HomeMARKETINGProximity Marketing: What Proximity Marketing Is And How It Works

Proximity Marketing: What Proximity Marketing Is And How It Works

Proximity marketing is used within stores (or museums, hotels, airports…) to offer administration to clients on the cell phone and further develop the Shopping Experience. Vicinity showcasing is a promoting administration that permits you to make and send customized and contextualized content straightforwardly to explicitly focus on your cell phone furnished with a specific application. 

It is a geolocalized administration: it is enacted when the client winds up going through a particular region, for instance, inside a retail location, while the client enters the store or cooperates with clients in lodging or with guests at a gallery or even with clients of a general store. It is utilized to tell customized correspondences continuously, for instance, to make you aware of the accessibility of another deal or coupon by sending a warning to your cell phone.

The utilization of cell phones in stores today is a great chance to draw in clients and further develop the Client Shopping Experience. One out of three clients picks what to purchase via looking for data progressing, i.e., commonly from their cell phone, and as numerous as 31% say they settled on their decision by being impacted while searching for data when they were inside the store.

Proximity Marketing Enabling Technologies: Beacons And Bluetooth

The basis of proximity marketing is beacon technology based on Bluetooth low energy (BLE, Bluetooth Low Energy). It is a wireless system for transmitting and receiving messages within short distances between a beacon device and a smartphone equipped with an app. The name of Apple’s beacon technology is iBeacon. Unacast research distributed in July 2016 and taken up by eMarketer uncovers that a close answer for help showcasing exercises is utilized in over half of associations, including retailers, retail chains, lodgings, travel industry organizations, air terminals, and arenas. 

The research assesses that 8.3 million signal gadgets are introduced around the world. In any case, far and wide dispersion just here and there compares to commonsense use. Another review connecting with the US market expresses that just 23% of those talked with announced themselves happy with the carried out in-store reference point arrangement, and 22% anticipate changes to the cycle. The system, as a matter of fact, is frequently complicated for the client (opening an Application and initiating the association is brief), and this stances critical difficulties for advertisers.

Proximity Marketing To Interact With The Customer

To be recognized, a customer must have installed the retailer’s mobile app on their smartphone and have activated Bluetooth. The beacons installed in the store can thus intercept the smartphone and send a push notification. If the customer is known, the information can allow the user to open the app to view personalized products and offers, basing the selection on previous visits or purchases made online. Through texts, photos, and videos, the consumer can, therefore, get an immediate idea of ​​what he can find in the store and be directed to the correct department.

A Personalized Marketing Strategy: Tailor-Made Advertising And Promotion

Starting from advertising, today it is possible, for example, with technological solutions already present on the market, to launch localized advertising initiatives, focusing investments on the proximity of the user and organizing targeted and profiled communication or engagement activities, basing them on the position of consumers.  «But not only that: the possibility of using the data provided by smartphones allows us to have a series of information on the user’s choices which no longer only concerns online behavior, but also behavior in physical places,» 

Just as – to cite a couple of examples – campaigns aimed at mothers can be set up because the people who always find themselves passing and stopping in front of an elementary school between eight and nine in the morning have been identified as such, in the same way, retail has the opportunity to adapt marketing initiatives to customers who have already visited a store or intercept them near a competitor’s store by offering personalized coupons. Obviously respecting privacy laws .”

Increase Sales Thanks To Real-Time Marketing

Attracting the customer inside the point of sale represents only the premise for starting a dialogue with him in the most delicate moment of the customer journey: that of the actual purchase, during which new cross-selling tactics can be implemented thanks to Proximity Marketing. 

By detecting that a certain product is being placed in the shopping cart, the system can send the user a promotion on a related reference or a notification on other potentially interesting products for the type of purchases in progress, or it can provide information with engaging content, a recipe for example, which suggests further offers,”  «But it can also generate interactive maps or maps equipped with augmented reality functions that guide the user to the right shelves, where it will be possible to stock up in self-service mode. 

This is an aspect that should not be overlooked to ensure maximum customer satisfaction even at peak times, around Christmas or during sales, when the staff is always bustling.” Finally, the integration with the mobile app’s ecommerce platform combines the physical experience with the possibility of completing online shopping in the event of stocks running out or when sizes and colors of a specific type are not available in the store. Boss. In this case, the references would be sent to the customer directly at home.

Examples: From Proximity Payments To Loyalty Programs

The smartphone is also perfect for making the user experience of customers who prefer self-service methods in stores more straightforward and more satisfying. The telephone can, in fact, be used as an alternative scanner to traditional terminals in points of sale that have not yet adopted self-scan solutions, at the same time guaranteeing confidence and practicality for users who use their device. Savings on the retail side, given that they do not, we need to equip ourselves with a fleet of new devices.

Then there is the whole great world of proximity payment, in full development, with several banks already active with their services.» Even the after-sales world can be managed in proximity: several case studies at an international level show how effective it is, for example, to forward surveys in real-time to those who are leaving the point of sale, rather than also innovatively managing loyalty programs not only rewarding the user for his purchases but also for interactions with the brand and the company, thus considering the frequency of access to the store or indeed participation in surveys and competitions.

Proximity Marketing Is Data-Driven

All this exchange generates a mass of data that allows you to access more information on your visitors, anonymously monitoring users’ movements within the store and identifying those that create the most revenue and those with the right potential to increase turnover. For example, what are the most frequented areas of the store?

In which ones does the customer stay longer? What are the average times spent inside the store? All these elements are now straightforward to highlight and use to support the preparation of increasingly effective layouts and sales processes. The second theme concerns the more excellent added value to be transmitted to the consumer, both through tangible benefits in terms of service and by offering loyalty programs that are more interesting and closer to the customer’s actual needs.

The third plus is given by the strengthening of customer care, which, once again, can now be managed in real-time and by responding to specific questions with a genuinely people-centric approach. «This means putting into practice a data-driven marketing strategy, in other words, profiled and segmented marketing for each user based on the analysis of real customer behavior,» comments Marta Valsecchi.

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