Proximity Marketing Tutorials: Malls / Retail Stores (Part 2)

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Written on Wednesday, August 12, 2009

  • Store Locator for Malls
Another great service is a store locator, that helps consumers find the location of the shop they want to visit in seconds -- very useful i'm sure you agree, in crowded high-streets or huge shopping malls.

The consumer could simply browse the list of shops on his/her mobile phone, or search for the shop in question (e.g. send an sms with the name of the shop and his current location/post code, or use a mobile phone application that also knows the consumer's current location). The consumer would then keep the map on their mobile until s/he reaches his/her destination.
  • Map / Floor Plan
In a simpler, more limited, form, the store locator could be substituted by a map or floor plan, that could easily be stored(even for future use) on the consumer's mobile phone.

This is almost too easy to implement -- you walk into a shopping mall and see a poster with: 'text map to XXXXX to receive the mall map on your mobile via MMS'. Or you get prompted to turn on your Bluetooth in order to receive the map. I believe however that, though simple, it is still unused.

Of course, advanced proximity marketing systems, that are also aware of the consumer's current location could also project this location dynamically onto the map, adding in an LBS element, and making for a much more useful service.
  • Proximity marketing campaigns for products utilizing e-coupons, mobile games, contents and media content (images, video, sound).
Obviously, and perhaps needless to say, you can also run content push campaigns, i.e. sending via Bluetooth for example a promotional message to everyone with BT turned on. This is a great way to reach the widest possible audience, but you do run the risk of spamming everyone, as I have pointed out above.
  • Track Customer Movement Patterns
I really love this proximity marketing application because it is so simple, completely unobtrusive, private & discreet, yet hugely useful.

With a Bluetooth Marketing System installation, it is fairly straightforward to track consumers' movement patterns anonymously. Let me elaborate, with a bit of background.

Each mobile phone Bluetooth transmitter (and bt transmitter in general) is identified by a unique address, which is no way correlated with the owner's mobile phone number.This makes it possible to create an anonymous 'profile', identified solely by this bluetooth adress. Unless the consumer somehow chooses to share his/her personal information - such as his/her mobile phone number - with us, there is no way we can otherwise retrieve it directly.

So, imagine a mall/high-street covered with a bluetooth marketing system installation. If this is sophisticated enough (and provides coverage like a bluetooth network), you can build a database of consumer appearances in each shop / mall area / high-street shop / etc. and by using an appropriate algorithm analyse the movement patterns and see whare people go first / most, or how they move from section to section / shop to shop.

The same idea, at a smaller scale, can obviously be used withing large stores, such as super markets, where shoppers' movement patterns are almost a science of its own -- i'm sure enough of you out there know what I mean -- and be able to track which aisles people go to and how they move generally within the store.

Of course, with bluetooth the sample might not be 100% representative , but with most newer phones now equipped with bluetooth, and practically every consumer owning at least one mobile phone, all you have to do is give them a decent incentive for keeping their bluetooth turned on.

Whatever the cost for the supermarket manager, I'm sure this kind of information would come in pretty cheap for them.

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