You must have heard about beacon technology if you are involved in marketing or own a business. Perhaps you have even received a Google beacon as a part of a program that Google launched to give away free beacons to businesses. Google did this to improve mobile visibility and experience.
Beacon technology first debuted by Apple in 2013 and since then, it has come a long way and continues to grow. By now, you must be wondering what exactly is beacon technology? In this article, we will be discussing everything about beacon technology.
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What Is Beacon Technology?
Beacons are small and wireless transmitters, which use low-energy Bluetooth technology for sending signals to nearby smart devices. It broadcasts a radio symbol make up of a combination of numbers and letters on a regular interval (1/10th of a second approximately.)
Beacon technology is amongst the latest developments in proximity marketing and location technology. In simple words, beacons connect and transfer information to nearby smart devices for easier and more accurate interaction and location-based searching.
How does beacon technology work?
The beacon device contains a radio, CPU, and batteries. it repeatedly broadcasts out an identifier that is picked up by your device like mobile and marks out a significant place in your environment.
The identifier is a distinct ID number, which your smartphones recognize as unique to the beacon. Once connected, the beacon carries out the functions it has been programmed to do.
Benefits Of Beacon Technology
Improved offline attribution to Google Ads
You can connect your beacon’s signals to your Google Ads account to gain useful insight into your searcher’s offline activity. You can even track in-store visits. This implies that you can attribute the total number of online users walking into the store.
Marketers and business spend several billion every year on their online ads and thus, understanding the offline attribution have become more important than ever. Marketers have been struggling to comprehend how their online marketing efforts and offline attribution link. To make it easier to comprehend, we have an example below.
- Suppose a user searched for a smart black bag.
- Your Google search ad pops.
- The user clicks on your ad, browse the product, and then closes their phone.
- Now, the user decides to have a look at the bad at your store.
- They enter the shop. Now, their phone will pick up an identifier from the beacon in your shop.
- The beacon will recognize that this is the same phone that clicked on your ad and will link the data with your Google Ads account as “store visit.”
Therefore, by installing a beacon in your store, you have significantly improved your attribution modeling. So, you now have an idea of how many people have visited your store after seeing your Google ad. If the ad is able to drive more customers, you can invest more in the ads.
Cheap and easy to adopt
Beacon technology is very affordable. Even setting up a beacon device is pretty simple and consists of a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier.) After installing, you only have to conduct the process of creating actions, tags, etc.
In short, beacon technology is cheap and can be installed instantly since they arrive in ready-to-use form. So, even if you are unsure about beacon technology, you can try it out.
Advanced data collection
Bluetooth technology is better than other proximity technologies like WiFi and GPS. With advanced accuracy, you can collect more reliable information regarding where and how your customers are walking throughout your shop. This information will help you to improve your in-store layout and product listings.
For example, if your customers spend a lot of time in the crockery section of your store, you can either expand it or change its the location to keep it near the entrance.
Improve your Google My Business listing
By installing a beacon in your business, you can improve your Google My Business listing. The beacon tracks popular timings for visits in your company and improves the accuracy in the GMC list. The beacon can also help you gather useful information on check-in and appeals users to upload snaps of the venue. This way, you will gather more reviews for your business.
A detailed and up-to-date GMB listing is vital for local SEO. Thus, using beacon might help in supercharging your data collection and ensure your GMB listing stands out from others.
Benefit to customers
We have discussed the benefits of beacon technology to marketers. Now, we will talk about the benefits of beacon technology to customers. Beacons aids in improving user experience by adding a layer of personalized interaction during the shopping experience. Customers trust, security, and familiarity with a brand increase with targeted ads and offers. Since the market is widening significantly, building trust in your customers has become more important than ever.
Final Thoughts On Beacon Technology
The possibilities of beacon technology in location-based and proximity marketing technology are numerous. As data collection tools, beacon offers Google a chance to understand business better that use Google’s services, along with the users themselves, to improve their algorithm. Main benefactors of this location-based technology are the transportation and logistics industry. Beacons can be used for highly accurate asset tracking, especially indoors. Additionally, beacon technology can also be used for tracking doctors of patients in hospitals during emergencies.
However, it is hard to say how popular will beacon technology become as the technology is still fresh and has had a fair share of setbacks.
