The hottest marketing trend retail in 2019 is beacon digital marketing
As we talked in our previous articles, high street retailers are going through struggles since the rise of online shopping.
Beacon digital marketing may be your ace up your sleeve.
Read more:
3 retail brands eliminating check-out lines,
What is the retail trend of 2018-2019?
Here are some numbers provided by Beaconstac to help you see the big picture:
- The beacon technology market generated $519.6 Million in the year 2016 and is expected to reach $58.7 Billion by 2025;
- Retailers can improve their position and increase the operating profit by nearly 9% with an ROI of 175%;
- For small and medium businesses, ROI increases to 365%;
- 16x more effective than Google Pay per click;
- For coffee shops, the average CTR is 3-4%, which is 30x the CTR of a Facebook ad.
image source: beaconstac.com
What is beacon digital marketing?
Beacon digital marketing is a form of communication between brands and their consumers.
It relies on a small piece of hardware called beacon which can be deployed at fixed places such as shopping mall, coffee shops, car dealerships, airports, museums, bus stops etc. These beacons send brand notifications to customers’ smartphones through their Bluetooth feature.
Beacon technology
In 2015, Google designed Eddystone, its beacon technology.
Eddystone is a Bluetooth advertising protocol that works with Android and iOS. The beacons communicate with Bluetooth enabled smartphones via Eddystone. Google Nearby, a pre-installed service on Android phones, scans for Eddystone URLs and displays the content linked to it. Other services on the device such as Nearby Notifications, Samsung CloseBy or Physical Web compatible apps scan for and display these Eddystone URLs after passing them through a proxy.
How it works
The beacons broadcast URLs that can be detected by smartphones.
Beacon notifications direct the customer to a custom URL (any website), a form, or a markdown card. Markdown cards are creatives used instead of websites.
To use beacon digital marketing, you need beacon hardware and a website/form/creative card. You should also note that you don’t need a brand app.
image source: beaconstac.com
6 smart ways you can use beacon digital marketing to increase retail sales and brand awareness
1. Interact and engage with shoppers
- Send recommendations related to their purchase history;
- Upsell products;
- Send recommendations based on shopping habits.
2. Loyalty program
- Send customized notifications on offers to patrons when they are close by;
- Deliver time-sensitive geo-targeted offers with greater precision;
- Reward loyal customers for spending time with you.
3. Offline data
- Track footfall;
- Create heatmaps of zones in the store;
- Analyse merchandising effectiveness;
- Gauge customer loyalty;
- Analyse the content type that drives consumers.
4. Inform shoppers
- Share useful information about a newly launched product, the brand or the description of the products you are selling.
5. Boost in-store sales
Raise awareness about ongoing offers, promotions, sales etc.
6. Help visitors navigate through your store
Theory is nice but let’s talk real-life examples of companies using beacon marketing and their results.
Beacon digital marketing results for retail via beaconstac.com and kontakt.io
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Increased mobile view
Allrecipes’ mobile view went up to 26M – 35.9M per month by utilizing beacons for location-based marketing. They pushed beacon notifications with meal recommendations and recipes that required the featured products on sale.
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Boost in revenue
The Lyngby shopping mall set up a treasure hunt for kids.
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Increased customer experience
Auchan used beacons for wayfinding and promotions.
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Improved in-store conversion rate
The K-supermarket in Finland used SmartCart to offer new capabilities to their users. 84% of these users plan to use SmartCarts on their next visit.
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Increased in-store visits with contextual data and promotions
With carefully crafted messaging, ELLE brought 8.5% of their shoppers in store, generating up to $440k.
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More app-users
After 7 months Carrefour observed that the number of app downloads increased by 600%, and that users spend 400% more time in the app.
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Increased retention and CTR
Gino Rossi has been able to achieve 99% retention over time and a CTR of 85%.
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Increased numbers of check-ins
Rockbot increased the number of check-ins per venue by 41% and boosted song request rates by 22%.
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