For the past several months, many businesses have been chosen to receive small boxes containing Google Beacons from the one and only, Google. The businesses that have received these mysterious little boxes are wondering, what the heck do I do with it? If you are one of those confused business owners, I’m here to lend a helping hand (and trust me, the information I have in store is some exciting stuff!).
So, what is a Google Beacon?
A Google Beacon is a small device that is intended to be placed inconspicuously inside your business’ physical location that connects with smartphones and other Bluetooth devices that have location services turned on. Once the Google Beacon and Bluetooth device are connected and signals have been sent, the beacon can track when somebody is physically inside your business. Apps can then read these signals and perform the appropriate action such as simply inform the beacon that somebody has arrived at your business location or have the beacon send special offers to someone’s phone. Beacons can also be placed down to a specific product’s location. For example, if somebody has clicked on an ad from your Google Ads campaign and is now at your store to buy the product they viewed, the Beacon will know and you can accurately attribute that conversion to your campaign. Pretty cool, right?
Beacons are also great for your Google My Business listings as it will track popular times for people to visit your store and prompts customers to upload reviews or photos straight from their phones. This will essentially help to improve the quality of information on your listing.
Can I get one?
Beacons are currently in Beta testing so not just anybody can get one. Requests for Beacons were open at one point, but are now closed so if you did get one, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. There are third-party services who are selling Beacons, however. You can find Beacons that are compatible with Google services here: https://developers.google.com/beacons/eddystone
This is a very exciting time for business owners and marketers as now we can finally connect online advertising to offline actions. Now is the time to take advantage and embrace these new technological changes so don’t get left behind! If you agree, feel free to contact us here at Commit and we would be more than happy to have a consultation with you to help elevate your business with not only just Beacons but all of your marketing needs.
