2014 was the year that everyone got really excited about beacon technology and there’s no doubt that 2015 will be the year it becomes mainstream. We’ve put together a quick of 15 ways beacons can be used across many vertical sectors including retail, education, healthcare, events and tourism.

1. 15 2015
beacons
in
WAYS TO USE

2. One of the simplest ways to use iBeacon is on displays, at point-of-sale and at information
points to provide those nearby with content relating to where they are. You can control how
content is displayed by date, time and even the weather. Different content can be shown
depending how close someone is to the beacon and by how long they’ve been near to it,
whether they’ve been there before and if they’re are moving away.
discovery1

3. 2In its simplest form iBeacon technology can be
used to transmit content from one device to
another. It works like AirDrop but is persistent –
the sharing persists from one app to another until
transmission is stopped.
sharing

4. 3
selling
Place an iBeacon on a mannequin, sofa, pair of shoes or even a house to
let potential buyers to find out more about a product when near to them.
Beacons are being adopted in retail to help shoppers make more
informed buying decisions and to navigate their way around stores.
Beacons are also being used by retailers alongside customer data
profiling to up-sell and cross-sell, and also to provide a more personalised
customer service.
& customer
service

5. Whether it’s to make a purchase, learn about something or go
somewhere, beacons are being used to influence the behaviour of
those nearby and this is especially effective when they are used in
clusters. For example, by triggering different information at various
beacon points in a museum you can potentially alter the visitor’s path
to include a new display or perhaps a survey or donation point.
4influencing behaviour

6. 5Potentially you can monitor anything such as proximity
to a beacon, dwell time, path from one beacon to
another, and then use this information to learn out
about your places, spaces, customers, visitors,
patients, students etc. In Healthcare, beacons can be
used to track a number of things like medicine
dispensing, hospital ward entry sanitation and to allow
doctors to quickly and securely access the correct
patent records.
& tracking
monitoring

7. Every beacon interaction can be counted which means they can be used standalone or in
groups to collect numerical data and flow profiling. Examples are cars entering a car park,
shoppers in a till queue, people entering/leaving a building, patients in a waiting area, and
attendees at a conference. Whether your motivation for counting is sales, safety or something
entirely different, beacons can play a useful and important role in measuring numbers.
counting 6

8. There is great potential for
using beacons in schools and
universities. You can turn a
teacher’s device into a beacon
to automatically transmit the
right content to student’s
devices when the teacher
walks into a room. Teachers
can also create their own
beacon self-discovery
displays for students to explore with their
devices. Integration with back-end
solutions like Google Apps for Education
and iTunesU ensure that beacons fit in with
existing education platforms, therefore
offering real value.
7
education

9. 8Beacons can be used to automate mechanical
processes; turning on the lights, adjusting the
heating, vending a coffee or paying for parking,
and also manual processes such as airport
check-in or entering a building. In most
situations where the ‘if this, then that’ rule can
be applied, beacons can be used to make
things to happen ‘magically’ where you’re
nearby.
automation

10. For many things like surveys, place and timing is a major factor
for success. Beacons give you the power for ‘in the moment’
feedback from the right people exactly when you need it. For
example, you can use a beacon to conduct a survey at the exit of
your museum, or take a real-time poll at a live conference.
9polling & surveys

11. payments
Beacons can be used to trigger ‘in the moment’ real-time
payments and therefore enable sales to be closed when the
time is right. Offering seamless on-the-spot payments will
please customers who are in a hurry and some retailers like
Apple, are moving completely away from ’tills in the corner’
retail layouts in favour of more dynamic and self-service
payment processes which align perfectly with beacon
technology.
0

12. wearables
The growth of wearables is great for beacons as devices like ‘smart watches’ are pushing the
widespread adoption of Low Energy Bluetooth in everyday use. So whether it’s a watch, a
fitness band or a ‘smart’ item of clothing, connecting the wearable to devices and services that
are nearby has very exciting potential. You could, for example, receive app notifications on
your watch when it’s nearby a beacon, or link your physical activity that day to automatically
customise your workout plan, which is beacon-triggered when you enter the gym.
11 http://www.apple.com/uk/watch/apple-watch-sport/

13. Any group of people who get together can use beacons to get more out of that time and
place. You could take a beacon with you to a meeting and instantly share your contact details,
agenda and presentation with anyone in that room, without email and without codes. Another
example is at a networking event, where a room can identify who is in it and encourage
interactions by making introductions automatically based on shared interests or company
sectors.
groups 12

14. 1The great thing about beacons is that you
can ‘layer’ content on them and control who
sees what. In a museum, for example, you
can deliver different content for first time
visitors, regular visitors, patrons, school
children etc. All these different sets of
content are all triggered by the same set of
beacons, but the user experience is defined
by each users’ app and their own unique use
of it.
market
segmentation
3

15. 14Beacons can add an extra layer to many
security systems to make them much more
resilient. E.g. if John is carrying a beacon
and passes a face recognition camera, the
system no longer asks “Whose face is
this?” but rather “Is this John’s face?, which
performs a much deeper recognition test.
Personal beacons can also be useful for
determining access to information or log
access to areas in a building.
security

16. iBeacon app content doesn’t have to be a just a coupon or a special offer,
far from it! Apps can be used to deliver videos, images, games, puzzles and
quizzes, that are pertinent to a specific location. You could give a beacon as
a gift, which automatically ‘opens’ some content in an app on a specific date
such as voucher on a birthday. One of the first uses for beacons and still one
of the best is for treasure hunts, where users reveal clues by visiting
beacons in a specific order.
fun
15

17. ?
howwillyouusebeacons
2015
in
these are just a few examples

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