A couple of years ago, if we would have said that technology has diverted consumer from offline shopping to online shopping, today the technology is bringing consumer and retailer together like never before. With the help of new technology like Beacon, retailers are able to market their brands more effectively and defining new trends in offline shopping experience.
What are Beacons?
Beacons are small, battery-operated, low-cost wireless devices that continuously transmit a simple low-energy Bluetooth signal saying: “Hello, this is me, here is my ID.” Apps on smart phones can pick up these signals; perform various actions based on the ID, micro location, proximity, time, and user’s context to deliver rich contextual and personalized experiences.
Why Beacons for brand marketing?
Economically cost effective:
Beacons are more cost effective way of marketing rather than current trend of hoardings, banners, LED display, TV promotions etc. An average price of a Beacon device is $20-$30.
Small in size, can fit anywhere:
Beacons are very small in size and it can fit on door, ceiling, door, window, rack anywhere you want and totally hidden. This is an obvious advantage over large banners, displays, hoardings that requires more space and cannot fit anywhere you like.
Easily changeable:
Because of their small size, Beacons can be changed as frequently as you want across different locations based on your business requirement. We don’t think this could ever be possible with current marketing trends.
Reusable:
Beacons simply send signals to app, it is the app that identifies these signals and shows different messages. A good app will allow you to cheaply change promotions and messages. Thus you can run many campaigns through the same app to achieve different business objectives.
How can you increase your brand marketing with this new technology?
Increase traffic of consumers at your brand / store:
Hundreds of consumers pass by your brand / store, identify them, greet them and invite them to your brand / store, guide them in finding what they need. Even if the app is not running, Beacons can wake up your apps.
Brands can send notifications for sales and promotion offers as soon as consumers step in the range of Beacons. As more number of consumers will visit your brand / store, your brands will automatically get marketed and sales will increase.
In-store assistant and efficient consumer service:
Once consumers are in the brand / store, Beacons can help them in identifying and spotting out products that consumers are finding, from several thousand products, long aisles, multiple floors and inefficient support staff.
It saves time, energy and resources by helping consumer find relevant information quickly, as consumer walk through the brand / store it can send out new information and alerts, gain consumers attention by promoting products that they are highly interested in buying, get rid of long payment queues by simple online billing process with digital receipts.
Capture consumers’ behavior:
Beacons can be easily integrated with current CRM system and based on how consumer behaves inside the brand / store; this information can be feed into the CRM, which can help in building consumer loyalty programs and solutions, drive up consumer engagement and increase efficiencies.
Beacons can help in capturing per consumer information like entry & exit data, how many used the app and saw notifications, amount of time spent in brand / store as well as in each section, visited locations, repeated visits, purchase history etc.
Retailers can analyze this information and plan their marketing strategy accordingly to engage more consumers and can send out more personalized messages, promotional offers.
Attract more consumers by engaging them based on their preferences:
Beacons can help in advertising relevant information on products, special offers and deals. It can send out more precise, direct and efficient messages, targeting more consumers who are really interested in buying those things. This will also make consumer feel more comfortable and is able to shift the focus away from the device to the message.
When brands know consumers behavior, Beacons can help in sending more personalized and context driven messages based on consumers’ preferences. Sending out customized messages, guiding them to specific sections and informing them on new arrivals based on their shopping preference will make them feel more personalized and thus increase your brand value and sales.
Gain consumers’ trust:
Beacons themselves don’t collect any data nor send any marketing messages to your phone. They broadcast an ID, smart phone uses that ID to understand the location and context. So, in effect, beacons don’t track you; your phones track a beacon.
Apps using location must do an effective job in explaining why and what they collect and have policies to delete the history of a user’s location. It is important to have the consumers trust and have the apps deliver value for them to allow for location services.
By implementing Beacon for your brand marketing in effective way, you will surely have an advantage in this competitive market having several brands.
If you are looking for such related solutions, if you want to increase your brand value, market it in efficient manner and engage more consumers, then LetsNuture team will help you in implementing your business situation into technical solution with best mobile apps and Beacon Integrated Aolution, providing on-going assistance and implementing Beacon technology at your business premises.