Google Project Beacon: How to Use It to Grow Your Business

Google Project Beacon is the newest addition to a number of savvy and innovative concepts by Google. This is a small Bluetooth device that helps location-based searching and makes business — customer interactions more accurate and easier. Google Beacon is a small gadget that has some great features useful for everyone, both customers and businesses. It helps customers to find exactly what they are looking for and business venues to find the right customers.

Now when we use cell phones so often to search for anything we may need, Google Project Beacon proves as an ingenious device that will greatly benefit customers searching for products or services, local shops, restaurants, or any other business venue to be found at any given location.

Whether you own a local store and looking to improve your business visibility or you are a customer interested in finding the best way to search for the products and services you need, keep reading to understand all the benefits Google Project Beacon provides.

What is Google Beacon?

If you’ve been wondering how to promote local business on Google, Google Project Beacon can help your efforts. It’s perfect actually because it increases your business location visibility on Google Maps and provides a more precise understanding of how customers interact with your business. Currently, Project Beacon Google is limited to a certain number of businesses, but most stores can install it.

Google Project Beacon is a neat, handy device that you can install at your business location, at your physical store. A one-way transmitter used to mark places and objects, once installed, gives your business more visibility potential. It makes easy to find your place of business by potential customers that are looking for your products or services nearby.

How Does a Google Project Beacon Work and Why Should I Install It?

Your Google Project Beacon will basically ping out a signal to nearby users that have location services switched on on their phones. If they are looking for a product or a service related to your business in your neighborhood, a location-based, one-way signal coming from Google Beacon will get information about your business into their search results. Google Beacon simply increases your chances to be found by your potential customers easily and faster.

But there are some additional features that you will love! When a potential customer’s phone understands their location and whether they’ve already visited your venue, you can open an assortment of advanced features to elevate the quality of your local business appearance online and enhance customer’s experience.

Install Bluetooth Beacon Google to:

• Get more visibility on Google maps when a user in your neighborhood is looking for a product or a service relevant to your business.
• Allow your venue to collect reviews, photos, and other user-generated content.
• Provide more precise and detailed insights on how people connect and interact with your place of business.
• Find out what are the popular times at your store and how long do customers stay during their visits.

How to Get a Google Beacon and How To Install It?

Google Project Beacon is a small tool that any business venue can install. Google is currently sending a number of Google Beacon Devices to businesses who’ve already used their advertising services. Their experts estimated that these businesses are most likely to benefit from Google Project Beacon location features.

If you received a Google Beacon but you weren’t expecting it and you need help with Google Beacon setup, it’s best to contact your operations department or reach out to a Google sales representative for help.

If you’ve received your Google Beacon but don’t want to use it, you can discard it, says Google. However, take into account that if you decide to dispose of your Google Beacon now, there may be consequences later on. Should you change your mind in the future, disposing of your Google Project Beacon now may impact your qualification to get another Project Beacon in the future.

If you haven’t received your Google Project Beacon but you’d want to improve the location information Google provides to you and your customers, you can request one for your business venue from Google.

Google Beacon Setup

To start with a Google Beacon for Business, you need to:

1. Get some beacons
2. Configure your beacon
3. Integrate your beacon with Google and register it with Google
4. Add an attachment; use the recommended Google Beacon Dashboard, Beacon Tools app, or the Proximity Beacon API.

When ordering your Google Project Beacon, make sure to choose beacons that are compatible with the multiple beacon protocols (Eddystone, iBeacon, AltBeacon) for best performance.

How to Use Google Beacon?

Google Project Beacon sends signals to improve the accuracy of location detection. When you register your Google Beacon, the Places API will use longitude and latitude coordinates to find an exact location, indoor floor level, and Google Places PlaceID.

With Google Beacon for business, you can receive Nearby Notifications and Messages. Add attachments to your Google Project Beacon and access them as messages. You can use and drive your own app installs. The messages are stored in the cloud and you can update the messages whenever you want without having to update the beacon itself. Within messaging apps, you can start conversations, launch chatbots and easily drive potential customers to your content about nearby products and services. One of the most advanced ways how to use Google Beacon is to help users discover your products and in-store inventory, drive and get more reviews, as well as check-ins.

You can make your Google Beacon link to a single web page by broadcasting Eddystone URL frames. Nearby Notifications can read these compressed URLs.

How Much Does a Google Beacon Cost?

Google Beacon cost typically varies depending on the number of beacons you order. They aren’t expensive. An average price for a single beacon can be about $25. If you need a greater quantity of Google Beacons, you may pay for a single beacon anywhere from $15 to $17. Google Beacon cost will differ depending on the type of battery and battery life beacon uses, as well as on beacon’s signal range.

Don’t forget to consider the cost of battery replacement if you opt to buy battery-powered Google Project Beacons. To lower the costs, look into powered beacons.

How Does Beacon Technology Work?

Beacons are practically small sized computers and present a part of indoor positioning systems. They use proximity technology to detect nearby human presence and deliver contextual and informational personalized experiences.

When you set up a beacon in your local business, it will send code with a message to a user who walks past by your area to their mobile device. The code will appear in the form of a notification and a user can view it only using a mobile app.

To use beacons, you will always need a user’s permission, a beacon device, and a mobile app.

What Does a Bluetooth Beacon Do?

You can deploy a Bluetooth Beacon at the entrance of your local business. Once installed, these beacons will transmit signals in the range that can vary from 20m to 300m. Nearby smartphones that get in the range of beacons will send the ID number attached to the signal to the cloud server. Then the server will respond with a notification about a deal, a video, or a feedback form linked to the beacon ID. When users click on the notification, they will be led to whatever you planned they should do — they will go to a landing page, a form, or a phone number.

If you’ve been wondering how to promote your local business in Google or enhance your promotional efforts, Google Beacon is a great next step.

Contact us today if you need any additional information about these small devices with such a huge impact on advertising. Our specialists will help you. Please leave us a comment if you have any experience with Google Beacons — we would love to learn all about it!