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Five Minutes With: Phil Harris, CEO of Geofeedia

What are your biggest opportunities & challenges in marketing tech for next 12-24 months?Screen Shot 2016-02-16 at 9.04.48 PMThe largest opportunity and challenge is presented within the application of location data. Today, organizations don't always understand that social data can be analyzed by location, andour mission at Geofeedia is to open those opportunities location-based opportunities ranging from business intelligence to customer service to marketing. What keeps your clients up at night?Many of our customers are overwhelmed by keeping up with their daily responsibilities, and they fear missing the important opportunity or risk that will affect their business. It's true across a variety of customers including retail organizations, transportation groups, hotel chains and even college campuses. With hundreds of vendors contacting them, they're not able to take the time to discern which technology presents incremental value for their goals.What's the hardest thing to educate clients about?With the proliferation of smartphones, there is more data to act on than ever before. And the younger generation's adoption of technology is changing marketing faster than marketers can keep up. Educating clients about what's current, available and possible--like location data--can be the greatest challenge.What are some unmet needs in marketing technology landscape?With location technology, marketers can "go beyond the keyword and hashtag" to listen and engage with consumers by location. We call location-based listening the "other half of social listening," since it can open up possibilities for events, retail establishments, brand activations, new store openings and more.What social network do you anticipate accelerating growth in the next year?The adoption of Instagram has been explosive and continues to grow. Our customers tell us Instagram will continue to grow quickly for everything from listening, engagement, customer service and marketing use cases.