Is your business under-represented?

Do you own a personal navigation device or PND (Think Garmin, Magellan, Mio, TomTom, or your gps mobile phone)?

Conduct a point of interest search and notice Starbucks, Subways, and McDonalds are easy to find. How about your own business, where is it listed?

Where it ranks on the list may determine whether a PND guided user finds Subway over your location.


Typically GPS hardware/software manufacturers license these business based POIs from NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, or the like. These providers are always looking for unique, local results - and it is much easier to collect POIs 1000 at a time. Some of you may have working SEO programs to help web searchers find you, but what about strategies to help people find you in the real world using PNDs?

If you have 1000+ locations I doubt you are reading this blog. Companies like NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, and MapQuest have probably already reached out to you. So as a smaller operator how do you make your business stand out in the searchable list on a PND?

We at Mapicurious want to give you ideas for marketing your business via personal navigation device in a multi-part series.

For starters let us introduce a definition:

Personal Navigation Device (PND) - Software and hardware to receive a location and guide the user between two points in the physical world. You know these as Garmins, Magellans, Dashes, Mios, and Navigons. You should know that Nokias, iPhones, and Blackberrys fall into this category as well.

It is very possible that the customer in your store now has one of these.

Second, let's prepare a few answers to critical questions making your business stand out?

1. How many times have you felt your location is a disadvantage compared to your customers?

2. Do customers mention they had difficulty finding a location of yours?

3. How much is it worth if a customer finds your location on their PND with an attractive amount of information, and bypass your competitors to visit?

4. Ask your friends and customers, what brand of PND they have.

We'll use these answers in the next installment.

Thanks,

Maps