Proximity marketing is a kind of communication method. Through this, you can give your business information to your customers. Proximity marketing is a very nice communication method, it can send the correct message to the right place to the right customer. You can send your business information directly to the customer’s smartphone.
However, through the medium of television, radio, and handbill, you also give the information to the customer. But with the help of this opportunity again to offer a new offer, you have to sort out the ads by spending money. This method is very cost-effective and less acceptable. But through proximity marketing, you can easily get your offers to the customer at a lower cost. And this work helps Beacon, it easily sends the information to the customer’s smartphone.
Over the past few decades, shopkeepers used traditional methods to communicate with their customers. After the Beacon arrived at the present time, there was a revolution in this communication method. Proximity marketing and Beacons technology make the business easier.
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The working process of proximity marketing using beacons
To see how proximity marketing works, we will see an example of a retail store.
1. Beacons are kept on the switch in front of a shop.
2. Those BLE beacons continue to send the signal to their range. BLE signals are a mix of numbers and characters.
3. A smartphone detects those signals if the smartphone is in that signal range and Bluetooth switches on the smartphone.
4. Then the smartphone sends an id number to the cloud server. This id number is with the transmitting signal.
5. Server Checks ID number. The server then took the necessary actions. It’s a discount notification or a new product review or just a compliment message.
6. Then this notification reaches the customer as a webpage or any form.
The difference between Location-based marketing and Proximity marketing
Over the last decade, real estate and retail businesses are focusing more on location-based marketing. Digital marketing is not only profitable but is not sure about the customer’s location. However, marketers and business owners can now understand the need for perfect marketing from GPS and Geofencing. And here’s the need to discuss proximity marketing contributions. Let us know about proximity marketing and location-based marketing and where to use them.
What is Location-based marketing?
Simply put, location-based marketing refers to communicating with potential customers in a range. Let’s assume a coffee shop wants to run location-based marketing, about their new one almond-flavored cappuccino menu. One kilometer of its store wants to deliver this message to all the potential customers. In this range, if there is an ice cream store, this message will be reached to its customers.
And it can be done using a smartphone’s GPS and cell tower triangulation method using the latitude and longitude calculation. This is the kind of marketing that targets a particular geographical area’s mobile user.
Geofence is a virtual boundary whose range is 50000 meters. If you want to do business in more than 100 meters, then you can adopt this method.
What is Proximity Marketing?
Proximity marketing is a more perfect method of location-based marketing. Let’s just mention the example above, now the owner of the coffee shop wants to make his marketing more perfect, trying to inform the customers who are going to the side of his coffee shop to tell his new menu. Let’s assume that he wants to do this marketing within 300 meters of his coffee shop. Proximity marketing is targeting a particular place’s customer, it is not a virtual geofence. It makes the communication system more relevant and personalized. Proximity marketing is used in specific areas. The distance of the area is within 100 meters. Through proximity marketing, a specific product or brand is marketed to customers.
The solution of Proximity marketing
For decades, businessmen and marketers are using proximity marketing. Technology is now available and proximity marketing is being used with the help of some advanced technology. Such as Bluetooth Beacons, NFC, and WiFi
1.Use of proximity marketing by Bluetooth Beacons
Bluetooth beacons are the most acceptable proximity marketing technology. 86% of proximity marketing is done with Bluetooth beacons. Beacons are low energy transmitters, which are powered by low energy Bluetooth. And the nearbee smartphone sends the necessary notification. There are two types of beacons-
iBeacons
Apple launched its first Ibeacon in 2013. When physical and digital were mixing together. Macy, Walmart, and Starwood were getting too many customers in their hotel because they were offering their customers with outgoing customers in front of iBeacon. Smartphone BLUE signals can be sent with iBeacons.
Eddystone
In 2015 Google Eddystone protocol came publicly. This is an open URL protocol that sends Bluetooth low energy messages through proximity beacons. Its popularity grew very quickly. It lost iBeacons to the competition in very short days. Through these beacons, the smartphone adopts the Eddystone signal. This can be done without any app.
On October 25, 2015, Android announced that any smartphone will not support nearby notification since December 6, 2018.
2. NFC based systems and proximity marketing
NFC was designed to empower profoundly secure payment and applications. NFC empowered clients to pay just by tapping cell phones against NFC-empowered gadgets. This innovation did not take off extremely well, despite the fact that it seemed promising in the beginning. This failure could be because of the accompanying reasons –
• Clients require an application to utilize NFC labels to get messages.
• NFC is a detached type of proximity marketing – which implies NFC promotions expect clients to start the engagement. In contrast to beacons, NFC frameworks can’t broadcast notifications.
• It has a compact transmission range of 20 centimeters.
3. Wi-Fi-based systems with proximity marketing
Wi-Fi has not been a proximity solution. However, with the broad of open Wi-Fi, advertisers are currently utilizing Wi-Fi to send a notification. The Wi-Fi hosting site can send location-specific content to the purchaser’s browser.
Wi-Fi requires users to agree to a connection each time they enter the business location. Also, Wi-Fi-based frameworks are not exceptionally precise with regard to proximity marketing.
4. RFID based systems with proximity marketing
RFID tags are used to track the movements of things and maintain inventory. A revolution came after RFID came in 2003. It is very familiar with very little time. But RFID has some limitations –
• The main obstacle to using RFID is to use a lot of hardware to use it. For example – tags, readers, reader control and apps. To make the infrastructure of the business, a large amount of capital should be employed.
• RFIDs like other proximity marketing cannot be easily used with smartphones. Requires hardware to send a specific frequency signal to RFID.
• It cannot be classified as necessary to send information through RFID. Eg – location, frequency, time of the day, etc.
Main reasons for Bluetooth beacon better than competing technologies
With the help of Beacons technology, proximity marketing is more rewarding than other technologies. The reasons are:
1. 10 billion smartphones in 2019 are Bluetooth enabled
In 2019, more than 10 billion smartphones have been used in Bluetooth technology. The amount of people who put their Bluetooth switch on different continents is estimated to be – 50% of the Canada and USA continents have their Bluetooth always switched on. 25% of Russia and 33% of UK users have always kept their smartphone Bluetooth on.
2. You do not require your own app to run beacon campaigns
There is no need to continue any application to run Beacons technology. And it has been possible for Google nearby notification and Nearbytechnology. Through this technology, non-silent, rich notifications, non-duplicate and visually appealing notifications have been sent directly to the customer’s lock screen on an Android smartphone. The customer can follow the business whose notification is coming to his phone and it can send a notification even if he is out of the beacon’s range.
3. The click-through rate is better than competitor technologies
Click through rate of Beacons campaign depends on many parameters –
• Usage of a third-party app
• Deployment location and strategy
• Nature of business
• Schedule of the campaign (Days and time)
• Notification copy etc
Click through rate of Beacons campaign is 55% to 60%, which is much more than other social media marketing. Usually, the click-through rate of a small business is 2% to 3%. Beacons campaign gives 25% higher CTR. Which is very profitable.
4. Beacons have an excellent ROI
The three main reasons for getting a very good ROI through Beacons marketing are – low cost, long battery life, and minimal efforts.
• The price of a beacons device is less than $ 20.
• The average battery life of all beacons is 2 years. It depends on the type of beacons and transmitting ranges.
• A businessman himself can set up these beacons and no engineer needs to run it.
According to the Q1 2017 report, a business’s operating profit has increased by 9%, with 175% ROI. ROI of small and medium business can be increased by 365%.
The process to set up a proximity marketing campaign using beacons
The uses of proximity marketing in a business
Proximity marketing brings radical changes in communication with the customer. These are:
1. Advertisement
Television, Radio, and magazines have now gone on advertising. It is not easy to target customers in specific areas with this type of advertising. So, by proximity marketing, beacons are making more profits by targeting customers at certain places.
2. Personalization to enhance engagement
Large companies like Amazon, Walmart, are using beacons in stores to get their customers. These large companies are getting the following benefits using beacons –
a. Send recommendations related to their purchase history.
b. Upsell products.
c. Send recommendations based on shopping habits.
3. Loyalty programs
Customers’ loyalty programs are made to keep customers happy. Through this program, customers are given some credit to buy things. Large brands and local merchants are running loyalty programs in their customers using beacons. They have the following benefits –
a. Send customized notifications on offers to patrons when they are close by.
b. Deliver time-sensitive geo-targeted offers with greater precision.
c. Reward loyal customers for spending time with you.
4. Amassing offline data
At present, the businessman is working to collect the data for his business repeatedly. Large brands are collecting these data through beacons to do the following-
a. Track footfall
b. Create heat maps of zones in the store
c. Analyze merchandising effectiveness
d. Gauge customer loyalty
e. Analyze the content type that drives consumers
How to implement a proximity marketing campaign without an app?
There are currently very few technologies that are successful as beacons. And it’s only possible for two protocols – Eddystone and iBeacon. The marketer does not need any apps to communicate with their customer. Eddystone protocol can communicate with the help of Bluetooth enabled smartphone.
The URL that Eddystonebeacons broadcast on the smartphone without any apps. There are some services, such as nearby notification, Samsung closeby, physical web, it scans the Eddystone URL.
On Android phones –
Nearby apps is a Google service. The Eddystone URL on the Android smartphone can be detected by it.
On December 6, 2018, nearby apps were launched. It is possible to send non-passive, non-generic, rich notifications android phone lock screens.
On iOS phones–
Physical web compatible apps are required to run the beacons campaigns in the iOS device. Nearbee apps have been created to run the beacons campaign on iOS devices.
Run proximity marketing campaigns on iOS devices
Needs a brand app or third-party app to run proximity marketing on iOS devices. Coca-cola, Heineken, ScreenVision is a major company that runs proximity marketing using their apps and has been very successful. Small companies may not have their own apps, they can run marketing using third-party apps. Nearbee is such a third-party app to use it.
Here’s how it is better than any other third-party app:–
1. Add an app intent to the campaign.
2. Allows delivering notifications at a specific time of the day, or days of a week.
3. The app is designed to run and scan quietly in the background. This implies clients get the notification even when the device is locked.
4. With the app, you can send telemetry information to the Google beacon platformwhere you can monitor the health of beacons.
5. Send multiple notifications from a single beacon.
Proximity marketing in retail
The proximity marking retail is being used in many ways. In addition, to push notifications and cupon, proximity marketing is used to attract new customers, to share store experiences, to create loyalty through personal message.
Major beacon use-cases in retail
1. Inform shoppers
Beacons are used to give information about a specific place and object. Use the Supermarket to give information about the newly launched product, to give them the brand and specification of the product sold. To inform about the new dishes used at the restaurant, to express the chef’s opinion. Let us know about the new car specifications and features using the car dealer. Beacons not only share information, but it also helps to increase sales.
2. Boost in-store sales
Beacons are being used at stores and malls to inform ongoing promotions and discounts, to inform product sales and relevant offers. Integrating POS with beacons for easy payments. Increasing sales of stores using beacons. The number of visitors to the store is increasing.
GPS works very well at any outdoor location. But it does not want to work when entering into a building. And here’s the use of beacons. Beacons find the right place through the triangulation method. You can find indoor or outdoor anywhere by beacons. That’s why beacons are being used at the airport, museums, shopping malls.
Proximity marketing in real estate
Currently, the real use of proximity marketing is seen in the real estate business. Real estate brokers and agents are using proximity marketing for leads capture, sending a business card.
Major beacon use-cases in real estate
1. Driving traffic
Beacons are sending important information to customers. For example, fixing the appointment of real estate agents with information about the home, previous owners or prospective customers.
2. Enhancing the buyer’s experience
Instead of an agent, beacons give all the information about a house. If a buyer enters a house planted with beacons, then immediately the buyer will receive all the information, no agent will need it for this purpose. Multiple buyers can be able to visit a house with one Beacons altogether information.
Proximity marketing in hospitality and travel
Being used in travelers and the tourism industry for the benefit of Proximity marketing. Also being used in airport hotels and attractive tourist destinations.
Proximity marketing in small businesses
Small businesses such as coffee shops, stand-alone restaurants, retail stores, and car dealerships are successfully using beacons. They are getting very cheap ROI by proximity marketing.
