What is a beacon?

Marketing advances every day as technology advances and a new demonstration of how marketing and technology come together are the “beacon”.

The beacons are small devices or electronic components of the size of a coin and low consumption, which use the Bluetooth connection, to transmit notifications to any mobile device, which is within its radius of action (about 50 meters). They are composed of a microprocessor with a Bluetooth radio chip and a battery, which is usually a button cell battery.

At the moment two large bet on Apple (iBeacon) y Google (Eddystone). Both devices are supported by the IOS and Android operating systems and both need the Bluetooth turned on to function.

This technology, although it was created by Nokia, was popularized by Apple with its iBeacon in 2013, making it universal for everyone.

How does a beacon work?

These small devices emit a signal that can be received by any mobile device and thus be able to interact and send the message we want to that person who is within the radius of action of our beacon.

With them, we can geolocate users of smartphones, where GPS technology can’t reach.

If we think of a business, anyone who enters it, we can wake up your phone and go launching messages and personalized assistance for everything we want to offer from our store. For example, when a person enters our business we can send a message such as:

“Good morning John and welcome to our store, today we have on offer all the man’s shoes”.

When he buys the shoes, for example, we can offer him another service:

“Surely you can be interested in the shirts we just received and ties to dress very elegant.”

At the time of leaving, we can send him another message.

“See you later, enjoy your purchase and have a happy day.”

The Beacon adds value to proximity marketing

In this way, we have helped the client to show our offers, services and whatever we can think of, with constant and personalized communication. You do not have to chase them and you can develop marketing strategies, strategically placing beacons in your establishment. Also thanks to them, we can know where they have been inside the store, how much time they have spent in front of a product, and what products they are most interested in.

What benefits do they have for users?

We can think of many, but the most outstanding is that you can give relevant information to that user in real time of any product or service of your business, offering an easy, comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.

The user can also know in real time what are the offers or discounts offered by the business, with which the user will be informed instantly of the products in which money can be saved.

Another service that can be offered to avoid waiting and queues are to order the product online while you go to the store, we can be talking about coffees, or usual products of purchase so that when the user enters the store is You can have prepared and ready to go.

This has just started but it is estimated that the beacons market will double this year and will lead to constant growth until reaching 400 million shipments in 2021.

Beacon and the future of digital proximity marketing

Thanks to the union of integrated technologies between beacons, apps, cloud services, and Big Data, we can offer users unique experiences in the consumption of any type of information, products, services, offers, personalized messages, payments, suggestions, tips, etc., creating unique conditions of digital proximity marketing.

Now it only remains for us to let the imagination fly and create proposals of value that allow us to offer unique experiences to customers at every moment.

If you find interesting everything related to digital marketing and innovation, we recommend this article: What is Google Audience Center?