When Apple introduced the iBeacon protocol at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in 2013, it laid the foundation for a new industry - the proximity industry. Here are the benefits of Beacon technology and how it can be applied to the Marketing industry.

Firstly, we explain what beacons are. Beacons are small wireless transmitters - a class of low-power Bluetooth devices - that use Bluetooth technology to send their identifier to other nearby devices. This identifier consists of a unique identification number that the device to which the beacon is connected, a smartphone, for example, identifies.

Each beacon device contains a CPU, a radio, and a battery. The battery life varies by manufacturer and can range from 1 to 48 months. The beacons can also be powered by a USB port, which makes them ideal for long-term permanent installations.

Beacon technology has many applications and potentialities, some already available when beacons were introduced for the first time, others that only emerged as technology advanced.

Identify the relationship between Google ads and offline purchases

Today, brands are betting more than ever on online advertising. You can determine how many users make purchases in your e-commerce coming from your ads. However, it is not easy to see the relationship between digital marketing and its offline attribution. Beacons offer a solution to solve this problem. If you connect your beacon to your Google Adwords account you can follow the visits to the store. This happens as follows:

1 - The user writes "Leather shoes"  in the Google search;

2 - Your Google Search ad appears;

3 - The user clicks on the ad, browses the site and the product pages and then leaves the site;

4 - This user decides that he wants to try the shoes before buying them, so he goes to the physical store;

5- When the person enters the store, the smartphone that did the previous search connects to the beacon identifier;

6-The beacon recognizes that this phone is the same that clicked on your search ad, and links that data to your Google Ads account as a "shop visit."

By recording actual visits to the store from your search ads, the beacons will help you understand the impact and effectiveness of your search ads.

Proximity Marketing

Proximity Marketing has a lot of potential for the right deals and marketers willing to invest in this area. Imagine putting beacons in your physical stores, which even allow you to see in what area of ​​the store the potential customer is. With location information, you can send contextualized advertising, even depending on the products that are in the area of ​​the store where the customer is. To do this, the user must have Bluetooth enabled and receive notifications from the establishment.

The beacons also allow you to monitor the frequency of visits and consumer behaviour within establishments. Depending on the range of the beacon signal, you can also alert users who are close to your store and send messages related to discounts, loyalty programs, and more.

The Future of the Beacons

The potentialities of beacon technology in marketing and location-based technology are innumerable. As data collection tools, beacons offer you the opportunity to better understand your customers, your advertising investment and more. Beacon technology is especially useful in the logistics and transportation sector, allowing for more accurate tracking. In addition to object tracking, beacons can be used in health areas to track patients or physicians during emergencies.

For now, it's hard to imagine what this technology will become. Being a very recent technology, it still does not have the expression of others more popularized but we are looking forward to the development and the potentialities of beacons in the next years. Perhaps the greatest advantage of beacons is their low cost compared to other technologies.