Mobile

3 Ways Beacons & Mobile Marketing Can Enhance Your Retail Business

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As a retailer, maximizing on conversion opportunities is crucial. However, with the digital revolution changing the way people are shopping, marketing your brand and increasing conversion can get tricky. Mobility and flexibility are more important to customers than ever. What can you do to your marketing strategy to take advantage of this? Beacons and mobile marketing are your answer.

Using small pieces of Bluetooth data, beacons are a type of technology that provide accurate location information. Through smartphones equipped with Bluetooth 4.1 like the Samsung Galaxy S7, beacons can seamlessly communicate with each other, mobile devices and the cloud. And mixed with mobile marketing, your retail brand has the potential to boost customer acquisition, product sales and overall profit. Not convinced? Michael Baker, retail consultant and vice-chair of the ICSC’s Asia-Pacific Research Council, says that beacons are one of the most promising ways of merging the offline retail industry with the popular online sphere. Here are just a few ways you can take advantage of beacons.

  1. Proximity Messaging

By detecting the location of people through their mobile phones, beacons allow retailers to drive more people to their store. Rather than just acting when customers enter the store, the 70 meter proximity of beacons means you can reach customers in a wider area. Through incentives and promotions delivered with the beacon, the opportunities for retailers to drive sales drastically increases. Further, you can tailor these promotions to each consumer’s interests, demographic and needs, with the targeted marketing increasing chances of a successful transaction.

  1. Useful Analytics

Through the advanced technology of beacons and mobile phones, the potential for rich and extensive data analytics that can be applied to further business strategy is significantly increased. In terms of online shopping, what product is purchased and its style, color and size, how the consumer ended up on the site, the path to conversion and method of purchase can all be identified and broken down to enhance what is leading to more successful conversions. And with beacons, this data extends to in-store experiences as well. A customer’s movements can be tracked and what routes were more successful can be utilized. As a result, retailers can adjust product placement, promotion placement and service assistance to best enhance sales.

  1. User-friendly Experience

Beacon and mobile marketing are great examples of how digitization is making processes quicker and people’s lives easier. There’s nothing more frustrating than not being able to find a particular item in a store. With online shopping now available, this annoyance can deter customers from in-store shopping. However, with beacons, consumers have the capability to search where a product is located in store rather than roaming around. At point of sale, customers can complete the transaction through their mobile device even when in the store, making the customer experience seamless and distraction-free. Eliminating the hassle and making the purchase process more streamlined can encourage people who are often turned off by the in-store experience to visit consistently.

Beacon and mobile marketing epitomizes the flexibility and ease-of-use brought on by the digital world. And when it comes to retail, providing convenience and user-friendly service are key elements to fulfilling goals of customers acquisition and sales.