What Is Proximity Marketing?

The days of standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for your turn to pay, are long gone. Now we're all just scanning our phones by the cereal aisle and paying from our seats. It's incredible how much technology has changed our lives, but it's also created a new way for businesses to reach customers: proximity marketing. Proximity marketing is the practice of marketing goods or services based on a customer's actual physical location. This practice relies on cell phone triangulation, GPS technologies, and network components that can connect with a user's smartphone, one of the most common ways businesses track consumers. There's nothing more annoying than walking up to a store display and having the salesperson follow you around, trying to sell you something. Now, thanks to proximity marketing, that problem is solved! Proximity marketing can be beneficial to businesses. One of the most straightforward and best examples is when firms use proximity marketing to target advertisements to customers who are physically close to a product. Imagine walking up to a large and prominent store display and having a coupon for those items on a smartphone screen. This information will be based on your location, so it's only relevant when you're close enough for it to be helpful and not annoying. If you don't want it? No worries; ignore it. Marketers have been trying to figure out how to use proximity marketing for years. It was mostly about getting people's attention with discount coupons or free samples for a long time. That's still an essential part of the process, but the goal has shifted from reaching people's attention to getting them engaged with your brand. Users find themselves with limited attention scope and may choose to focus their digital activities in different ways. That's why proximity marketing needs to be done carefully, and businesses must move forward cautiously.