The latest episode of TV Five’s Gadget Show featured Suzi Perry, who had been given the task to come up with the best advertising campaign using the latest in cutting-edge technology.
She used, amongst other technology, “Bluetooth Messaging” to send out Bluetooth messages in Manchester Piccalilli Train station, these messages were sent directly to mobile phones to advertise The Gadget Show.
The episode showed Suzi standing on a large, vinyl, Gadget Show floor mat, explaining how if you switch on the Bluetooth function of your mobile phone you will receive a message. (If the transmitter was fitted with a low cost Omni-Directional antenna, the messages could be automatically sent to all Bluetooth enabled mobile phones within the range of the transmitter (approximately 30 meters in each direction))
Watch a clip of the episode by clicking play below:
If you are looking at using Bluetooth Messaging in your business please visit the website below: www.textblue.co.uk
Perhaps you have played with the idea of Bluetooth Advertising for your business but are reluctant to jump in and make a purchase. You may wonder if it would be a waste of money if it turns out to be “not your cup of tea”. We have always offered a trail on the software but the software without the hardware is only a mere glimpse of what it’s all about. Naturally, you would like to see some measurable results from using the product, you want to “use the thing for real”. That’s fine, go ahead. Of course we are not going to send you hardware for free and give you free bluetooth marketing! That would be silly. However, from today, we have added a rental option to our services! Bluetooth Advertising rental starts from just £10 per month! You can rent forever or until you decide you would like to purchase a system outright. Click here to view your rental options. What does £10 per month buy you in the way of advertising these days? Nothing that we’re aware of (let us know if you know of anything). Click here to get started.
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Is the Apple iPhone compatible with Bluetooth Marketing? This is a question that is asked on a regular basis and the short answer is no but we are just going to explain why.
The Apple iPhone is equipped with Bluetooth technology however Apple have decided to strip down the Bluetooth functionality by removing some components, one of the Key components that has been removed is Object Exchange or OBEX for short. OBEX is what is required to send Bluetooth files to phones and as this has been removed Apple iPhones are currently not compatible with any Bluetooth Marketing System available.
Going forward there is a possibility that Apple could be introducing OBEX into the upcoming models but nothing has yet to be confirmed.
The good news is that Apple have a small market share in the grand scheme of things at under 3% of the total number of phones sold in the UK.
We are also working on a Wi-Fi product which will be introduced the third quarter of 2010 and will be able to send files on demand to Apple iPhone’s and other Wi-Fi compatible smart phones.
Bluetooth Marketing is becoming a vehicle for free marketing communication, letting businesses put their promotional messages directly into the hands of consumers. Some companies have already succeeded in establishing a new channel of communication with clients and know how to use it effectively. But in many other companies, marketing departments do not have any idea how to organize a Bluetooth Proximity Marketing campaign well, so that it achieves its marketing goals without overspending. An Internet search on Bluetooth Marketing is not likely to return enough information on this topic. As a result, marketing specialists opt to plan their campaigns using the familiar promotional strategies from the “bricks-and-mortar” world which often fail such campaigns. When a Bluetooth Marketing campaign fails, the cause may be one of the following three most common mistakes.
Mistake #1:
The “Carpet bombing” approach
Many inexperienced marketers make the mistake of blindly assuming that the more coverage they can get and the more messages they can send in the same breath, the more effective their campaign will be. Sometimes this may be the case in traditional bricks-and-mortar advertising, but in proximity marketing it does not work. Following the “carpet bombing” approach, some marketing managers choose the biggest hardware units with an excessively large number of transmitters and start littering phones with continuous trails of messages from an anonymous source.
The risk with the “carpet bombing” approach is that people get alienated by spammy offerings and are forced to switch off their Bluetooth, getting out of the circus of prospective campaign participants. Obviously, the effect of the campaign goes down to zero. In contrast to this approach, an effective Bluetooth Marketing campaign – one that, first of all, informs people openly that they’re in the place where a Proximity Marketing campaign is being run. Ideally, one of the first things the person sees around should be a Bluetooth sign that says “You have entered a Blue Zone. Activate your Bluetooth to receive special offers, promo coupons and other information”.
Most customers agree that messages with promo coupons, interesting offers have value, serving as a support tool for them. But nobody likes getting messages they do not need. Therefore our second bit of advice is to provide the customers with your Bluetooth friendly name (If its not obvious) so it gives users confidence to know who is sending the message.
One more important piece of advice is to provide themed zones for delivering relevant Bluetooth content. This approach allows you to take advantage of one of the drivers of human behaviour – curiosity. Practice shows that if there is a group of people with mobile phones standing close to the display with some interesting content and discussing something, it drives passers-by to come closer and take part in the campaign. Besides, seeing other people getting content to the phone helps others overcome the psychological barrier and they get involved too.
Mistake #2:
Avoid cheese traps
The first job of marketing is to provide the maximum exposure for a product, service or company. Remembering this rule, some marketing managers make a false assumption that the more Bluetooth transmitters that they use in the vicinity of the campaign, the better. As a result, it is tempting for some Bluetooth proximity hardware suppliers to promote this concept. They offer their equipment at a lower price to the average market price, which can be quite attractive, but it’s just a beginning. They also suggest that you buy a large number of transmitters for one location. For example, you may be lured into setting up 8 cheap units where 2 high quality would perform equally or better.
In our experience, Aircable manufacture a high quality Bluetooth transmitter called the Aircable Host XR3 with is an extremely powerful transmitter constructed in a small but stylish unit and works specifically well with the TextBlue Proximity Sender software.
An opportunity to get the most result for the least amount of money always looks great at first as it appears to reduce your Bluetooth proximity campaign costs. However, you should consider such offers with skepticism. Firstly, 8 cheap units will cost the same amount of money as two quality units. Secondly, the efficiency of Bluetooth marketing relies heavily on correct location placement, rather than the number of transmitters. Besides, you can achieve an even better result if you put your units in open but busy locations where there is a high pedestrian traffic area.
There is another reason why you should be weary of handing off your Bluetooth marketing campaigns to providers with low prices. Proximity marketing itself is not inexpensive but as it relies on technologies that require tremendous amounts of development and maintenance of the equipment, it make you think, if a provider of equipment for Bluetooth campaigns offers its hardware at significantly low price’s compared to its competition, it tells us only one thing – the Bluetooth hardware perhaps hasn’t had the development required to make it a reliable platform, for example, cannot recognize the mobile phone models which means that users may not receive your campaign as the hardware may perceive the handsets not compatible or receive an incorrect reject.
Mistake #3:
Choose your software properly
Just in the same way that you need to select quality hardware, you should spend the same due diligence choosing the best software. The best option is to install TextBlue Proximity Sender. This program gives you full control over your proximity marketing campaign. You can create and send a business card, coupon flyer, mobile video, pictures, animated images, audio, Java games and bar codes. The program allows you to schedule a campaign to be broadcast continuously or only on specific days or times. Unlike similar solutions, TextBlue Proximity Sender can recognize all Bluetooth-enabled phones around and send messages in the correct format, so that they are recognized by any phone model without problems.
Another reason why TextBlue Proximity Sender is so reliable is that it is built from ground up with the Wireless Communication Library (WCL) at its core. This library enables the application to communicate with mobile phones and other wireless devices via Bluetooth, irDA and WiFi. The specialty of Wireless Communication Library lies in its ability to discover and connect to ALL wireless devices in the area and upload files at a very high speed. By the way, Wireless Communication Library (WCL) is available as an SDK for developers who are interested in developing their own Bluetooth marketing software.
Avoid Mistakes in your Bluetooth Marketing
In contrast to traditional methods designed for mass promotion, having a high level of customer confidence and willingness to get involved are critical in making an effective Bluetooth Marketing campaign. You will need to be convincing enough to grab the attention of people, make them switch on Bluetooth and stay tuned to you during the campaign. Another important factor that creates the foundation for a successful campaign is the placement of broadcasting devices as consumers should stay within the operational range of the transmitter for the time of the campaign to be able to receive all promotional messages without interruptions. By avoiding the common mistakes we mentioned above, your Bluetooth Marketing campaigns will be more successfully and efficient.
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing is permission based, which means that when a mobile phone has received a Bluetooth message, the recipient has the choice to either accept or decline the message.
The customer (or recipient) needs to positively indicate that they wish to receive marketing messages, BUT the marketer is required to explain that those marketing messages may contain information about other companies’ products and services, if appropriate.
When someone isn’t feeling well automatically a Drs appointment is made, the patient struggles to get through to make an appointment, is then interrogated by the receptionist to ascertain if their ailment warrants an appointment and after all this there is nothing available for that day so is told to call back tomorrow!
Why don’t more people pop along to their nearest pharmacy for a free chat? Pharmacies offer a wide range of services, from prescriptions, eye tests, diabetes tests, blood pressure testing, asthma service, cholesterol and heart check, stop smoking, to name but a few. I am not saying that a Pharmacist can resolve any ailment, but they can give advice and point you in the right direction. Did you know that Bluetooth Proximity Marketing can help you to let the public know what you have on offer?
Place a pod within your pharmacy or in a spot where passersby will receive your message, create a campaign and away you go!
You can use Bluetooth Proximity Marketing to advertise your services, let people know that you offer a prescription delivery service; you offer health advice, what you are promoting at the moment. Spread awareness of Cervical Cancer; send reminders of the flu jab, advice on how to stop smoking, kid health care, child nutrition. What about awareness days/weeks? Take advantage of your Bluetooth Proximity Marketing pod and spread awareness of what is happening or coming up by creating a calendar reminder. All the recipient needs to do is to accept your message and your calendar reminder will be automatically stored in the calendar of their mobile phone!
You can create as many campaigns as you like and run them as often as you like and in addition you can create campaigns offering general advice, any specials you are running, your opening hours, introduce your pharmacist, or your manager.
Bluetooth Proximity Advertising can be used for many different promotions, it’s easy to use and there are no additional costs. Once you have purchased the pod of your choice, it’s yours to use as often as you like!
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing can benefit florists to obtain more custom. By setting up a “vcard”, each recipient will have your business card stored in their “address book/contacts list” of their mobile phone! This means that if and when the recipient wants a local florist, do you think they will turn to the yellow pages or are they more likely to whip their mobile phone out and look you up?
Suppose you have a special offer you want to promote. In this instance you can create a ”gif” advert. On a gif advert you can have pictures and text and multiple pages. It’s like your leaflet or flyer only greener because there is no paper!
The “vcal” if very useful for florists! With the ”vcal” you can Bluetooth pod or software to create calendar reminders. For example, why not set people’s mobile phone calendars to alert them on the morning of Valentine’s Day and Mothers Day to come to into your shop to get some flowers?
What about a special deal that you want to promote? Why not create an advert with a ‘show this voucher to get 10% off’?
Now bear in mind that this form of marketing (Bluetooth Proximity Marketing) is permission based and therefore not intrusive. Each time a mobile phone is alerted of an incoming Bluetooth message, the recipient has to accept it before they get it, so don’t worry about the morality of your campaigns.
Bluetooth Proximity Marketing can be used to promote your florist in many ways, all you need is the Bluetooth product and a little bit of imagination!
As a taxi driver you are out and about all day and night.Besides having your telephone number displayed on your car, how else do customers know or remember your number?Yes they could look in the telephone directory or on the internet, but what happens when customers are out at night and need a taxi?
Why not advertise 24/7? You can utilise your ‘money maker’ to bring in more business!Your taxi is out and about all of the time; why not advertise on the go in a way that will inform new customers of your telephone number and allowing new and existing customers to retain your number!How do you do this I hear you ask?The answer is simple; Bluetooth Proximity Marketing!
Install a Bluetooth device within you taxi(s); create a business card and away you go!As your taxi is driving up and down streets, picking people up, you are constantly surrounded by people so you can be broadcasting your business card to customers all of the time!You can even broadcast whilst you are waiting for business; there is no limit to Bluetooth Advertising, you can broadcast as often as you like and use as many taxis as you like!
One your business card has been broadcast the recipient has the choice whether or not to accept your message.Once they have accepted it, your business card is stored in their contacts for when the need it!It is that simple!
No more need for business cards in shop windows, in the local supermarket or in telephone booths, everything is moving into digital format, why shouldn’t your business card?
Did you know that Bluetooth isn’t only used for advertising? Here at TextBlue, we work with a number of Police constabularies that are taking advantage of our technology to spread awareness, by using Bluetooth messaging.
Crime prevention is extremely important it’s all fine and well wanting to report a crime to the Police, but many people feel that if they need or want to report a crime, that it may not be important enough for the Police as they have ‘more serious’ crimes to deal with.By making the public aware of campaigns, how to report a crime, reminding the public that they will be supported and offering tips on how to help prevent criminal actions is benefitting not only the Police but the public as well.
Police officers that are on patrol are carrying mobile phones that broadcast community safety campaigns to remind people to lock their car doors and houses.We as the public, forget or think that we won’t get broken into to, we are only human after all but when you are sitting at home relaxing and unwinding from your long day, and your mobile receives a message from the Police (you can choose to accept or decline the message) reminding you to lock your doors, there is a good chance that you could have forgotten to lock your doors.
What about those areas that are being targeted for burglaries, cash machine muggings, pickpockets etc?By broadcasting a message via Bluetooth, the Police are spreading awareness of what is happening in the area.Even if the recipient of the message is already aware of what is happening in the area, by receiving the message it is a reminder.These messages will also reach the offenders, which is good, not only will they become aware that the Police are close by and targeting the area, but they will be aware of what the Police are actually doing in order to prevent the criminal acts, for example a plainclothes Police officer withdrawing money from a cash machine, the criminal will have no idea who is or isn’t a Police officer so this will act as a deterrent for them.
The Police have a hard job tracking down missing or wanted people. In order to find these people Police are using Bluetooth messaging to broadcast pictures and descriptions of people that they are looking for.Many people don’t watch the news, read a newspaper or listen to the radio, which is the standard method of advertising, but by receiving a message on your mobile with an actual picture of the person that the Police are looking for, you will have the picture to hand
Bluetooth messaging is also being used in pubs and clubs to remind patrons not to drink and drive.By using this method of advertising it is helping to reduce drink driving, not only is it a reminder not to drink and drive but some people do think that they are above the law, by receiving a message the Police are making the public aware that they are near and sometimes scare tactics is the only thing that is needed!
The use of Bluetooth messaging is benefitting us all, the Police are utilising the means to spread awareness, remind the public of contact numbers, campaigns and that they are not very far away!
