DIGITAL MARKETING
You have surely heard of proximity marketing and you probably asked yourself what exactly is proximity marketing?
It is a widely used marketing technique. Those who use this type of marketing target its customers, to whom it subsequently sends specific content.
It is a geo-localized service and is activated when the customer is located within that particular area. For example, if a customer is inside a shop or a shopping center, this method allows you to send offers and information in real time related to the store itself. Often the customer, while inside the shop, looks for information on a product they would like to buy, and they are indirectly influenced by advertising that in real time appears on their mobile.
How to use proximity marketing
For this to work, the customer should have previously installed the app of the store where they are located and activate the function bluetooth. In this way the beacons installed in the shop can intercept the customer’s phone and send a push notification. How many times have you received offers and information about products available within a particular store in real time? Often, pushed by the advertising we receive on our phone, we have more desire to buy.
Receiving this type of message helps the customer in his experience of shopping. Receiving information, images and texts in real time allows the customer to buy more responsibly and certainly being more informed.
This approach to localized marketing shouldn’t seem too strange to you. Nowadays it happens on the smartphone, but also think about computers and the many searches done online. How many times have you looked for a certain thing that you ended up not buying? In this case you will surely have noticed that the advertisements that pass on the web are definitely related to your previous research. This is because somehow our searches are filtered and stored by search engines, subsequently proposing articles of our interest.
How to do targeted proximity marketing
With smartphones, being that when we are away from home they are also our PC, we do exactly the same thing. If we do a search for a product, a physical store or a place, ours searches remain stored. In this way, the artificial intelligence allows those who do proximity marketing to send us targeted advertising related to that particular physical place. This methodology serves the shopkeeper only as a first approach to attract the customer to their point of sale. Let’s say that would be the first step towards the dialogue with the customer, which will be developed once the customer is physically at the point of sale.
When a customer purchases a certain product, or puts it in their shopping cart, that’s when the proximity marketing app comes into play. The next step could be a message or notification that allows the customer to view other products or offers within the store. In the case of a grocery store, the idea could be to send a recipe, allowing the customer to buy the other ingredients as well. If it’s a clothing store instead, the message should send an image containing the perfect match of that piece of clothing with others to complete the look.
Why use proximity marketing?
For the shopkeeper, proximity marketing is essential to increase sales within your store. Imagine having a shop and wanting to understand which products work best, the areas in which people stop most to look at items to buy. This might allow you to focus on the right message to send just when the customer is located in that particular area. It would be a great help for the customers themselves, maybe they stops because they don’t find what they would like or simply because indecision has the upper hand.
By understanding what the customer’s real needs are, you can better use this form of marketing, helping the customer having a simple and satisfying shopping experience at the same time. The customer will be happy to be able to buy by inquiring and losing less time to search for products. A satisfied customer will definitely come back and you will know even more in detail what to offer. If used in the right way, proximity marketing is sure to make your business grow.