Mediaboss Marketing

Cell service providers collect location data on all of their customers, all of the time. This means that anywhere you go with an operating cellphone, your provider is monitoring and recording your every step based on GPS coordinates. These data are sold to marketers, who use it for a wide variety of uses.

Here's an example: Your local Chevy dealer buys the cellphone ID information of everyone who walks into the Ford dealership across the street. As soon as someone test-drives a new Ford, the Chevy dealer taps into a massive database to match their phone information to their name, home address and email, not to mention a host of other profile information about each person.

Now that Chevy knows all of Ford's potential customers, it can market its own cars in very competitive ways. The company not only knows who's in the market for a new car, it can also target sale prices, incentives and the benefits of a Chevy in ways that compete directly with Ford. This can include email blasts, postcards and digital marketing ads through a network of third-party websites that those specific users frequent.

"Location marketing is taking over the digital landscape," said Mike Ruffing, a digital marketing expert with Midwest Direct in Cleveland. "Buying ads to increase awareness is one thing, but placing incentives in front of qualified, active buyers takes this technology to a completely different level."

While location-marketing technology has been around for several years, until very recently it was cost-prohibitive for small and midsize companies to take advantage of it.

Today, for small businesses, location-data marketing has become far more approachable, accessible and cost- effective. It can be a very useful tool when trying to match elusive audiences with very specific offerings.

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Adviser: Digital marketing at the speed of change - Crain's Cleveland Business