10 Beacon Technology Marketing Trends You Need to Know

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Last year beacon technology transitioned from retail to non-retail industries. This year, beacons are expected to become the digital eye of the user and the marketer. So, what exactly are they, you ask?

Beacons consist of tiny devices that transmit signals to mobiles and apps with Bluetooth enabled technology.

‍According to Business Insider, 2018 will see 4.5 million beacons within the U.S alone. Furthermore, the predictions suggest up to 900% growth within the three years!

Proximity solution providers or PSPs in the U.S are lagging at 37% as opposed to that of Europe leading the beacon revolution with 46%.

With the projected growth expected to reach 400 million beacons by 2020, it is high time that you learned the rising marketing trends of beacon technology!

10 Beacon Technology Marketing Trends to Prepare for:

Apart from being incredibly affordable, beacons are also becoming highly scalable for businesses.

It can help the blind tread the roads and customers cut through the clutter and see exclusively what they searched for.

However, unless businesses create an open data for beacon technology, growth might become stunted.

How does that happen? Stop wondering and read ahead!

1. Accurate Insights into Customer Behavior

Eddystone beacons, IOS, and Google cloud Proximity Beacon API - How they interact

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The purchase intent of a buyer can be regulated using beacon technology once you assess the data based on the shopping history of the customer.

For boosting the customer engagement on your digital or brick and mortar store, beacon technology can help. Moreover, 70% companies have already made plans to add beacons as vouched by the Boston Retail Partners Association.

According to the statistics of Hillshire’s marketing, 6,000 customers were recorded within two days from launching beacons. Moreover, the purchase intent for the same showed an increase of 20 times!

2. Seamless Shopping Experience

As beacons will be used to expand the sense of services around a user in the near future, it will also offer cross-channel and omni-channel shopping experience. For example, you will be able to pay for your gas and find the toiletries you were looking for at a gas station with a beacon synced with your phone sans talking a word!

Google’s Eddystone offers Nearby Notifications, which helps customers buy an item while reviewing it or when sharing the bills with friends. It helps customers to lock-and-seal items they want as well as finding it in the store!

3. Revitalize the Mobile Apps

It is expected that 2018 will drive more individual beacon based marketing campaigns than single trials as of now.

As businesses can customize the beacon to project special themes and designs based on the service or store, it eliminates the need for customized applications in the long run.

According to Job Worley, the CEO of Proxama, Eddystone is growing at a rate of 38% and beacons of the future are expected to remove the need for apps.

However, by developing beacon specific apps, you can have unhindered and direct conversations with your customers, simultaneously tracking their every movement in the retail market as well.

You can also use third party apps already installed on customer’s digital devices to send readable beacon promotions via signals.

From a business perspective, beacons can boost the engagement of users on your app more than ever.

According to statistics, it can speed up the market like it did in the case of a French Retailer named Carrefour, who grew user involvement to 400% at his store owing to beacon technology!

How to leverage in-store customer information to personalize across channels

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4. Personalized Shopping Experience for Brick and Mortar Retailers

It is a fact that 21st century shoppers like incentives and similar other customized shopping features as opposed to traditional shopping boosts.

Amazon and other e-commerce shops offer white papers to customize the shopping experience for every user – and now small businesses can do the same at an affordable rate with BLE beacons!

You can target attractive offers to customers based on their location in the shop with beacon technology. It can even replace the need for salespersons in the store.

With companies like Wal-Mart employing advanced ways to boost sales with custom-recommendations, discounts and offers, beacon technology can help you multiply the sales.

5. Extend Customer Reach

Installing beacons at the right place can drastically increase your reach.

You not only get access to new potential customers, but a higher number of recurring customers as well. Considered a geo-targeting solution by retailers, beacons have many practical uses.

They can attract customers who are around your location to find viable services from your stores proactively. As it can customize the offers based on the user’s history, new customers can be on-boarded with enticing offers easily too.

NOMI is one such company that drove in 1,300 new customers by installing beacons throughout their music festival. What’s more, it was a grand success!

6. Offer Seamless Connectivity

Networking is another boon of beacon technology set to revolutionize online shopping.

Beacons can be used to connect your customers with one another too.

One of the prominent companies who employed the same is Mingleton, a dating app. The app offered customers an exclusive feature to check ‘Who’s nearby’ for members when moving close to the beacons. It lets people you wish to meet, pop up on the phone when you’re actually around them. In short, Mingleton is tinder with BLE instead of GPS!

Soon enough, all you have to do to find a suitable partner will be a brisk walk!

7. Non-Retail Markets

It is true that retail has already made its progressive mark with beacon technology. However, when it comes to extended to Non-Retail Markets, beacons can offer efficient and better practices too.

According to Congress of the Graduates, the biggest job fair in Germany, incorporating beacon technology benefitted the recruiters and candidates exponentially. The hosts of the job fair created customized notifications for candidates to find relevant jobs and companies easily, when entering the fair.

After installing 300 onyx beacons for every booth at the fair, Congress of the Graduates became a huge success!

Real Estate

Spotting neighborhood properties for rent and sale becomes easier when there are beacons around you. Proximity beacons can help the seller and buyer get acquainted as well as strike a deal with a virtual tour of the building prior to buying!

Sports

In a sports stadium, beacons can act as a landmark to direct the audience to different stalls when used on mobiles. It can alert the customers to surprise offers and connect them to vendors in the stadium directly without the need of salespeople patrolling the seats.

Restaurants and Food

A breakthrough technology for restaurants, beacons will help takeaway restaurants process the orders smoother than before. It can notify customers about special offers, promos and advanced table booking via the beacon apps!

Travel

For cabs and hitchhikers alike, beacons can act as a landmark too. Cabs can promote marketing offers to travelling passengers as 90% people use smartphones on their cab rides!

A phone holding a picture of a dress with a tag reading "15% off today!"

8. Sensor-Up the World

The world of beacon technology opens us to new discoveries than singly directed searches. It opens the customer to a world of endless possibilities around them.

In the near future, when multiple beacons are installed all across the country, they will all be programmed to communicate with one another too. This in turn will create a nationwide network of connectivity according to Stephen Statler, Author of Beacon Technologies.

‍Yet another innovative leap of beacon technology is that it can be used to display exact information sought by the customer. The global mannequin supplier in the UK and US installed beacons in the London showrooms recently.

Referred to as the beaconed-mannequins, these mannequins display the product details on such as the price or make for doorbuster deals.

These advanced mannequins have been employed at House of the Fraser, Jaegar, and Bentalls. It is soon expected to hit the U.S too!

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9. Mobile Payments

According to Google statistics, mobile search ads converted higher online purchases than traditional methods.

In this age where every website is trying to optimize for mobile integration, it is natural that beacon technology will be used for exclusive benefits such as hassle-free mobile payments.

Yapital is one such BLE integration for mobile payment from Europe that guarantees ‘Everywhere Payment’ sans credit card details of the user. The best part is that Yapital works even where there is no network signal by using your voice recognition!

Mozido is another beacon payment portal where you can exchange funds with people in your v

icinity without a fuss.

The emerging benefits of Bluetooth 5 - Mouser Electronics

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10. Bluetooth 5 and the future of Beacon

Beacons are the future of 21st century virtual advancements.

Bluetooth 5 is expected to roll out domestic, social and corporate features soon too. It has 800% more capacity to broadcast efficiently with a longer range, ideal for estates and malls.

The new technology will enable easier and sharper marketing features for proximity based processes.

As more products are expected to come with in-built Bluetooth technology, beacons will be a universal tool soon!

Conclusion

Beacon technology is the stepping stone to the digital revolution. The combined effect of the marketing trends above will make beacon technology the next big thing for 3-4 years ahead.

From helping you reach the local market to your favorite Coachella booth and tracking your assets, beacons will emerge as the ultimate tool to manage your digital existence!

So be sure to watch closely for more updates on the best beacon technology marketing trends.

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