Who could have imagined that you would be able to walk into a physical store while looking for your favorite item and suddenly receive a message on your phone that the same item is available for you at a discount?
The time is here, as you don’t have to wait for a sales executive anymore and can take out your phone to let the app of the relevant guide you through the aisle to your favorite item with Beacon Technology. Many big companies, including Macy’s, Urban Outfitters, CVS, Lord and Taylor, Target, and timberland, have already implemented this technology in their stores.
By using the marketing beacon technology, retailers can effortlessly meet customers’ requirements and provide them with a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Research shows that 70% of customers want to shop with this technology, making it the need of time, especially if you own a famous store.
What is Beacon Technology?
Apple first introduced the beacon technology advertising in 2013 for the first time, and customers were able to shop with it by using their phone’s Bluetooth. It was a part of the iOS 7, and Apple users were able to enjoy beacon from day one. The technology was thought way ahead of its time as it used Bluetooth beacons placed in various locations across the store.
This way, the store staff knows about the customer’s approximate location and gets an idea about what they are looking for. If a customer can’t find the item or is lost in the store, you can direct them to their desired location without physical interaction.
Businesses can save money and effort in advertising discounts, promotions, and upcoming sales events by using the target beacon technology to send the information on their hand-held device. To implement this technology and enjoy all its benefits, customers must download the store’s official app.
Types of Beacon Technology hardware
The beacon technology marketing is divided into three categories based on its hardware to help customers move through the store. All these technologies are cheap, and everyone can install them in a few simple steps.
- Standard Beacons: Standards beacons are used to track customers around the store, and they are usually of the size of wi-fi routers.
- USB Beacons: You can get an idea by the name that these beacons can be deployed as USB flash drives.
- Parent Beacons: These beacons can track all the other beacons in your store and upload the data to a cloud server from time to time.
How Beacon Technologies Works?
You can hire a beacon technology company to develop your beacon solution and use it to listen to signals from beacon devices around your store using Bluetooth technology. The AI works in the background on customers’ phone signals and provides them hyper contextualized content according to their current location.
Beacons send small data packets to your customers for advertising purposes, which is one-way communication. Customers can’t interact with these messages, but store owners can send them more information whenever they want.
If you implement this technology in your store, your sales will skyrocket as shoppers tend to buy products from stores with beacon technology. You can transform the customer experience and change your brand appearance with it.
In 2016, Google implemented a system that allowed users to enjoy all the services of beacon technology without downloading the app. This was considered a big leap for the beacon technology, and customers opted for the technology after this massive update.
Benefits of using Beacon Technology
After learning everything about beacon technology and how it works, it is time to learn its benefits to understand why your business needs it.
- Better Customer Experience
Beacons focus on customers’ exact location and help retailers send high personalized content to suggest the products. Targeted push notifications help customers finalize their decision to buy a product from the nearest aisle.
As soon as a customer enters your store and uses your app on their phone, you will learn about all their past purchases to recommend them products accordingly. If customers love a product and suddenly receive a message on their phone that they received a 10 or 20% discount, they will surely prioritize your store on their next shopping trip.
- Get more Insights About Customers
Knowing everything about your customers will help you sell them the right product at a good rate to earn your product and make them repetitive customers. By storing their shopping data on a secure server, you will be able to access it with a single click in the future and analyze the data to make necessary adjustments to your store.
- Enhance Engagement With Customers
Besides better customer engagement, beacon technology also enhances engagement by sending useful content to each customer separately instead of a large marketing campaign. These include special deals, discounts, and offers for a repetitive customer.
Why Are Retailers Using Beacon Technology?
Retailers who tested the beacon technology by developing their solution with the help of Mobile App Development got results that they previously couldn’t achieve with traditional techniques. This technology has become a permanent part of their retail management strategy. Below are some benefits that factor in the increasing demand for beacon technology.
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To help Customers in Finding the Right Product
- If the customer is entering your store for the first time in their life, there is no way that they will know the exact location of each item as even stores of the same category has different settings. There are some other options to achieve this target, but beacon technology is best, especially if you want to keep your store clean from all those signs.As customers move through the store, the app will give them further directions and tell them even the smallest details, including aisle number and row number of the item. Some advanced app lets customers upload their shopping list to give them a complete route plan to buy all products without forgetting anything. It can highlight products on the screen with pins and remind you if you go past a product.
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Update Customers About Your Stock
- Work with a beacon technology company to give customers an integrated shopping experience using an omnichannel retail strategy. It is time to end the gap between customers and retailers finally. If an item was unavailable at your store previously but is available now, send a push notification to notify customers about it and give them a feeling that you care about them.
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Offer Freebies
- If a customer buys many products from your store, sometimes saying thanks is not enough. Give freebies by showing an on-screen notification on their phone. Customers don’t have to talk to the sales department for their freebies as they will find it on the relevant aisle and pick it up.No cash? Customers don’t have to worry about anymore or feel embarrassed in front of other customers as they can learn about all the available methods through the app. They can scan barcodes to tell retailers that they have got their freebies.
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Take Your Loyalty Program to a Whole New Level
- Companies get Ios App Development Services to integrate beacon technology with social media marketing to take their loyalty program to new heights. Stores offer social media links in their apps that users can follow to get future updates about upcoming products.
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Encourage Customers to Purchase Items
- If a customer has been in your store for quite some time now but hasn’t made a purchase, use beacon technology to encourage them to purchase your items. Experts came up with the point-of-sale stage, which refers to when a customer spends some time near specific products and decides to buy the product.If you send them a discount, they will buy your product without worrying about the price. They can show the discount coupon they received at the checkout, or store staff will automatically know about the discount as they generate it.
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Keep track of the location of the customer in your store
- Location matters the most, and those who track the exact location of their customers in the shop use beacon technology to send them information about products that they spent the most time around. With this real-time information, customers can move within the store at their pace and finish their shopping.
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Notify them about discounts and coupons
- If there is an ongoing promotional event, go for the Software Development Solution to notify customers when they enter the store to be the first to avail of the discount and continue their further shopping. This will save you the cost and effort to print physical discount coupons to make your store look a bit over.If a customer wants to avail discount using a coupon, they can enter the coupon code or scan the QR code. By removing all the hassle of manually using discount coupons, you increase the decision-making speed of customers.
Future of the Beacon Technology
There are many big advantages of beacon technology when you implement it correctly. But the number of retailers using it to enhance customer experience isn’t promising, which makes new retailers doubtful about the usefulness of the technology. This is good as you will get the first-come benefit by contacting an App Development Agency to develop your beacon technology integrated app.
Next time, customers who will use this app for the first time will shop from your store. This will better your store’s image and your business in the general public. If you Implement a new technology for the first time, customers will come to test the technology, increasing your sales for a short period.
Do you have an Idea?
Conclusion
If you are still thinking about using the beacon technology in your retail business, this isn’t the time to think. This is the time to act before it’s too late and someone else implements this technology before you. Opting for this technology over traditional technologies will give you a lot of benefits, and you will earn your investment back in no time.
