Proximity marketing, a close communication

Although in recent months we find more and more news and events dedicated to marketing proximity, it is likely that when we talk about proximity marketing, you still do not know for sure what we are dealing with. For this reason, after asking ourselves what the beacons are and how they work, we try to clarify better what is proximity marketing, what are the tools and the technologies that could allow you to use it and, above all, what are the advantages you can bring to your business or user experience.

Beyond the details and specifications immediately consider what is the proximity marketing Proximity marketing can be considered also a solution to attract and encourage interaction with customer who is close or within a physical space, without taking into account details and specifications. The physical space in question could be a means of transport, a shop, a museum, a congress center or a coworking space and, again, an amusement park, a cruise ship or the shed of a manufacturing company.

The proximity marketing, in fact, is far from another smoky chimera of the digital revolution or a complex technology that will still require a lot of time to be applied: even if more widespread in the United States, communication solutions and proximity marketing have already been successfully adopted, just to name a few: Amsterdam which used them to make public transport and tourist services more effective, to improve the usage of the Venaria Palace museum in Turin; to improve the experience of travellers’ MSC cruisers.

Proximity marketing:the characterizing factors.

Regardless of the context in which you choose to apply your proximity marketing solution, you must know the features of this tool with confidence: only in this way will you be able to better exploit its makings.
It is a lever that you can use in a well circumscribed and delimited physical context: marketing and proximity communication exploit, in fact, different technologies (such as GPS, Wifi, NFCs and, above all, Bluetooth and iBeacon) which imply the physical presence of a user, or of a client, in a space, and a specific action of the user himself, which, in this way, activates the actual marketing action.
From these simple coordinates it is easy to understand how the aspect that most characterizes proximity marketing is the physical interaction with the customer: the promotional actions in which the latter will be involved represent, therefore, a valid opportunity to increase sales of offline retail , making the most of the advantages of technologies whose final goal is to make the customer experience more pleasant and informative and to increase brand awareness.
You can consider proximity marketing as an innovative tool to be used to develop a new channel of communication, but I suggest you integrate this resource into a multichannel content marketing strategy because it allows you to finalize many of the actions performed online to publicize and make known your brands, your services and your products, in a truly unique experience. An experience (purchase, training, discovery, entertainment) that, while is remaining tangible, real and close, becomes an opportunity to attract and satisfy your customers or your visitors, offering a discreet and at the same time inviting content, because it is able to offer what can satisfy its needs, in a specific place and time, in the best way.

Proximity marketing: a closer content marketing

We can consider some practical examples to understand at least some of the opportunities offered by integrating proximity marketing tools into an overall digital marketing strategy.
Imagine being in a department store, among the shelves of electronic items. Imagine you need a new phone but you not know how to choose the model that best suits you. What could you do? Most likely you will ask, again, probably you will ask for an help to your mobile phone that is about to pass over.

You will put your hand in your pocket, you will take it out and start looking for information about the mobile phone which could be the most suitable for you. You could write the brand that you prefer the most followed by a phrase like “under 300 euros” or you could write a phrase like “smartphone with 13,000 pixel camera” if you like photos and Instagram. Whatever you write, among the results you will find only links that take you on e-commerce electronics without showing you what you really can do for you.
With proximity marketing everything would be easier: if you are the manager of the electronics store and mobile phones you could send to users who approach the shelves of the different mobile phone manufacturers, a different offer for each brand. If, instead, you are the customer looking for the new smartphone, with a simple notification, you would have available on your (old) mobile phone the product card of the new smartphone (which you would buy) with an advantageous discount on the price and all the technical features, from the definition of the camera to the Giga of the data card.

Why do we talk about a closer marketing content? Anyone who takes care, even superficially of digital marketing knows very well that the contents are really important for determining the success of a product or a service. Precisely for this reason, anyone who is involved in content has tried to identify the best, fastest and most effective way to offer them to a customer, in recent years.
Even if the web is frequent only as a user, you know that the mobile version of a website or an ecommerce is constantly improved and that in many cases, for a product or service, you find a specific app instead of a mobile version of the site.
In this way, however, everything remains online and, above all, stops outside the door of the shop, outside the congress hall, before the port where you have landed, in short, far from reality.
With proximity marketing, and proximity communication, on the other hand, contents entersin  the point of sale, arrives in your events. Moreover thanks to the possibility of integrating Beekon solutions to your company CRM, you can adapt to preferences, tastes and needs that your client or visitor has at that moment.
What are the advantages of proximity marketing? We only observe the most obvious ones. Send a notification with a discount to your customer, just when you are in the store, could increase the number of items that will put in your cart while you get the slides of speakers during a scientific conference could make him more positively evaluate the event to which he is participating.
Fast, effective and in real time.