Why Beacons Have A Bright Future
When Apple, Google and Samsung get behind a new technology innovation it’s almost certain to make it to the mainstream masses. And that’s exactly what has happened with Bluetooth SMART beacons, argues Inlight strategy director, Ben Howden.
These tiny, low cost transmitters are not only set to change the future of marketing but also the way we as consumers interact with the real world. It’s hardly surprising that businesses of all shapes and sizes – from large grocery chains to entire shopping precincts, international airports to world class sporting stadiums – are rolling out beacon solutions at breakneck speed.
So what the heck is a beacon? In its simplest form, a beacon is small wireless device that broadcasts signals using Bluetooth Smart technology, an intelligent and power friendly version of the Bluetooth wireless technology that has been around for years. On their own, beacons don’t really do that much aside from transmitting a signal that contains some unique identifiers, which typically include a UUID, major, and minor. The magic happens when applications running on your smartphone, tablet or smart watch pick up these signals and trigger a contextual experience based on those unique identifiers. I’ll bring this to life through some real world examples later on.
Back to the beacons. They’re cheap. They cost anywhere from $10-30 a pop and can last up to three years on a single lithium battery. But be warned; from our testing, reliability and battery life vary significantly between different manufactures. Beacons can communicate with smartphones or tablets that are as close as five centimetres or as far as 50 meters away, which opens up a range of exiting applications for communicating with, and engaging consumers. Not only that, but Apple, Google, Samsung, Blackberry, Nokia, Sony and pretty much every other mobile device manufacturer offer native support of Bluetooth SMART, which means that the majority of the Australian population are walking around with beacon enabled devices in their pockets already. Add to that the growing wearables market (all powered by Bluetooth SMART), and you can see why beacons are quickly becoming a very attractive proposition.
If your business has a footprint in the physical world, there’s a fair chance that beacons are a big deal. Let’s get back to those real world examples I mentioned earlier on.
Next time you walk past your favourite shopping mall, your smartphone will detect an in store beacon and automatically let you know that a product you were looking at online early that day is on sale inside. Once inside, product based beacons will offer up detailed product information and targeted offers as you’re browsing the shelves. Now imagine that at the same time your smartphone has recognised a beacon at the cashier and has triggered your customer profile on an iPad dashboard for the customer service assistant. The profile contains details on your shopping preferences as well as past purchases. All in the name of offering you a more personalised and tailored shopping experience.
Sound a bit creepy? Before you jump to that conclusion, you should be aware that in order to deliver messages and content using beacon technology you must first gain permission from the end user via the application. And there are rules that can be setup to limit the number of notifications that are sent to a user in a given time period. If you fail to deliver value and abuse the capability with low value content, your app will be deleted. It’s that simple. Your mission should be to ‘surprise and delight’ the user. Do that and you’ll be rewarded.
If you think about it, beacons enable something that we as marketers have been dreaming about for a very long time. The ability to reach the right person, with the right message, at the right place and at the right time. Say I have a supermarket app installed on my phone with my Flybys card linked to the app. I walk into my local supermarket and my smart phone picks up a beacon in the nearby dental isle. The app scans my Flybys purchase history to see if I’ve bought a toothbrush in the past six months. The answer is no and because of that little insight I’m presented with a message telling me that I’m overdue for a new toothbrush. To sweeten the deal I receive a time sensitive discount that is too hard to resist. It’s one to one marketing like we’ve never seen before. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
But it’s not just about marketing. From arriving at the airport, to visiting your local bank branch, to taking a trip down to the local car dealer in search of some new wheels, beacons offer us the opportunity to significantly enhance the customer experience through the delivery of contextual (and helpful) information based on your exact location. And we all know that customer experience is the way to capture the hearts and minds of our customers. Just look at how companies like Uber, Amazon, Zappos and Apple have redefined what a great customer experience looks like.
How about another example? You’re at the beach on a hot day, and it’s packed with people. You’ve got your two kids in tow and you find the last remaining patch of sand and stake your claim with beacon towels and a beach umbrella. Before the kids take off to build sand castles and play in the shallows, you put a simple beacon device around their wrist. Open up your smartphone, set a range – say 20m – and if the kids go outside of this range you’ll receive a notification along with directions on where to find them. A simple solution that tracks the most important assets in your life – your kids! Now think of all the other valuable assets you could track with beacons. Hospital equipment in a busy hospital. Your car. Building materials on a construction site. Employees on a high risk work site. The list goes on and on.
I hope that by now I’ve painted a clear picture on how these low cost transmitters are set to transform a number of different industries in a big way. But before I conclude, there’s another benefit that I haven’t yet covered – analytics. That’s right, every time someone with an enabled app comes within range of a beacon there is an opportunity to capture the data it creates. With beacon powered analytics you can start to understand real world behaviour, like store visits, dwell time, pathing and conversions. We like to refer to it as “Google Analytics for the real world”. One caveat though. Whilst beacons can provide rich and detailed information on both visits to your physical locations and subsequent engagement with your app – it only includes users who have your app installed, not the entire population. But it’s still immensely valuable data. Imagine you own a network of national stores. Now imagine that when each person exits one of your stores and has downloaded your app, they are presented with a simple ‘rate your experience’ prompt and the results are recorded. Pretty quickly you can understand which stores are delivering a great experience and which stores are not – arming you with a set of data that allows you to optimise the in store experience.
So there you have it. A little insight into why we think beacons have an extremely bright future. Beacons are definitely not right for every business, but there’s no doubting that for some businesses they can provide a huge competitive advantage and engage customers in new and exciting ways. Let the beacon revolution begin!
Latest News
The Mars Agency Announces Latest Findings Of Retail Media Report Card
The Mars Agency has developed a scorecard that assesses the capabilities of leading platforms across key criteria required to optimally plan, execute, and measure effective retail media programs. The scorecard aims To help brands efficiently evaluate their spending options across retail media networks in Australia (and New Zealand). With spending on retail media advertising in […]
‘It’s The Lesser Of Two Evils’ – NRL Eyes US Betting Market As Aussie Regulators Circle
US betting firms will be delighted by the circa 50,000 Americans who could soon watch the NRL on their favourite app.
A-League In Deep Discussions With New Partner To Keep Games On TV After Production Company Enters Administration
The A-League's insatiable appetite for scoring own goals continues.
TV Ratings (27/03/2024): Jungle Members At War Over Concealed Lipstick
A heated argument between two jungle members did the numbers for Ten last night, with I’m A Celeb obtaining a total national reach of 1,282,000. Fans were delighted as Candice Warner and influencer Skye Wheatley got into it over a stick of lipstick, leading Warner to dub the Instagram star “selfish.” Wheatley, best known for […]
Is The Australian Music Industry In Trouble? Inquiry Launched Following Splendour Cancellation
Earlier this week, an inquiry was launched into the challenges and opportunities currently facing the Australian live music industry in the wake of multiple festival cancellations. On 25 March 2024, the Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Tony Burke MP, asked the Committee on Communications and the Arts to inquire into and report on the […]
Liana Dubois, Leandro Perez, Aimee Buchanan & More Gather For Inaugural Compadres Leadership Event
Didn't get the invite? Perhaps you're not as important as you thought.
Cathay Captures The Unforgettable Thrill Of Cathay/HSBC Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, Via Publicis
Nobody does rugby like Hong Kong, apparently. Certainly nobody does it as badly as Australia.
Cocogun Nabs Christine Watts, Kirsty Reynolds & Shev Tan Bolstering Management & Creative Teams
Cocogun bolsters its team with new hires. Committed to purchasing a bigger sofa, too.
The Media Store’s Jacquie Alley & Sam Cousins Take The Plunge With Pro-Bono Work For Cure Cancer
B&T chats with The Media Store bosses about their great pro-bono work and sponsored swim.
Hawke’s Brewing Co. Taps Rocket Comms For PR Agency Following Competitive Pitch
We're expecting Rocket Comms productivity to crash in spectacular fashion following this win.
Spotlight On Sponsors: Patties Serves Up A Taste Of Home For Olympians & South Sydney Rabbitohs Recommit To Gambling Reform
While the Rabbitohs commits to gambling reform, B&T reckons the team should commit to a decent auto sponsor.
Google: “Inevitable” That Bad Actors Will Abuse Ads Platform As Advertiser Account Suspensions Double
Google maintains it's simply impossible for it to entirely stop bad people placing & paying for ads using its service.
Quantcast Expands APAC Sales Team With Appointment Of News Corp Account Manager
No pressure at all when you are appointed as a client success manager.
Publicis Sapient Tests Microsoft-Powered Gen AI Search Tool With Homes & Villas By Marriott Bonvoy
Given Gen AI's record for mangling stuff, B&T cannot see the problem with letting it decide your next holiday digs.
Volkswagen & DDB Group’s “Roo Badge” To Reduce Kangaroo Related Road Collisions
Watch out for RooBadge as Cannes Lions' most debated campaign this year.
Twilio Launches Unified Profiles & Agent Copilot Features To Boost Productivity & Engagement
Agent Copilot sounds like James Bond's less interesting cousin.
Reebok & Honda Among New Clients For onetwo agency
OneTwo finally lives up to its name with this double billing.
Ogilvy Report: Throw Out The Social Strategy Rule Book, The Rules Of The Past No Longer Apply
B&T was puzzled that all 'influencers' aren't, effectively, 'virtual', but here we are.
WhiteGREY & AKQA Merge In Australia, Lee Simpson Departs
Fortunately, the combined agencies aren't opting for a trite portmanteau for the new name.
Splendour In The Grass 2024 Music Festival Cancelled!
Music fans all over the country reportedly relieved they can pack away their rain coats and gumboots for another year.
TV Ratings (26/03/2024): “Fairy Bread, F***ing Disgusting”: Gordon Ramsay Slams Aussie Food In Food Stars Launch
Ramsay not one for mincing his words, even when it comes to minced meat pies.
Paramount+ International Boss Doubles Down On Aussie Content, Says Ad-Tier will Grow Audiences And Revenue
Good news as Paramount will not be binning I’m A Celebrity for re-runs of Frasier.
Brent Smart: Telstra Pushing For 50-50 Brand-Performance Split But Warns Numbers ‘Won’t Look Great’ Initially
The old brand vs performance debate continues. But here, Brent is firmly sitting on the fence.
Crowded House, Tones And I & Dom Dolla Win Big At The Shure Rolling Stone Music Awards
B&T staffer reports back with humdinger of a hangover & feeling seriously uncool after mixing with music types.
Opinion: Dyslexia “A Hidden Gem” For Brands & Agencies
Dyslexics offer underappreciated benefits in the corporate field, according to this op-ed.
David Jones Taps Criteo To Power Online Retail Media Arm
Want to see ads for things you probably can't afford? David Jones has got you covered with new retail media play.
oOh!media Sets Up Team To Target Business Audiences Across Airports & Offices
oOh! wants brands to harass you every minute of your next business trip.
QMS Launches Australian First DOOH & TV Partnership With Samba TV
Samba TV, of course, is not a channel dedicated to dancing. Much to our dismany.
Slew Of New Hires At Amplify
Four new faces join the Amplify offices. Team say desk scarcity becoming "acute".
Adobe Announces Content Authenticity Initiative Expansions To Counter Deep Fakes
Try as they might to enlighten them, we suspect Trump supporters will continue to watch and believe Fox News.
The PR Group Appoints TechCrunch Senior Reporter Catherine Shu As Director Of Content & Media
Catherine Shu makes the bold leap from journalism to PR. Says inevitable pay bump was "unrelated".
HERO Nabs Ebony Santin From AMPR
Rumours Santin cleared out the stationery cupboard before departing are as yet unconfirmed.
Karena Noble Checks Out Of EVT Hotels & Resorts To Launch Comms Consultancy
Noble still managed to squeezed in a continental breakfast before departing.
Canva Acquires Design Platform Affinity To Bring Professional Design Tools To Every Organisation
Canva & Adobe face off continues. We're not picking sides but keenly aware that Canva's office is next door to ours.
“Lean On Our Team To Help You Find An Audience”: Why Understanding Audience Engagement Is Essential In Journalism
Engaging the audience is critical to journos, apparently. We'd thought self-loathing & alcoholism were key.
Adobe Summit: Major Gen AI Developments, Data Concessions & Partnerships
What happens in Vegas stays there. Unless it's the Adobe Summit and then you get to read about in B&T.