Can Customers Find Your Business on GPS?

Travelers are increasingly using Global Positioning Systems during their trips to find information including lodging, restaurants, activities and attractions. These locations are collectively referred to as Points of Interest or POIs.

GPS is available in two basic forms: stand-alone devices such as Garmin, Magellan and Tom Tom and mobile devices such as cell phones and smartphones. Stand alone devices have the data such as hotel addresses and whatnot loaded onto them. Cell phones and smartphones connect to this data via the internet. With either type of device a traveler can pinpoint their own location to within several meters and search for POIs by category, and the device will show them POIs that are near their present location. Smartphones such as Apple's IPhone appear to be eclipsing the stand alone devices because they can pretty much the same GPS functions plus full internet access, phone, texting etc... for a similar cost.

It is difficult to pin down the number numbers of such devices that are out there, but here are a few statistics to consider.

There are more than 150 million cell phones with GPS capability.

40% of smartphone owners use the devices for turn by turn directions while on a trip.

80% of IPhone owners use the devices for turn by turn directions while on a trip.

By 2013, there will be 300 million smartphone users.

So, the opportunity exists to sell lodging, restaurants etc... to millions of travelers while they are on the road.

The problem right now is that the devices are only as accurate as the data they are drawing from. If your hotel is not in the database, or not under the correct category or has the wrong address, potential customers cannot find you. This is quite common.

There are essentially three companies that manage separate POI databases that feed nearly all the GPS devices in the country.

W.A. Fisher Interactive can help our clients make sure their businesses show up in the correct locations, under the correct categories, with the correct contact information to give them an advantage in reaching travelers to increase sales.

Optimizing Websites for Mobile Users

The number of people using cell phones and smart phones for accessing the internet is growing rapidly. According to the Pew Center, "use of the Internet on mobile devices has grown sharply from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2009". The study further finds that 32% of Americans have used a cellular or smart phone to access the internet for e-mailing, instant-messaging or information seeking which represents a growth of 73% growth in the 16 month interval between surveys.

The problem is most websites, including most travel/tourism sites, are not designed for or optimized for use on such devices. These sites are likely to display poorly, be very difficult to navigate or not display some content at all. As a result, the user is likely to search elsewhere for the information.

To view how your site appears on various mobile devices, you can find emulators online such as this dotMobi site: http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php

W. A. Fisher Interactive can optimize websites for use on mobile devices to ensure our clients don't miss out on significant sales to users of such devices. After optimization, the web site essentially reads what browser is calling up the site and displays the content accordingly. On a desktop device, the user sees the regular full-screen web site, but on a mobile device, they would be redirected automatically to a separate site that has been designed for the most common mobile screen sizes and browsers.

Social Networking Sites Present Marketing Opportunities

Social networking websites are by far the fastest growing media segment, presenting advertisers with entirely new and innovative ways to reach potential customers and communicate with current customers.

Facebook and myspace, the two most popular social networking sites, had more than 2 billion combined visits in January of 09!

The micro-blogging site, Twitter, is quickly gaining ground with more than 55 million visits. See the attached chart.

With this volume of traffic, it is small wonder that advertisers are clamoring to reach this lucrative market.

The basic idea is get as many people as possible to follow your, tweets, blogs and facebook pages and to share them with their networks of friends. Social sites are beginning to compete with search engines as a primary means of finding information online. Travel and entertainment are particularly popular categories of information to share through these networks.

W. A. Fisher Advertising & Printing has created extensive social/viral campaigns for clients including Iron Range Tourism, for which we have created a number of local spokespersons to focus on a particular market segment. One of the tricks to social marketing is not to come across as a corporate sales pitch, but rather as an individual with a shared interest.

Our volunteer spokespeople are local people that have a passion the outdoors, golf, ATVing, skiing, etc... Ideally, they will write and submit all their own content and may incorporate videos, how-to demonstrations, tips, trail conditions or whatever their followers or "friends" wish to see.

The Iron Range Tourism social campaign has been very effective in expanding the client's reach in various niche markets at a relatively low cost.