New developments in mobile marketing coming online this holiday season may offer some unexpected opportunities for small, independent geek culture retailers to work with much larger retail partners to increase business opportunities on both sides.

Most Saturdays, my wife and I embark on a series of chores and errands that take up much of the afternoon: buy groceries, get gas, hit the comics store, snack on some frozen yogurt, maybe pick up some random stuff at Home Depot or the local mall.  Lots of other shoppers have similar routines.

It turns out those routines contain valuable information--especially when a stop at the comic or hobby store is part of the list. And now small retailers may be able to benefit, if big players get smart about using location data.

Small players, big advantage.  Big retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Macys are locked in a high-tech arms race to identify good customers, entice them with personalized offers that bring them into the store, and keep them coming back for more.  They are developing sophisticated data-based marketing technologies to assist them in that--technologies far beyond the reach of most small businesses.

The big retail chains may have the resources, but comics, game and hobby retailers have something even more valuable: engaged and loyal customers.  As we all know by now, there are fewer demographics in the market these days more desirable than geek culture enthusiasts.

In industry parlance, comic stores are destinations, the most desirable type of retail establishment.  Comic buyers are appointment shoppers, the most desirable retail customers.  They show up week after week on a regular schedule to pick up preorders, and while they are there, they frequently make impulse purchases on the recommendation of fellow shoppers or store staff.  These are the customers that big brands would kill for--especially when they are already out and about, with wallets at the ready.

The important question about these customers in terms of the broader retail ecosystem is, where do they go next, after they leave the comic store?

The Cookie Monster is following you.  This used to be a hard question to answer, at least on a large scale level.  While the Internet has tracking cookies that follow users around from site to site and report back on their browsing habits, the physical world was a tougher nut to crack.  But recently the tech industry developed tracking cookies for meatspace.  They’re called mobile phones.

Every time you check in on Facebook or Foursquare or ask directions from Siri or Google Maps, you add to a pile of (largely anonymous) user data about where people go and what they do.  There are even some apps that very explicitly ask you to help with this project in exchange for cash gifts and discounts.

As customers move from place to place in the course of a shopping outing, they reveal previously hidden connections between businesses.  This type of information, known in marketing as affinity data, is extremely useful in developing cross-promotions and partnerships with non-competing businesses, and in measuring the effectiveness of advertising in generating foot traffic.

Oh the places you’ll go!  One company used this kind of data to discover that people who went to see Thor: The Dark World were 30% more likely than other shoppers to visit Forever 21, Banana Republic, Ben & Jerry’s or a Disney Store.  We know that car commercials are omnipresent on sports broadcasts of all kinds, but did you know that ESPN viewers are the ones most likely to actually visit a car dealership?  Or that T-Mobile customers tend to watch Modern Family, while Verizon appeals more to the Big Bang Theory audience?

Guess what companies do with that information?  They reach out to other businesses whose customers share the same interests to try to strengthen the affinity, with results that are often mutually beneficial.  Best of all, the connections don’t need to be at a gigantic scale: affinity marketing works just as well or better at a local level as it does nationwide.

Imagine, for example, if you knew that 40% of your customers left your store and bought a coffee from the Starbucks down the street?  More to the point, what would Starbucks do if they knew that customers from the comic and game store next door were among their best customers?  The cost of creating an incentive program with the comic retailer--say, offering a 5% discount on coffee purchases for any purchase of $25 or more at the comic shop--is nothing to a giant chain, but could make a meaningful different to a small shop.

Geek culture marketing--no capes required!  The past several years have shown that big brands with no intrinsic connection to geek culture are willing to follow enthusiasts into comic cons and other fan spaces in (often pathetic) bids to win our attention with swag and silly "product-in-a-cape" marketing promos.  These ham-fisted attempts backfire more often than they succeed, embarrassing the brand and polluting the ecology of fan culture.

Affinity marketing using location data provides a much more graceful way to integrate geek and non-geek businesses around common interests.  Nerds need groceries, gas, mobile data plans and Grande Mochachinos as much as the next guy/gal, and they often make these purchases on the same trip as the weekly visit to the comic shop.  Comics retailers should be on the lookout for these kinds of opportunities to partner with nearby businesses to drive more foot traffic, greater convenience and good deals for everybody.

-- Rob Salkowitz (@robsalk) is author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture and is working on a new project on the future of marketing and retail in the digital age.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.