Discussing Beacons and What They Mean for the Retail Industry
By: Dane Traill-Forbyth
Tags: Tech, Marketing, Beacons, Digital Marketing

This week, I catch up with Mike Blackmore and pick his brain on all things Beacons

There is a relatively underused, and underdeveloped tool that will soon become the norm in retail stores around the globe. We call them Beacons. These are devices that enhance customer experience, track and measure foot traffic, and could potentially put an end to face to face sales. I chat with Mike Blackmore, a Google top contributor and and advertising tech Beta-Tester on his thoughts of this new wave of digital service.

Beacons are a new tool for advertisers that combine digital offerings with en-vogue experiential marketing offerings. What are your thoughts on Beacons?

We’ve seen the media hype about beacons. We’ve read about proof of concepts and how they are the latest and sexiest devices to hit the Internet of Things. Beacons are here to stay. Now’s the time to get serious in your business about the impact of these devices. This year alone beacons are set to influence over 4 billion US dollars of retail sales, and that number is set to grow tenfold by next year. But right now, many marketers only think about using beacons to push phone notifications.

So what exactly is a Beacon? How does it work?

To start off with, what is a beacon and how do they work? I like to use the analogy of a lighthouse. A beacon has one simple purpose in life, and that is to send out a signal and say I am here. It’s completely unaware of any mobile devices that are around it. It doesn’t connect to them. It doesn’t steal their data. It doesn’t know anything. It just sends out the signal and says hey, I’m here, I’m a beacon, much in the same way a lighthouse would. It doesn’t see the ships. The ships are the mobile devices.

They are a very simple device. They have a universally unique identifier, a major and minor. Beacons are used in many different situations from retail to museums, airlines and airports, and even sometimes indoor navigation. A beacon can be a physical hardware device that is just for the purpose of being a beacon. They can even be battery powered. They can even be a mobile device, an iPad, an iPhone, an Android device. They all have Bluetooth capable low energy antennas.

Pro-Tip: A beacon powered up to 70 meters might only last 6 months, whereas if you have it down to 2 meters you might get 2 whole years out of your beacon

So how will these affect advertisers and consumers? What are some typical uses for Beacons?

You can use beacons at the right time and place to give users that virtual tap on the shoulder and say: “Can we take your order. Would you like some help? Would you like a personal shopper dispatched to your location? Here’s your boarding pass for today. Would you like to get an updated priority boarding so you can skip the queue?” Also, I have seen some case studies where car dealerships are implementing beacons for after-hour lot shoppers so they are able to see the information about the specific vehicles on the lot.

This really opens up the ability for dealerships to get leads after hours with a simple push notification and the user is sent to the vehicle landing page where they can inquire.

Is implementing them difficult? What challenges do advertisers face?

There are many different models and brands of beacons out there, from Facebook to Eddystone and much more. Most just require an app and some bluetooth connections.

Beacons are very affordable. They’re practical. They’re easy to install. It’s not science fiction. These things can be put to work today in your company. When positioning your beacons, what you need to know as well is that water or human bodies absorb Bluetooth low energy signal. Don’t be afraid to take your beacon and position it up high. The ceiling’s usually pretty good.

Ok, good to know. How do consumers interact with beacons?

It’s more like the beacons interact with the consumer. For consumers, this means a frictionless shopping experience, with fewer gaps between channels. Consumers only need to have their bluetooth enabled on their device as it works on BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and be within range of your beacon. In some cases when you can get your hands on a Facebook beacon and the consumer is in your target radius. When they open Facebook on their device they will be shown your Facebook page and any special offers you are advertising. Basically a push notification lol.

What kind of information can a beacon deliver? How does it enhance the shopping experience?

iBeacons can only transmit one type of data: the UUID number. Beacons using the new Eddystone standard can transmit three types of data: UID (similar to UUID), URL (website addresses) and TLM (telemetry, such as temperature and beacon battery level). Standard beacons don’t have any memory to store arbitrary data, but you could work around that by using the Lightblue Bean or building a custom beacon from Raspberry Pi. Another option would be to use a backend, where you store and retrieve the data.

It enhances the shopping experience in many ways depending on what industry you are using your beacons for. A few examples I have already seen are:

Beacons can help customers find what they are looking for faster, find associates for one-on-one help and they can even streamline the checkout process. But without a beacon network a mobile app is simply just a mobile website.

As customers travel around a store the app can share relevant content about departments, feature sections and offers specific to showroom displays.

Retailers have been using various methods to monitor foot traffic around the store for a long time.

So to a consumer, a beacon is simply a push notification that does the job of a sales person. Is this the final blow to the face to face sales industry?

I think some industries should be concerned, but for the most part this could be used as tool to send people directly to sales people or have sales people directed to them with heat mapping etc. The dashboard is incredible because it allows you to see trends at your business such as where do people enter your dealership and where do they leave, you could offset this by placing salespeople on ups in those high traffic areas.

That’s fair, but considering the rapid advancements of both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality it’s no longer the dreams of sci-fi writers that Bots and Artificial Intelligence can be making sales, demonstrating products, and be aggressively pricing items. Is this not a step towards giving the customer what they want? A truly transparent shopping experience. The Cost/Benefits of self service have been on display for years. I believe this is a monumental step in self service everything.

Paradigm shift is another term I would use when describing how this is going to transform consumer behavior. What’s leading this is the transparency and experience beacons offer.

People more than ever want to shop and not to be sold to. The market chooses the winners and I believe the cost/benefit of self service is already ingrained into certain day to day conveniences from the grocery store to the gas pump. The need to interact with a human is becoming less and less.

Technology, especially beacons will only increase the amount of services that will be driven by AI, beacons and whatever else the boys and girls are dreaming up in Silicon Valley. I am really interested to see where this ends up in the next 5–10 years. Beacons are not a new technology but since Eddystone changed the game in 2013 they have become more of a reality for any business to utilize.

I completely agree. Lastly, if you were to build an advertising campaign that utilized beacons in retail stores, what would it look like?

I would create an advertising campaign that would send push notifications for an example at West Edmonton Mall when you walked by a store you could get a push notification to come into the store and present your mobile phone for an additional 10–20% off items in the store. The retailer would be able to track conversions in real time and the customer would get notified of specials without having to take the dreaded step inside your store unless it appealed to them first. There are many other ideas flowing through my head for car dealerships but I will get into those at a later time.

Great! Thanks a lot Mike, always awesome to get your insight on emerging tech and marketing trends!