Casey Markee will be speaking about Beacons & Retargeting at SearchFest 2016, which is being held March 10th, 2016 at the Sentinel Hotel in Portland, Oregon. For more information or to purchase tickets, please click here.
1) Please give us your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I’ve been in the digital marketing field since 1997. I worked in the early dot.com boom in San Diego until 2000 when I decided to start my own digital marketing firm, Media Wyse. In that capacity over the last 15+ years I’ve provided online marketing support, campaigns, and consulting services to dozens of companies worldwide.
Since 2004, I’ve also been the Lead SEO Consultant and Head of FastAnswer Support for industry-leading e-publication www.SearchEngineNews.com (SEN). In that capacity, I’ve provided corporate and private training to digital marketing teams on five different continents on topics ranging from Google penalty recovery, to link earning, to site auditing. I’ve also published over 400+ articles covering dozens of topics and I’m one of the authors of the Unfair Advantage Guide to Winning the SEO Wars. This is the longest continuously updated SEO book in the industry and is currently on it’s 236th revision.
Most of my time spent these days is providing referral-only consulting services to companies big and small and training SEO teams and private consultants as an independent contractor for SEN.
2) How do Beacons work and why shouldn’t I be creeped out by them?
Briefly defined, these are wireless Bluetooth-powered location-aware transmitters that provide increased geo-targeting through apps or WIFI. Retailers or just general brick-and-mortal locations can install beacons throughout their stores and venues then hypertarget their audience with offers and marketing messages.
Beacons are about the size of a quarter and can cost anywhere from $5-80. Right now there are two main beacon wire frame technologies in iBeacon (by Apple) and Eddystone (by Google). Apple’s iBeacon was on the scene first and is a proprietary technology that really only works with apps. In other words, to use iBeacon, retailers or venues must get their audience to install an app. Eddystone, by Google, is the more recent technology and it has several different wireframes which allow increased targeting that don’t necessarily require an app of the target audience. In fact, Eddystone can use the built-in notifications functionality of Android to provide messaging in many novel ways.
Your statement as to “why shouldn’t users be creeped out” is a valid one. You may remember the 2002 movie “Minority Report” with Tom Cruise which showed his character getting relentlessly targeted with shopping offers as he was running through a mall in 2054 Washington, DC. That type of targeting is already here and CAN be done with beacons. In fact, you can walk through several big retailers right now and receive customized beacon messaging, based on your past buying habits, individually targeted to you as you walk down the aisle. That “could” certainly be viewed as creepy to many.
To combat this perception, retailers and brands need to really embrace a value-driven approach to their use and implementation of beacons. It needs to be seamless and it needs to further the experience of that user in that moment.
3) Please share some effective Beacon strategies that businesses have implemented.
Beacons can be used in a variety of ways including; navigating users through a store map virtually via their phones, serving users pop-up notifications when they are near a retail display, acting as a virtual docent as they navigate through an exhibit hall or museum, and by providing timely arrival and departure information when they are near a bus or train stop.
Companies continue to embrace and push out beacons in many new and novel ways. For example, the Starwood hotel brand has launched a SPG Keyless program to many of it’s properties worldwide that use beacons to turn smartphones into full hotel passports. Guests can use their smartphone as a hotel key, to turn on and off lights, adjust their thermometer and even order room service. All of this from any location in the hotel.
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Another example of the novel ways beacons can be used is what is being done in agriculture with Germany company Fliegl. Their harvest tracker app allows farmers to mount beacons on combines and harvesters and both track and record arrival and departure information, grain weight, and grain loss numbers. It also allows grain buyers to know the exact farm a shipment was received from allowing for increased food chain tracking and ifood safety measure.
With examples like the above you can see why I say beacons are bad-ass! 2016 should be very exciting for the technology. I’m excited to speak on the topic at SearchFest in March.
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.