As society pushes forward into the future, brick and mortar stores are becoming less important to our decision process. Digital tools enable us access to information whenever we need it, and so in order to survive businesses have had to make our online experience more convenient and enjoyable, further taking away from in-store success.
We are moving forward though, and technological advancements are making sure that the balance between both in-store and online experiences remains in tact. One of the best examples of this is Proximity marketing!
Simply explained, Proximity Marketing is the use of cellular frequencies that alert consumers to the location and current promotions of nearby businesses. According to a Proximity Directory Report, the most common use of proximity tools is through Bluetooth beacons, of which, occupy 86% of all proximity technology. This essentially allows marketers to deliver contextually relevant notifications, to you, through your phones Bluetooth capabilities.
Although its use does not erase the issues that e-commerce has created for brick and mortar stores, proximity marketing still provides businesses with brick and mortar stores a new way to bring people through their doors. According to Shopkick Insights, one of the biggest advantages proximity marketing provides is a higher conversion rate as its estimated that 57% of all consumers are likely to engage in local based advertising. Proximity marketing further improves user engagement and brand awareness through its ability tailor notifications to specific customers needs.
PM is still being trialed and modified by many businesses with strong brick and mortar presence. Macy’s in the USA, recently installed 4000 individual bluetooth beacons in one of their stores. These beacons allowed them to notify individual customers to deals that only they would ideally find attractive which enabled them to achieve higher conversions.
McDonalds also trialed the technology in istanbul, where through use of popular loyalty app, they were able to notify potential customers in the area of a local McDonalds store with coupons that entitled them to try a new coffee for free.
Digital Wave 
This is the first I’d ever really read or heard about proximity marketing, super insightful. That McDonalds feature should definitely be introduced here, sounds awesome!
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It does doesn’t it! I think more businesses could garner a much larger engagement with consumers, especially through promotions over proximity marketing. If i’m walking down the road and Mcflurry’s all of a sudden are $1, you bet ill be making a detour!
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Nice blog post Jordan!
This is a really interesting topic and I agree that proximity marketing can help to raise awareness and increase your store traffic. However, I personally think that constantly getting notifications from different stores would start to annoy me after a while. Do you think consumers might start to react negatively to proximity marketing if marketers send to many push notifications?
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Thank You Anne! You are not wrong, I’ll be the first to admit that if i got a notification every time i walked down the road i’d be really annoyed. However, I think there are people that would take kindly to it. With the example I’ve included about McDonalds, they did their proximity marketing over a short period, and only people that used a certain app were able to get the notification. So I think it shouldn’t be an all the time thing, but more so a special occasion or specific time of the day thing 🙂
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Nice piece Jordan! I have never experienced proximity marketing myself and whilst I think it could be very annoying and may feel like an invasion of my privacy to get notifications whilst in or near a store I would most likely react positively to it if the notification is of value to me. Have you ever experienced proximity marketing yourself?
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Thank you Viva! I myself have never experienced it from a digital point of view, however if you’ve ever been to places like Italy and Greece, when you walk through the streets there are sometimes front of house staff from restaurants that walk around and try and get you to come back for a feed at their restaurants. Thats probably the closest example I can remember. It’s nice to think that these same businesses will be able to use technology to do that in the future instead of wasting man power and essentially money by getting people to do it 🙂
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