Location-based mobile marketing is quickly blurring the boundaries between the online and offline worlds. Thanks to the incredible rise in popularity of smartphones over the course of the past decade, today’s marketing professionals must now target the areas where the digital and physical intersect on mobile devices.

What exactly do we mean by all this? To put it simply, more people than ever before are turning to their mobile devices to make on the spot purchase decisions while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

Walk into nearly any store and you’re sure to see at least a few customers with their smartphones in hand. And, no, they’re not texting or browsing the web. They’re reviewing their options before making purchase decisions. In fact, according to Google, 82 percent of consumers now make purchase decisions in brick-and-mortar stores based on information from their smartphones.

Below we discuss this new breed of marketing in more detail. We offer up four of the best tricks and tips to help you make your own local mobile marketing campaign more effective.

1. Personalized Advertisements

The Internet, and mobile devices in particular, have made it very easy to tailor advertisements specifically to the individual consumer viewing them. These targeted ads have been shown time and time again to greatly increase engagement.

Yet the big problem with personalization for most brands is context. In other words, how do you personalize an ad to a consumer if you don’t know anything about them? Furthermore, how do you create an advertisement that will appeal to your target audience?

The key here is to integrate all of the customer-level data you have at your disposal. This includes data from your website, mobile apps, email, call centers, offsite impressions, and more. The more information you have, the more thorough customer profile will emerge.

Naturally, this is exactly where analytics comes into the picture. Tracking data from all of your customers is the only way to piece together a solid advertising profile. And it’s this commitment to analytics that makes the next three local mobile marketing tips below really work.

2. Launch Mobile Apps

Perhaps the biggest local mobile marketing tip of all is to find out which apps your customers are actually using. Studies show that the average customer might download up to 50 apps, but only end up using 5 of them on a regular basis.

With that said, it’s time to experiment. Use your customer analytics data from above to develop mobile apps specifically for your target audience. Be sure to make them as relevant as possible, creating them to fill a hole that needs to be filled or solve a problem that needs to be solved. Once again, effectively doing this is only possible if you know what your customers are looking for.

3. Optimize Mobile Apps

Place focus on making your company’s apps as effective as possible. Spend time optimizing them to make them easy to use and with a purpose. You should use app analytics to see how your apps are being used and to test out different types of content and features. The key here is to remain as nimble as possible so you can make necessary changes on the go.

4. Connect Across All Platforms

All your company’s platforms must be well connected to ensure success. These include your social efforts, your mobile efforts, your online efforts, and your offline efforts. If your marketing campaigns aren’t connected across the board, your brand will end up looking stupid in the customer’s eyes. You must connect the dots across all of your platforms.

At the end of the day, local mobile marketing success is all about knowing your customer. Once you know your customer, you’ll be better able to meet their needs. More people than ever before are using their mobile devices to make real life decisions and you need to adapt to this by designing your apps with this in mind.