Facebook recently started offering free Bluetooth Beacons to businesses in order to increase usage of it’s Place Tips feature. Place Tips essentially allows businesses to push notifications to smartphones about a place that you have entered. These notifications could be things like menu options, specials, or experiences or photos that your friends have shared at that locale previously. Technology wise, it’s pretty simple. You place a small little “beacon”, or essentially a device the size of a deck of cards, in your business and it transmits a signal to smartphones that are in the vicinity. Simple in action? Yes. Simple in use? Not quite.
As I suspected, this new tool is getting mixed reviews online. Most marketers seem to think it is pretty cool and might be helpful for push marketing, especially to boost purchases since you are already in store. I’ve already seen a few case studies that mention upticks in sales when used appropriately.
That being said, it seems as if many consumers find the push marketing a bit creepy. In a world where privacy has become a hot button for most consumers, this type of location based notification based is seen as too invasive. Some of the other drawbacks? The Place Tips feature is only available in limited geographic areas and for limited devices (Apple iPhone only at this point although Android is “in development”).
I think Place Tips needs at least 6 months or a year of progression before we find out whether this will be a larger part of digital marketing in the future. While other companies have been doing this previously, no one as big as Facebook has taken it on and it certainly hasn’t become a well known marketing option. I personally am a little wary of anything that makes consumers feel like they don’t have privacy, regardless of whether it actually does. I think we have a long way to go before Place Tips becomes acceptable or ubiquitous. I have seen big companies like Google come up with the next best new thing every quarter and it just dies a slow death of unuse. Google Wave anyone?
