Marketers aim to introduce geospatial technology use within marketing campaign, Google research finds
Mapping and geospatial technology is expected to factor in a growing number of marketing campaigns, a survey for Google has discovered.
The survey of marketing professionals, undertaken by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Google, found that 90% of marketers could see a growing important in mapping technology and said that they had plans to use it within their marketing strategies.
The research was undertaken in September 2011, involving 250 marketing managers, and also found that 62% of marketers using mapping technology, were forced to consider their product strategy as a result. However, two thirds (66%) said that it improve customer engagement and almost half (49%) found that it also increased web traffic and 47% said it grew sales too.
Nearly half of the marketers using the technology (47%) also claimed that it improved productivity, while one-in-five (21%0 was using it to combine different sets of data and to help spot trends.
Around a quarter of marketers said that they had increased their use of mapping technology as a ‘priority’ while 72% said that they would do so within the next 12 months.
Despite this, one in three said that ‘internal politics’ made it difficult to introduce the technology into their campaigns.
Miles Shipside, commercial director for Rightmove, commented:“The use of innovative mapping technology forms a key part of our marketing strategy and overall user-experience on the Rightmove site. We are constantly looking to improve the spatial search options we provide to consumers, resulting in innovative new tools such as Draw-a-Search. The mapping technologies that we provide not only allow us to provide a better user experience for home-hunters but also allow us to analyse and identify local and national market trends in the way that people search.”
Sanjay Patel, head of enterprise GEO - EMEA at Google, added: “We live in an increasingly visual age and people expect to be able to digest information quickly rather than spending time trying to decipher it. It is important that marketers are aware of the potential of mapping technology to help them visualise their data within a geographical context. Mapping technologies are being used for far more than just showing your customers where you’re located. Organisations in all sectors are harnessing the power of mapping technologies to get a better view of their customers, improve business processes, and most importantly of all, drive sales.”
Finally, Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst house Quocirca, said: “Data visualisation speaks volumes, and enables end users to reach valuable decisions far more rapidly than wading through tables and written reports. Visualisations of data across easily recognised environments – such as maps – makes this a very powerful tool for users across an organisation, not just data analysts. The easy accessibility and usability of public cloud-based mapping systems now puts this power into everyone’s hands – and should be embraced and used by any organisation where geo mapping could offer greater insights”.