The biggest challenge any business would ever face is to stay on top of the competition by staying relevant to customers. Other bigger challenges also include earning customer loyalty, building innovative strategies and keeping up with upcoming trends and updates of emerging technologies.
Embracing latest technological solutions is the best way to overcome all these challenges and achieve business advantages in the frenetic market
Since technologies are injecting new advancements and trends in our lives, including them in your business marketing strategy is the only way to adapt to changing customers.
Beacons especially stand out as a beneficent for reaching existing customers with effective product marketing content and customized recommendations.
iBeacon technology in particular shows huge potential for businesses across various industries including retail, entertainment, sports, hospitality and more in UK.
Here you will get to know how businesses can benefit most from adopting iBeacon technology in UK.
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What is iBeacon technology?
As a business owner, haven’t you ever thought of automatically sending alerts and notifications about special offers to mobile screen of people stepping into your store?
Did you ever envision a technology that pulls in data-driven analysis on all of the people inside your shop? Well, Apple’s iBeacon is here to address these business fantasies
iBeacon is Apple’s technological endeavor that revolutionizes the ways businesses interact with their customers (or vice-a-versa) by connecting with the iOS device of users.
The technology detects the presence of an iOS device of users as they appear within the detectable distance from iBeacon transmitters in UK.
in UK, Based on the Bluetooth Wireless Technology, the iBeacon implementation requires two basic elements:
- Bluetooth based iBeacon device
- An iOS device with the brand’s app
The iBeacon device works as a Broadcaster which generates and sends signals to customer’s iOS devices (receiver) soon as they come in its proximity. The receiver then responds accordingly
How does iBeacon Technology work for your business in UK?
Imagine a person strolling to the food market with an iPhone device and comes near local food outlets. In a moment or two, he sees Starbucks app generating certain alerts, suggesting directions to nearest Starbucks coffee shop in, say, 50 meters of distance. He follows the guide and appear at the coffee shop
This is when iBeacon technology detects the customer’s presence through his iPhone app. The app then shows unique suggestions and recommendations about ongoing promotional offers.
The customer feels ecstatic and is tempted to place the order and makes payment within the app.
Easy to implement and set up
In UK, setting up an iBeacon technology to start using its services is affordable and easy. You need a few iBeacon transmitters (3 to 4) that will be connected as hardware to your business app.
The process of setting up a beacon hardware is quite simple and straightforward and be wrapped up with a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). Once this is accomplished, you can commence implementing the strategic actions, messages and tags.
Setting up an iBeacon technology to start using its services is affordable and easy. You need a few iBeacon transmitters (3 to 4) that will be connected as hardware to your business app.
The process of setting up a beacon hardware is quite simple and straightforward and be wrapped up with a UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). Once this is accomplished, you can commence implementing the strategic actions, messages and tags.
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Personalized recommendations
iBeacon majorly revolves around personalizing the ways customers choose to interact with brands. The world of mobile commerce has already experienced the power of personalization in terms of enhancing brand value and customer loyalty.
With iBeacon solutions, personalization becomes integral as the technology makes offer coupons and product recommendations quite compatible to consumer’s specific lifestyle and expectations.
Thus, beacons can help retailers send personalized, more targeted, efficacious notifications to recommend quality products for consumers to consider.
Hudson’s Bay department stores rolled out beacons at many Lord and Taylor stores across North America in 2014 with an aim to send shoppers location-specific notifications, targeted content and personalized offers.
Cost effective operations
When iBeacon and NFC are both compared for their overall cost efficiency, beacon seems to overshadow NFC. NFC (Near Field Communication) is a short-range communication solution whose range lasts only up to a few centimeters.
In UK, iBeacons on the other hand can stretch its power up to 50 meters, which means installing NFC in your retail shop would levy higher cost than beacon technology. As discussed, the hardware part (transmitters) used in iBeacon-enabled Broadcast device also appears economic and facilitates low-cost installation.
Improved Sales and Customer Loyalty
Integrating iBeacon technology in your device paves way for better and more relevant push notifications that lure customers into buying custom products or offers in UK. The strategy yields increase number of sales, enhanced revenues and improved level of customer loyalty.
The Major League Baseball (MLB) witnessed more than double fans in 2014 as they rolled out iBeacons in 28 ballparks and started promoting merchandise coupons and seat upgrades via MLB app.
With iBeacons located at fan entry and exit points of MLB ballparks, iPhone users could tap into their MLB app and check-in to receive special offers and personalized content
In-store engagement with data-driven retailing
Merchants can tailor the novel shopping experience for in-store customers using iBeacon apps, which eventually reflects in larger footfalls and bulk sales.
Adopting creative user engagement methods on special holiday seasons, iBeacon broadcasters can smartly lure new customers inside their stores by tracking their in-store movements with data-driven retailing.
For example, Macy’s launched beacons in nearly 800 stores partnering with Shopkick which is a location-based coupon distribution app used by leading retailers.
Macy’s found an unusual way to deliver offline data-driven retail experience in which beacon tech is implemented to track customer movements in store. Based on this data, shoppers receive notifications on special discount and recommendations.
The promise of unflawed customer experience
iBeacon not only delivers well-crafted notification suited to consumers’ private tastes, but it also supports cashless payment, a facility that enables customers to purchase anything anytime without hassle of tangible money.
Aside from this, Hotel and hospitality industry can especially benefit to a great extent when it comes to transforming customer experience.
For example, Starwood Hotels & Resorts leverages iBeacon technology in its hotels that helps concierges make greetings more natural and personal, improves check-in process and keeps housekeeping services tuned to guests’ needs.
The most exemplary guest service at the two of Starwood U.S. hotels will have guests skipping the entire check-in process, entering their room, and using keyless entrance open the room doors.
The guests have a partner app installed on their smartphone and can simply open the room by tapping or gesturing the device.
Lower Advertising Cost
Without employing dedicated service professional such as advertising agency or greetings, iBeacon apps take care of building custom notifications, welcome greetings and offers at the time of check in.
These apps will save a lot of cost rather spent on advertising efforts so that businesses can think of enhancing their existing service quality with more iBeacons inside the store.
More iBeacons translate into more efficient connectivity with customers’ app. Moreover, merchants can target more customers at times with user-controlled, non-obtrusive ad notifications, reducing the overall advertising cost.
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Conclusion
Businesses can unanimously agree that iBeacon technology seems to work wonders by shaping a distinguished method of mobile marketing and reaching customers.
With iBeacons in place, merchants can present users with interesting offers and personalized products on their iPhone device.
Retails shops especially have a lot to gain from installing iBeacon hardware since the technology drives tremendous sales to retail industry.
Businesses are most likely to see immense influence of beacon on customer engagement, retention, purchases and experience at beacon-equipped premises.
In a way the technology also guarantees a competitive advantage over those who are still unaware of its power. The possibilities you explore using iBeacon powered apps are unlimited.
It is therefore time for merchants to boost their marketing capabilities by adopting iBeacon apps in everyday engagements.