You may have heard about beacon technology if you own a business or work in marketing. As part of Project Beacon, a program Google started to provide free beacons to businesses with the objective of increasing mobile visibility and experience, you may have even received a Google beacon in the mail.

Since Apple introduced beacon technology in 2013, it has advanced significantly and is anticipated to do so in the future. By 2024, the market for beacon technology is expected to reach $25 billion, according to a forecast made this year by Global Market Insights. It’s safe to conclude that the technology has a lot of potential and will likely influence the state of marketing in the years to come.

But what precisely do you need to understand about beacon technology? How can it assist you achieve your company objectives? Let’s find out.

• What Is Beacon Technology?
• What is a Beacon in Digital Marketing?
• Who Uses Beacon Marketing?
• What is the Purpose of a Beacon?
• What are the Pros and Cons of Beacon Marketing?
• How do you Set up a Beacon in Marketing?

What Is Beacon Technology?

Beacons are discreet wireless transmitters that communicate with neighboring smart devices using low-energy Bluetooth technology. They are among the most recent advancements in proximity marketing and location technology. Simply put, they link to smart devices and send data, facilitating and improving location-based search and engagement.

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The beacon itself is really straightforward. Every gadget has a radio, a CPU, and batteries. It operates by repeatedly broadcasting an identifier. This marker identifies a significant location in your environment and is picked up by your device, which is typically a mobile.

Your smartphone recognizes the identifier as being specific to the beacon and is an individual ID number. The beacon will accomplish the task it has been configured to once it is attached. Later, we’ll go over some of the several tasks that beacon may perform in more detail.

What is a Beacon in Digital Marketing?

Retailers can maximize the in-store experience and develop highly individualized marketing campaigns by installing beacons across a brick-and-mortar store. Beacons can also be used in spaces with weak cell reception, like the interior of a store, because they are Bluetooth-based.

Beacon Marketing provides businesses with distinctive and intriguing ways to interact with customers. It’s fascinating to notice that customer engagement using beacon technology can take interesting and unusual forms. In a brief period of time:

• 50% of the top 100 brands already use beacons in their stores
• It’s been predicted that that number will increase to 60 million physical beacons by 2023.

Then, customers get a personalized user experience with discounts, recommendations, and more. Brands are open to experimenting with novel marketing strategies in order to engage and draw customers.

Beacons’ ability to facilitate interaction between businesses and customers emerged at the ideal time. According to statistics, customers are more than willing to integrate their shopping experiences using mobile devices. Consumers want to utilize their mobile devices at the store, either to share their experiences or to receive benefits.

Retailers need to be aware that the added value provided to customers determines whether beacon marketing is successful.

For instance, according to current projections for technological trends, larger businesses seek to contact with customers more frequently by giving up tried-and-true methods of selling things once and refocusing their efforts on encouraging cyclical, repeat purchases. When beacons offer users useful information like coupons or benefits, such as beacon marketing encourages contact and engagement.

As long as a company can offer value to its customers, the more interactions it has with them, the greater the likelihood of consumer engagement. Therefore, when you tie it to beacon marketing, that brand engagement not only multiplies, it can also give the customer an entirely new experience and add another channel for interaction.

For customers who are shopping in-store, brands can provide discounts, customize their product recommendations, and provide incentives to buy items.

Who Uses Beacon Marketing?

Beacons aren’t a perfect solution to the customer engagement issue, just like any new technology. However, they do have some strong advantages, advantages that some of the biggest merchants in the world today are utilizing to promote sales and brand loyalty. Here are 10 well-known brands that have run some of the most successful beacon marketing campaigns employing beacon advertising.

1. Target

Target uses beacons to guide customers through its stores and point them in the direction of particular goods. The Target app, like Google Maps, displays your current location on the store map rather than just providing a static map or the aisle number where a product might be found. The aisle number and any ongoing sales for every item on your shopping list will be displayed on the map when you click on it.

2. Macy’s

In order to engage holiday shoppers over the 2015 Thanksgiving season, Macy’s used a mobile game powered by beacons. Customers who were close to beacons deployed in 700 stores around the country received push notifications.

The “Black Friday Walk In and Win” game, which offered the chance to win $1 million in Macy’s gift cards and other prizes, was promoted to customers through these notifications. With proximity targeting at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they increased their reach while this on-premise targeting successfully increased foot traffic.

3. Nordstrom

The best illustration of how beacons may be used to combine in-store and online buying is Nordstrom. As users pass a store with beacons placed, their beacon-enabled smartphone tells them if an item in their mobile shopping bag is in stock. Beacons are also being used to speed up try-on and checkout, offer online possibilities to in-store customers, and make suggestions based on their preferences.

4. CVS Pharmacies

CVS employs beacons to give real-time customer service messages, such as a reminder to refill a prescription or to pick up one that is ready, rather than mailing customers coupons and promotions. Customers at CVS reported that their in-store experience was improved by the beacon-powered push notifications by 62%. For those who received a pharmacy notification, that percentage increased to 72%.

5. Walmart

In order to covertly install beacons inside LED light bulbs across the store and parking lots, the retail behemoth teamed up with GE. Through the arrangement, Walmart was able to offer customized push notifications and discounts to in-store customers while also saving tens of thousands of dollars annually on energy expenditures per shop.

6. Neiman Marcus

With beacons, the high-end store adopted a new strategy from distributing coupons to customers. To advertise in-store activities like trunk shows, guest designers, and book signings happening on the same day a customer is in the store, it launched beacons at three stores. The CTRs for these educational push notifications were comparable to those of Neiman Marcus’ other marketing communications.

7. Universal DisplayWhen Hillshire Farms used beacon marketing technologies inside of supermarkets, sales intent increased by 20 times. The quality of Hillshire Farms’ goods were highlighted in a tailored message that was sent to shoppers using shopping apps, encouraging them to either add American Craft sausages to their in-app shopping lists or straight to their carts. More than 194,000 engagements and a 36% increase in brand awareness were the outcomes of the campaign.

Beacons were installed within the mannequins made by this international manufacturer, which has provided Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Uniqlo with mannequins. Anybody within a 100-foot radius of the store can receive a signal from these “smart mannequins” in window displays to encourage foot traffic. Additionally, consumers may instantly view an outfit’s details or buy any of its parts directly from their phones.

8. Levi’s Stadium Concessions

Levi’s Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers, has approximately 17,000 Bluetooth beacons that spectators may use to locate their seats, nearby restrooms, and refreshments. In conjunction with the Levi’s Stadium app, guests may even order food to be sent directly to their seats. The software received 183,000 downloads in seven months, had a 30% adoption rate, and increased concession sales by $1.25 million.

9. Hillshire Farms

When Hillshire Farms used beacon marketing technologies inside of supermarkets, sales intent increased by 20 times. The quality of Hillshire Farms’ goods were highlighted in a tailored message that was sent to shoppers using shopping apps, encouraging them to either add American Craft sausages to their in-app shopping lists or straight to their carts. More than 194,000 engagements and a 36% increase in brand awareness were the outcomes of the campaign.

10. Alex and Ani

Without ever sending a single offer to customers, one jewelry retailer employed beacons in all 40 of its stores to enhance store layouts and product placement. Instead, the company employed beacons to gather information about its customers, improve store designs, and inform them about its offerings. Customers who saw the digital beacon notifications made up 30% of those who entered the business.

What is the Purpose of a Beacon?

Beacons are used to draw attention, warn, and make people aware in order to help people in various locations and situations. Anyone who can see a beacon receives a warning, and various instructions on them instruct viewers on what to do and how to react. The majority of individuals use these beacon lights as warning devices to keep themselves safe most of the time, especially in some unpredictable scenarios.

Vehicles, structures that can be seen easily in inclement weather and other situations, such as buildings and aircraft, often have beacon lights installed. Most of the time, the messages that beacon lights transmit depend on the specific color or flash pattern they produce.

Beacon lights can be used in a variety of ways, but they are typically used to direct people to safety or alert them to a hazard or potential hazard. Beacon lights were originally used to warn people of impending danger. Wooden heaps that were lit and set in high places were used to ward off attackers or intruders who threatened their territory. The same was true of the lighthouses that sailors use to guide them as they travel over the sea.

Territorial Defense

As was already established, the early beacon lights took the form of lit-up woodlands that served as a warning that adversaries were nearby. When strategically positioned on hills and other high terrain, this type of beacon light proved to be quite beneficial. This style of defense was designed primarily to provide allied troops adequate lead time to prepare and to prevent being taken off guard, which could result in a loss.

Navigating Device

Beacon lights are also crucial for navigation since they may direct ships traveling at night and alert them to the presence of a shoreline through a lighthouse that emits a very strong light at night. In modern maritime vessels, beacons are also installed to prevent collisions between various boats that sail at night, inclement weather, and low visibility. Additionally, they are included in a lot of land-based transportation vehicles to help drivers navigate the roads, particularly in bad or foggy conditions.

Warning Device

The usage of beacon lights as a warning tool is also possible. It may serve as a factory alert or a notice for potential risk. Beacon lights are typically used inside factories to help workers with their tasks and duties. Beacon lights may occasionally alert employees to the completion of a process or the occurrence of an accidently occurring error or danger. Beacons that serve as warning devices are frequently accompanied with a deafening siren to underline their purpose.

What are the Pros and Cons of Beacon Marketing?

The use of beacons has been touted as a means to update the in-store experience for the mobile-first era.

Pros:

Accuracy. In comparison to GPS or WiFi tracking, beacons offer more precise location information. When used indoors, WiFi has a range of around 46 meters, whereas beacons are precise up to 450 meters.

Just as they can precisely understand how users are interacting with the app or website, this enables brands to gain a thorough grasp of how customers traverse and interact with their stores. Brands can make improvements to everything from store layouts and displays to inventory and loss prevention by using this useful data to determine what is and isn’t working with the in-store experience.

Sophisticated personalization: Customers can receive customized offers and discounts from merchants depending on their precise location within the store thanks to beacon advertising. Conversion rates and the customer experience are both enhanced by these timely offers that are customized for each client.

Let’s imagine a customer stops in front of a table with beach toys and children’s swimwear. Their phone flashes a 20% off in-store coupon valid today only, or a warning that sunscreen is located just two aisles away.

More thorough customer insights: Beacon data goes beyond which parts of the store customers frequent the most. Retailers can examine the best times of day and days of the week for customers to download and use particular in-store coupons. In order to keep lines short and moving fast, they can observe which things are bought together during the same shopping excursion and are aware of the busiest periods for checkouts.

Enhanced consumer involvement: Standard push alerts have 14% average open rates. 53% of the time, messages sent via beacon are opened. Users find them immediately relevant, and they have the power to persuade buyers at the key moment when they’re deciding whether or not to make a purchase.

Retailers who are happy: More than seven out of ten businesses that have used beacons claim that doing so has helped them better understand how customers browse the store and decide what to buy. 8 The majority of merchants also said beacons improved customer interaction in stores and aided in the development of more targeted offerings.

They work well: Over 70% of shoppers who received beacon-triggered material and offers indicated it increased their likelihood of making a purchase during a retail visit in a consumer research by beacon platform Swirl*. More than 60% of consumers indicated they would shop more over the holiday season at brick and mortar establishments that gave them mobile offers, and 61% said they would go a store more frequently if it offered beacon marketing campaigns.

Cons:

Implementation and Maintenance: Installing, testing, and maintaining beacons is a huge task whether you have one store or hundreds spread out throughout the country. Beacons sold separately are often affordable, costing $20 or less per unit, depending on the quantity ordered. The operating costs, however, are often overlooked by enterprises. For instance, each beacon must be manually placed, tested often, and replaced when it breaks or the batteries run out. Beacons can cost $300 per beacon per year to install and maintain overall.

Device restrictions: In her article, Shelley Bernstein discusses the difficulties she encountered while using and installing beacons at the Brooklyn Museum. In her experience, beacons fall off walls because they are too heavy for glue. They lack serial numbers, which makes it challenging to distinguish between them or spot a broken unit. Additionally, physical obstructions like persons or things can easily block beacon transmissions.

Opt-Ins from clients: Users must possess the following in order for you to deliver messages to them via beacons:

• Their mobile device on them
• Turned on Bluetooth
• Already downloaded your app
• Agreed to receive push notifications

Such a large number of opt-ins.

Partnering with well-known third-party apps, such as Twitter or shopping and coupon apps, that users are more likely to have loaded on their phones is one method that shops are getting around the app issue.

Customer Behavior: When you enter a store, do you immediately take out your phone? Most individuals don’t either. Customers simply haven’t formed the habit of stopping at every new display to check their phone to see whether there’s a new promotion. They primarily use their phones at physical stores to read product reviews and compare pricing.

The majority of consumers carry their phones in their purses or pockets, and they frequently move so swiftly between departments that it is challenging to engage them with beacon-powered messages, according to Venkat Gopalan, an executive at Sephora.

Due to these problems, a printed “Sale!” sign may be more effective at drawing in clients than even a customized push notification with beacon support. “Beacons are a high-resolution solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist, for a habit that consumers don’t yet have,” writes author Barry Levine.

How do you Set up a Beacon in Marketing?

Let’s go over what occurs when a user enters a beacon zone.

Bluetooth Low Energy signals within its range are continuously transmitted by beacons installed in shops, airports, and other commercial areas. According to the use case, the beacon range is calibrated. It spans 10 to 300 meters. These Low Energy signals can be scanned by apps with beacon support. These apps locate the ID associated with the beacon signal once they have picked it up.

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Using the ID, the smartphone contacts the cloud server and retrieves the associated activity. Users may be informed about an offer, a feedback form, or the company website through this action. These alerts are detailed in-app alerts that launch a campaign, such as a markdown card, a form, or a webpage.

Utilizing Beaconstac need three phases to set up a beacon marketing campaign: deployment, proximity marketing campaign creation, and smartphone delivery.

1. Deploy beacons

To enable a seamless interaction with customers, beacons must be placed in key areas. Additionally, the beacon range needs to be adjusted such that it does not impede the use of the nearby product.

Consider beacon deployments at an iPhone store as an example. Consumer education regarding the greatest features of each iPhone model is the use case. The beacon range in this instance needs to be adjusted so that the information about iPhone X is limited to this physical range. Information on the iPhone 7 should be provided to customers considering this device, not the iPhone X. (unless the goal is to upsell).

Other considerations include where to place them, at what height, potential signal interference with beacon signals, and more.

2. Create a proximity marketing campaign

Campaigns’ landing pages determine how successful they are. You may build short landing pages—what we call markdown cards—using the Beaconstac platform. Neither option requires a developer; you can construct from scratch or utilize one of the pre-designed templates.

The software also enables you to design stunning and fully functional forms for obtaining customer feedback. You may also do that if you already have a social media campaign or a campaign website that you want to lead viewers to. The analytics engine on the dashboard also enables you to evaluate and optimize your campaigns.

3. Deliver personalized campaigns

Your customers start receiving notifications on their cellphones as soon as you build campaigns and assign them to the installed beacons on the Beaconstac dashboard. Your customers will require a beacon-powered app in order to get these notifications. There are various possibilities for this app:

• Your brand app
• NearBee (a Beaconstac app, designed to receive beacon notifications)

The analytics engine on the dashboard also enables you to evaluate and optimize your campaigns.