Proximity marketing is a growing marketing strategy. This technique targets a person with advertising messages. This depends a lot on their closeness. It occurs when you give ads to people who live near your location. You can do this with different types of tech. It could be WiFi, Bluetooth, or GPS, with a wide range of uses.

An instance would be when a user enters a store. They may receive a message on their mobile device. This could be an offer on what you buy. It could also be scanning a QR code to access marketing materials. This could be for an event.

In this article, we will discuss the meaning of proximity marketing. We will also be going through some pros and cons of proximity marketing. You can even find some practices and tips to follow.

What is Proximity marketing?

Proximity marketing is also called “hyper-local marketing.” It is a technique that targets potential customers. You can use tailored ads to convince them to buy a product or service. This depends on how close a customer is to your location.

Proximity marketing is about getting your message to your customers. And also, getting their attention at the correct time and place. It uses tailored and relevant messages. It also produces excellent results for companies. This is true when put together with effective promo tools and methods. Over the last year, we’ve seen brands use this technology. From theme parks to casinos, brands do this to improve their customer experience.

Benefits and Importance

Here are some benefits of proximity marketing:

• Proximity Marketing Makes Geotargeting Simple. It’s so simple. You must specify a specific position for your beacon. A person is notified as they enter or exit a geofence. This applies to someone who stays within the geo-fence too. Geo-fence equipment can deliver texts to anyone inside a geofence. This can take place immediately or after a certain delay. 

• Proximity Marketing Gives You an Edge. You can make your platform engaging for your consumers. This is so that they will stay and participate. Besides that, it will also provide them with value. You will also engage and maintain them. It will also give your company a strategic advantage. Even then, there’s a line between boosting or hurting the customer’s experience. Many brands bombard customers with distracting messages. For this reason, you must assess your potential customers well. Then you can give time to creating a mobile digital marketing strategy.

• Proximity Marketing Provides Instant Conversions. A proximity marketing strategy will help you achieve many goals. One of which is conversions. Through this strategy, you can raise your interaction and conversion rates. With proximity campaigns, you can connect with prospects. You should do this when they’re most likely to buy from your brand. Sellers can entice customers with appealing offers. For instance, you can send special offer notifications at the right time.

• A personal experience is possible with proximity marketing. Making marketing personal is an essential part of a consumer’s experience. Proximity marketing lets companies send messages to mobile apps. But it also notifies store staff when a satisfied customer walks in. This enables them to provide a positive experience for returning customers.

How to Create A Proximity Marketing Strategy

There are some ways you can create a proximity marketing strategy. Here are some to keep in mind:

• Set objectives. You can set solid KPIs like boosting sales. You could also identify areas of your store that aren’t performing well. Besides that, you could set a KPI to entice a wider audience.

• Define the intended audience. Determine who your ideal consumers are, and split them into groups of people. You can relate personas or groups to age or gender. You can also relate it to occupation, location, or other info. This helps you adjust a user’s experiences to their desires and interests.

• Make a content strategy. It needs to be a well-organised set of messages sent to your consumers. It could be general or specific to certain seasons and vacations. Remember to use a powerful message. Your goal is to encourage clients, apart from advising them.

• Select a location. You must strategically place beacons on your company’s site. This can help inspire visitors to engage with your company. Another important thing to think about is the length of the visit. Proximity marketing works best in areas where people spend a lot of time. These could be in malls, big retailers, trade shows, train stations, and airports. So you’re looking for a location that gives your clients a chance to act. You should also allow them the time to complete that action.

• Choose the correct technology. You could use beacons like NFCs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi marketing, and geofencing.

• Check out the results. After doing this campaign, test the results of your work. You can check out whether you have met your KPIs. View how many individuals have clicked on the notifications. Also, check on your conversion rate. These results can help you to make changes to your campaigns in the future.

Pros and Cons

Here are some advantages of proximity marketing:

• You could send various messages to numerous consumers. This applies to those who join the same geofence or are next to a beacon if you use sections and channels.  In addition, beacons provide data better than WiFi or GPS tracking.

• For proximity marketing, and messages, the mean click-through rate can reach 80%. With such a high CTR, you can see how beacons transform a consumer’s experience.

• Proximity marketing boosts app interaction. An essential way to ensure high sales of an app is to engage users. Geo-targeting with notifications is a very useful engagement tool. This helps more with any company where location is critical.

Here are some cons to proximity marketing:

• The main con of proximity marketing is privacy issues. Many customers value personalization. However, some may not like your concerns about monitoring and following them. So, you’ll have to convince customers that the pros outweigh the loss of privacy. You can do this via focused coupons and promotions.

• Concerns about consent. This relates to privacy issues. Your consumers must consent to every proximity marketing strategy. This could be via message, software, or other means. But, it is different with this type of targeted marketing. Getting permission is more than agreeing to participate.

• Consumers should know what information you’re gathering about them. And also, the way you intend to use it. They must also be ready to agree to you tracking them.

• Some consumers may also choose to opt out. So, you’ll have to come up with several ways to persuade them to stay with you. You will also have to respect their private information. These concerns may have legal ramifications. So, it’s better to know your nation’s data protection regulations. Also, understand what the permission regulations are.

Tips

There are many things to know while creating your proximity marketing campaign. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Before using data, obtain permission from your consumer. You should be less intrusive when implementing a marketing strategy. Before using any data or offers to your users, seek their permission. Also, always try to explain your plans for that data before using it. Besides that, you should inform them about how they will profit from it upfront.

• Consider more than your consumer’s location in your message.  A good strategy is to create relevant context notifications. For this, businesses must first understand their customer’s behaviour. You should do this in a careful and precise manner. You can do this by including beacons in your loyalty programmes. 

• Make the best use of your notifications. You can do this by reducing the total number of units. A successful proximity marketing strategy depends on good content. This could be from choosing consumer engagement to offering redemption. Besides that, you should also divide the material into tinier units. This applies as you introduce more screens (particularly wearables) daily. This is so that it works regardless of screen resolution or technology.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices for proximity marketing:

• Limit the number of notifications per consumer. You should fix how many messages a consumer gets per store visit. Beacons give stores a unique chance to use the info for consumer feedback. Besides that, many marketers use the equipment as a marketing engine. This practice poses a threat to the choice of beacons. But, it may also overpower clients and push them to change their actions.

• Give consumers the choice of beacons instead of receiving pushed messages. Earlier, brands placed transmitters out of customers’ sight. But now, brands have begun placing them in plain sight. For instance, brands put beacons on the roof or at the mall entrance. Now, many choose to place them on customer-facing shelves.

• Make use of beacons to collect customer data. You can also provide exact retargeting. There are a few challenges that many retailers face. The most important one is the ability to connect online and offline information at scale. This allows for online retargeting depending on in-store behaviour data. But, with the introduction of beacons, retailers can now redirect their online customers. This depends on precise offline behaviour.

Top 3 Proximity Marketing Examples

If you’re not convinced yet, check out these top 3 proximity marketing examples.

• Eat: The food chain Eat, partnered with Weve. They used their loyalty app which is beacon-enabled called Pouch. The design of the app is to keep a loyalty card of a retailer. It is also created to push offers to consumers. The partnership helped overhaul their online as well as the in-store experience. It allowed them to decide how to influence the behaviour of consumers.

• Best Buy: This company used a strategy that helps increase sales in their stores. It provides a custom experience that customers can experience on a personal level. They used their app Shopkick for this strategy. The app helped to provide customers with rewards for stepping into Best Buy. This then helped to increase the footfall at some local Best Buy.

• Walmart: Walmart too launched a special Beacon GE partnership. This retail store made use of GE bulbs to store beacons. They then sent push notifications to customers in the store. These notifications were of different discounts, coupons and special offers. These beacon bulbs tracked shoppers inside the store to promote their products.

In Conclusion

Proximity marketing helps with preserving the app. Working to retain customers is a top priority for any company that has a mobile app.  You can boost brand loyalty and retain customers by putting up beacons. It is critical to have app stats in place.  Because then you can make reports on message opening and interaction rates. 

Marketers in many industries are starting to realise the potential of this strategy. It has far more potential than serving up coupons and offers. These tools are effective when you use them to understand the needs and desires of customers. You can also understand important patterns in how consumers buy things.

We also see many brands changing their marketing campaigns. This depends on the new technology of this strategy. Besides that, many of these efforts show off the offers available. And so, users’ perceptions change. This is because it creates trust for the brand. It does this by saying that the customer profits from the new tech.

What are some examples of proximity marketing that you have heard of? How did this article help you? Let us know in the comments below.