What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

The chances are that if you’re a conventional small/medium bricks and mortar business with a website and mobile app you have no idea who’s coming over the hill, when they’re coming or who they’re with.

The super-disrupters and the major brands know who’s coming over the hill and when. Those that have physical locations will trigger push notifications on smartphones to perform magic. Whether that’s to let you know you’re in the area or there’s personalised offers to be had. Turn on all your notifications and every coffee and restaurant chain will ping you into submission.

And they are certainly getting smarter, scooting around the edge of GDPR and privacy legislation to track where you go and when gives a view of your habits, if they can help those by offering your more they will.

More than 70% of medium-to-large retailers use location based services and this is on the rise. So, if you’re not on-board — now is the time, there are plenty of ways to exploit location services for any retail chain….

• targeted sales/offers when customers are in the neighbourhood

• improve customer experience

• sales analysis (visits vs passing by vs purchases)

• increase customer loyalty

Whether small or large, retailers can compete and advantage from proximity marketing. Exploiting the capability of bluetooth beacons and geofencing allows the retailer to track the customer within and nearby the shop; AI to predict their actions; push notifications and pinpoint marketing to influence decisions and assist customers in real-time.

As 5G strides over the horizon bringing continued expansion in smartphone and IoT/beacon coverage, retailers will need to understand the delicate balance between helping the customer and overwhelming them. And, in doing so continue to learn how to blend the footfall, behaviour and operational data from a variety of channels including online and location based service to lift their analytics and marketing capability to a new level.

In reality, we know who has already come over the hill and they are the monsters. They are the major bricks ’n’ mortar retail brands, the super-disrupters and their legions of retailTech, advertising, social media and marketing folk. Are you ready to join them, find your customers and use location services to help you navigate over the hill.