Historically, life pattern marketing strategies have primarily revolved around media placement planning. For example, if you wanted to market to the on-the-go working mom you message to her in a variety of different locations such as on the radio while she's driving the kids to school, on the coffee sleeve at the mega coffee shop, in email, social networking site ads throughout her workday, at the grocery store with product placement, and within news/entertainment/and shopping content in the evenings. Different ad formats, different media buys, varied levels of tracking all combine to render this highly labor and resource intensive. When done well, it's less creepy and stalker-y than it sounds and can really become sticky if your brand adds positive value with each touch point.
With mobile, because that device follows her to all those places, understanding the location of each touch point and the context of the thing she is doing, opportunity abounds to present sequenced interactions and incorporate the location-based insights to deliver immediate value for her in the form of useful content, easy to navigate mobile purchases, utility-based mobile web and app experiences. A key element to this is being able to understand where she is, but also, what interactions have you had with her in the past.
Across all these presentation layers, creatively and precisely considering what location means will allow you to progressively tell your brand story in highly relevant ways. If an acquisition effort, inspire or enable discovery. If a retention effort, reinforce the good things your brand brings to the life of the consumer. Based on activity from those messages, your life-pattern marketing execution may also tell you when certain life stages are being worked through as well as forecast when certain regularly exhibited consumer patterns might be likely triggering emails, SMS, or push notifications to further drive desired behavior.
As with any strategy, the right fit for one initiative will vary by brand and circumstance so any of these suggestions should be vetted internally and with experienced professionals. Location is one of many ways to think about your overarching efforts but today is more accessible than ever and still remains exceptionally powerful. How have you used location effectively in your direct digital marketing efforts?