bar­clays has test­ed out a few push noti­fi­ca­tions. The first pro­vid­ed a wel­come mes­sage to “[make] this feel like home for the next few hours,” she said. Oth­er mes­sages were for the 40/40 Club and the retail shop.

“We’re very con­scious of plan­ning our mes­sag­ing for next sea­son,” Padil­la said. “We want to be respect­ful of our guests. We don’t want to inun­date them with mes­sag­ing. We test, we under­stand, we imple­ment and we add val­ue to the cus­tomer.”

Derek Frid­man, group cre­ative direc­tor at dig­i­tal agency Huge, used the exam­ple of the app from home improve­ment retail­er Lowe’s, which uses Google Maps to map out each store and help cus­tomers find what they’re look­ing for, no mat­ter which loca­tion they’re shop­ping from.

“They did this beau­ti­ful thing – the sig­nage is there, which match­es the phone, so cus­tomers know that’s what it looks like and ‘I’m in the right spot,’” Frid­man said. “It’s not about sell­ing to them. It’s about get­ting them to the right place.”

In oth­er words, brands have to pro­vide util­i­ty and think about what will make con­sumers want to grant them access to their bat­ter­ies.

“Bat­tery is cur­ren­cy,” he said.

For her part, Kather­ine Hays, CEO of Vivoom, a plat­form that weaves brands into user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, said Vivoom gives users three ben­e­fits.

• Exclu­siv­i­ty. That’s because Vivoom pro­vides assets users can add to their videos in real time, which they couldn’t access if they weren’t at a par­tic­u­lar event, she said. She called this “the mod­ern-day con­cert t‑shirt” and said it gives social cur­ren­cy and inspires shares.
• Emo­tion. By pro­vid­ing wrap­ping around videos, Vivoom helps users cre­ate videos that bet­ter reflect the emo­tions they felt when they first shot them, Hays said.
• Authen­tic­i­ty. It starts with a user video and “the assets we’re adding are the real deal,” Hays said. In oth­er words, by pro­vid­ing addi­tion­al assets tied to a spe­cif­ic event or con­tent like a movie, users are more eager to shoot and share with friends and friends of fans watch these videos longer than they would oth­er­wise, which means “users are shar­ing a video with friends with a brand’s voice wrapped around it in an authen­tic way.”

Lesson 2: Don’t Screw Things Up, But Especially Don’t Screw Up Data/Privacy

Not­ing a brand real­ly can’t recov­er from screw­ing up some­thing like data, Padil­la said each of Bar­clays fran­chis­es asks cus­tomers for per­mis­sion to uti­lize data and com­mu­ni­cate with them and she said they do not cross-sell.

“Unless you opt in, you don’t hear from us,” Padil­la said.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Hays said users only receive Vivoom cam­paigns based on loca­tion or social activ­i­ty, such as attend­ing a game at Gillette Sta­di­um or lik­ing an app.

In addi­tion, Hays said Vivoom can change up offers based on what’s hap­pen­ing at an event, which helps keep cam­paigns and calls to action rel­e­vant.

Lesson 3: Make Experiences In The Physical Location Better

Frid­man said brands should think about how to start a con­ver­sa­tion with cus­tomers in the dig­i­tal space and then aug­ment that expe­ri­ence in a phys­i­cal loca­tion. He point­ed to car deal­er­ships, say­ing cus­tomers spend hours online doing research and then go to check out vehi­cles in per­son.

“I’m already edu­cat­ed online about what I can do in the phys­i­cal space, but [brands] can start turn­ing phys­i­cal loca­tions into des­ti­na­tions rather than just inven­to­ry on shelves,” he said.

Lesson 4: Be Ready For Anything

“If con­tent is king, cura­tion is the new queen,” Frid­man said.

That means con­tent has to be mod­u­lar so that it is “primed and ready” and “when cus­tomers go left, we can respond,” he added.

Padil­la agreed, adding that test­ing cre­ative is impor­tant to make sure it works on dif­fer­ent devices.

Lesson 5: Reward Passionate Fans Appropriately

What’s more, when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with pas­sion­ate fans that have opt­ed in to receive offers on their mobile devices, Padil­la said Bar­clays wants to reward them with real­ly great stuff. So, for exam­ple, after send­ing out a tick­et offer via SMS last spring and sell­ing over 400 tick­ets, she said the brand real­ized “these are peo­ple who real­ly want to be involved with this brand.”

To date, Bar­clays has not sent out anoth­er such offer because “we want to make sure to reward them with a bet­ter offer when we do it again,” Padil­la added.

Lesson 6: Put Yourself In The Customer’s Shoes

“When­ev­er we do some­thing, we ask our­selves if peo­ple will opt out if we do this,” Padil­la said. “If two say yes and two say no, we real­ly drill down to make sure it’s the right deci­sion.”

Have you incor­po­rat­ed loca­tion-based offers into your own mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy? What’s your take?