Proximity Marketing: Its Application & Benefits for Shopping Malls & Retail Sector
In order to increase their organization’s bottom line, business heads at shopping malls need data that can generate information about their customers, both one-time and recurring. Information such as shopping likes & dislikes, time spent at a particular store, and engagement with other recreational zones among others when gathered can then be used for planning an effective proximity marketing strategy.
What is Proximity Marketing?
Proximity marketing, the new wave for large facilities like shopping mall helps communicate with their customers in real-time while personalizing notifications right to their Smartphones. It is a system that uses technology to directly communicate with customers via adaptable devices. This is the modern way of targeting the visitors and the best part of it is that it engages them as well.
Isn’t that great news for large facility owners like shopping malls and the retail sector in general?
How Does Proximity Marketing Technology Work?
First of all, we need to understand the fact that this feature at shopping malls can be enabled with an indoor positioning platform only.
Once integrated into a Smartphone app, proximity marketing works to fine-tune the approach of the facility to improve customer experience and engagement.
How does proximity marketing work?
1. Firstly, beacon technology is deployed within the facility, within the range of the store.
2. Bluetooth enabled Smartphones to detect these signals and send the ID number attached to these signals to the cloud server.
3. Now with the help of this ID number, the server responds accordingly and sends notifications to the respective customer in the form of discounts, new products, feedback, or even greetings.
Hence, proximity marketing works best for both entities, the customers and the management. This survey has more details.
Proximity Marketing with Beacons – The Fifth ‘P’ for Shopping Malls
A renowned marketing professor Edmund Jerome McCarthy from America in his book titled Basic Marketing proposed this concept of 4Ps of marketing in the 1960s. The 4Ps being Price, Promotion, Product, and Place, the basic marketing mix.
Today, with rapidly growing market trends and indecisive customers, the need for the fifth P has evolved and, therefore, Proximity Marketing. Visitors in shopping malls are looking out for something that can notify them with exclusive offers even before they explore the store.
Here it is then, with proximity marketing with beacons, shopping malls can target their customers based on their previous interactions, and make them avail discounts, made exclusively for them.
Proximity marketing with beacons becomes very important in order to seek the attention of the digitalized masses of the 21st century.
Additional Benefits of Proximity Marketing Solutions
Apart from notifications, enhanced customer experience, and customer personalization, it can offer benefits such as:
• Customer Engagement – It is already an observed fact that more than 75% of customers have associated themselves with a Smartphone app to avail the benefits of proximity marketing while they are shopping.
• Customer Insight – To know what your customer is looking out for is impossible but with proximity marketing, the entire purchase map of your customers can be gathered at the end of the day and, henceforth, you can drive your consumers in their future visits.
• Hyper Customer Personalization – Based on the data you gather on each customer, the mall heads can hyper customize the selected customers with much higher discounts as a token of gratitude. This will certainly double the visitor engagement.
• Higher Conversion Rate – The fact that your interaction within the facility is recorded and customized, the consumers are by nature motivated to buy. Therefore the conversion rate of engaging will convert to buying.
• Mass Personalization – Multiple customers at once can be personalized with each one’s data scrutinized digitally to avoid any form of miscommunication or confusion.
The leading retailing businesses across the world like McDonald’s, IKEA, Amazon Go Store, etc. have already integrated proximity marketing within their businesses and have improved their bottom line.
Proximity Marketing Will Create a Win-Win Situation in Shopping Malls
Looking forward to the near future, retail industries like shopping malls will use this technology to collect critical visitor behavior data and allow them to engage them in a better way which eventually will result in a healthy RoI.
However, proximity marketing is not confined to beacon technology alone. Depending on the facility and the services it demands, marketers will have to pick the relevant one and break the gap between online and offline customers to reach out to larger visitor segments.
