Customized, Online Maps Can Fix the Broken Location Marketing Funnel for Businesses, Realtors & Others, Says White Paper from MapJam
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 23, 2015 -- Marketers, businesses, retailers and real estate agents who use readily available online maps to promote their businesses face losing customers to nearby competitors and negative online reviews – signs of a broken location marketing funnel, according to a new white paper from MapJam.
The broken funnel is easily fixed, however, when businesses create customized, fully owned and easily shared online maps to lure customers, visitors and patrons directly to a location, store or event. That’s the key message in the white paper, “Your Marketing Location Funnel is Broken: Fix Your Marketing by Fixing Your Map,” from MapJam, a web and mobile map publishing platform that enables businesses, organizations, and people to create useful, personalized maps that are easy to share.
“Brands invest a lot of time and money into their products, logos, and designs, and they should also ‘own’ the critical location element of the marketing funnel that attracts customers,” says Jack Gonzalez, a former geography teacher who co-founded MapJam with Co-CEO Scollay Petry.
“Like the businesses and events they promote, maps should be colorful, detailed, relevant, personalized and rich in content so that they catch customers’ attention directly and without distraction,” Gonzalez says. “Google is fine for addresses, but its maps can also expose online and mobile visitors to nearby competitors, similar businesses or potentially negative online reviews – the kinds of content that can siphon customers elsewhere.”
A Quick, Easy-to-Use Map-Creation Alternative
MapJam.com encourages a “clean, customized” mapping alternative for a variety of businesses and verticals, including retail stores, event planning, real estate listings, vacation rentals, event venues and more. Many marketers and businesses default to Google maps because of the brand’s recognition or because mapping alternatives have been complicated, time-consuming or costly to create and maintain.
But Gonzalez and Petry pose a simple question that is answered by MapJam’s easy-to-use map-creating interface: “Why give consumers more choices when the goal of marketing is to narrow the funnel of choices and lure consumers specifically and equivocally to your business?”
From the simple MapJam drag-and-drop interface, users can create personalized maps by:
- Adding location pins, notes, text, layers, landmarks and descriptions
- Uploading images and videos
- Customizing pins by background, size, color and icon
- Adding last-mile details, directions or call-outs
- Sharing maps via text, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest
- Embedding maps on websites and via a WordPress plug-in
Fix the “Clicks-to-Bricks Funnel”
Customized maps are a critical component of what MapJam calls the three-stage “Clicks-to-Bricks Funnel,” marked by 1. Prospecting (advertising, branding, coupons), 2. Pinpointing the location through maps, and 3. Closing the sale (through customer service, products). The funnel can siphon customers away at the middle step, especially if businesses rely on maps that expose customers to third-party information or competitors.
“The fix for the broken Location Marketing Funnel is MapJam, which helps retailers, brands and marketers create and ‘own’ their maps, from start to finish,” according to the authors. The white paper is now available for download.
For more information about location marketing, or to interview MapJam’s Gonzalez or Petry about the MapJam map-publishing platform, contact Nikkia Griffin at ThinkInk, ngriffin(at)thinkinkpr.com or 305-749-5342 ext. 239.
About MapJam
MapJam, based in San Francisco, is a web and mobile map publishing platform that allows businesses, organizations, and people to create useful, personalized maps that are easy to share without writing one line of code. Online maps can be updated in real time and shared via custom-URL short codes on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, email and text, or embedded as interactive maps on websites or WordPress. MapJam is part of 500 Startups (Batch 14). http://www.mapjam.com
Nikkia Griffin, ThinkInk PR, +1 (305) 749-5342 Ext: 239, [email protected]
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