Yext is one of our favorite partners because they are constantly innovating, and giving businesses ways to enhance their location marketing.
Their newest unveiling may be the most interesting yet, as last week Yext launched a new integration with Uber that allows companies to serve up hyper-targeted content marketing while customers are riding to a physical location.
The potential for Youtility here is enormous, as explanatory video, behind-the-scenes stories, even pre-ordering from the car all become possible with this new integration.
One of the beta testers for the service is Guitar Center, which serves up specs on in-store inventory to potential customers riding to a nearby Guitar Center location with Uber. Once they arrive, they already have an idea of what instruments they want to demo. A time saver for the customer and for the on-floor sales team.
It’s important to note that the only way this content is served up in the Uber vehicle is if the ride is hailed from the mobile app or mobile website of the business. In the Guitar Center example, they added a “Catch A Ride with Uber” button to their mobile site, using Yext’s Location Cloud service that ties into the Uber API.
Then, once the customer is on the way, when they look at their Uber app during the trip, the content marketing is served up. Only that customer sees the content, and only during the drive.
Customers are not tracked or targeted with content beyond this trip, and no money changes hands between Yext, the business, or Uber.
How Would You Use This?
If your have a business with physical locations, this integration gives you a whole new set of content marketing opportunities:
- If you have a concert venue, you could provide the set list of tonight’s artist.
- If you have a bar or restaurant, you could provide tonight’s specials and perhaps even let customers order their first round and appetizers while on the way!
- If you have a museum, you could provide video clips of current exhibits.
- If you have a coffee shop, you could provide a video showing your artisanal, in-house roasting process.
- If you run a golf course, you could provide hole-by-hole playing tips.
- And certainly, if you are in retail you can showcase in-store inventory (like Guitar Center is doing) but you could also serve riders a photo gallery of most popular products, or new arrivals.
- It would also be interesting to test special discounts only available through this program – a secret fan offer.
The 1:1 nature of this content marketing is very intriguing, and I love the fact that it’s wholly opt-in. It’s only served up to people who request an Uber via the business (which is a somewhat unusual circumstance, for now) so it’s perhaps safe to assume that those riders are enthusiastic about the opportunity to get access to more content from the brand.
Would you use this as a customer? Would you use this a content marketer?
(here’s a post from Yext about how it works step-by-step)
