2014 will be the year that micro location based marketing really kicks into high gear, and we’ll see a plethora of companies engaging in the use of micro-location technology (or beacon technology)

For many years Bluetooth had always been the poor cousin, the clunky, battery consuming beast, that was neither very fast or that good an experience. It also had some security flaws — therefore it fell out of favor and NFC (Near Field Communication) was tipped as the “next-new-big tech-thingy” and to be honest, for a while back in ‘06-’09 I guess I was on board with that as well. I could envisage, and plan out what type of consumer experience would work, what wouldn’t — types of devices that we could utilize, chip manufactures making the size smaller and smaller — meant that wearables would and could have NFC built in and suddenly you were now in a world where your watch (whether that was a Pebble or Galaxy Gear) we could embed the chip into the strap section and it would communicate via an App via the interface on the watch. Early days, but we had seen how inventive others had been around the TfL Oyster Card (http://www.instructables.com/answers/How-to-make-a-RFID-bracelet-for-a-travel-card-Oys/) where people would take out the chip and stick it onto watch straps — so the next logical step was to design a watch strap that had NFC built in and then allow communication from there…

In March 2009, I designed some concepts (found some of these in my old moleskine) looking at it from both the technical and business applications side — but most importantly — the end user experience? My thinking around ideation always centered around the end user — what, how, why, where… getting into the mindset of utilizing new technology — or should I say, utilizing existing technology in an new and different way with different dynamics… Of course I was still a few years off from Pebble watches et al, but still they failed to consider the NFC technology, that has a number of great potential consumer applications from metro transportation, micr0-transactions (paypal would have been an ideal partner here) automated social check-ins and of course digital pass for hotel stays (your NFC would unlock your room, pays bar bill, gym etc…)

Fast forward to 2013 and Apple announced albeit under the radar, iBeacon using BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) as their preferred next generation communication platform to integrate with Apps — and of course their Stores experience, the Apple device and more. Of course this is the next step from QR Codes and NFC as a communication and payment method — with a host of other features that can be written into the App as long as you understand the process and dynamic of the technology and the user base. At the same time, I looked around to see who else was ‘playing’ in this area — and came across NY startup Estimote, that had some beacon development going on and I like to play around with emerging tech, that I ordered the Developers Kit with 3 beacons, and access to their SDK to do some additional development around the practicalities and possibilities.

So far so, good — I’ll repost here once I have finished doing further development — but in essence if you have an existing App today, by adding the functionality to enable the Bluetooth within the device to sense (or ‘look for”) beacons near-by — of course depending on how you set the distance radius of the geofence. The technology is actually the easiest part of micro-location technology — we can determine the number of beacons, placement, proximity etc… the more difficult and interesting piece is WHAT…

So, you’re all set up in terms of deployment of your beacons — now what? That is the pertinent and relevant question?

Much of the excitement surrounding micro-location technology comes from the ability to deliver specific, relevant and targeted content to your customers when they are in specific ‘zones’ within your store. You can (and should) control where and when (in terms of radius to the beacon) to automatically push notifications to your customers, negating the need for them (or you) to rely on a mobile application or search your website for potential relevant content. The notifications that you send should be highly relevant (to the location of the beacon), valuable and special to them — for example something like, time sensitive additional discounts only to the customer who has ‘opted-in’ to receiving these type of messages, giving the customer a feeling / or sense of true exclusivity .

Over 80% of women have said that they would be willing to share their location, and allow beacon notifications, in return for something of true and real value.

So content and messaging must be paramount in your strategy, as well as keeping the content well maintained and fresh — as this type of digital marketing grows, the expectation and adoption from the customer will rapidly increase.

However, by rushing into using beacons can also have a negative impact as well, if multiple campaigns or promotions are running in close proximity, with a wide range location signal, this will cause confusion and multiple alerts that will quickly go from enjoyable to intrusive and annoying. So good planning in terms of range and frequency is vital to deployment and campaign management. The digital offers or contextual information must also be value driven and have the ability to enhance the in-store experience and be part of your overall omni-channel digital marketing strategy.