HugePedlar’s Blog

Well it’s been a while since my last post, but you can put that down to laziness and moving to Australia.

To get started in Bluetooth marketing you will need three things: a laptop, a bluetooth transmitter, and software.

I use an eeePC as my bluetooth laptop, because it’s small, cheap and quick to boot up. My bluetooth transmitter is a Belkin F8T012 - make sure your transmitter is a Class 1 device (100m range) and compatible with Bluetooth 2.0. The software I use is Blue Market Pro which is quite buggy but has all the features you’ll need.

Now with Blue Market Pro you’ll need your eeePC (assuming you go for one) to be running Windows, and specifically you’ll need your transmitter to be using the Microsoft bluetooth stack, not the manufacturer’s. Instructions on how to install the Microsoft stack properly can be found here.

I’m not going to get into the details of installing the software or how to set it up, because it’s pretty straightforward. Basically you want Blue Market Pro to be running in server mode with a file or list of files to transmit from its outbox every 60 seconds or so. I’ve used both animated gifs and plain text files successfully, the main difference being a text file can contain more information for your prospects but a gif looks prettier.

So all you have to do now is head out there and try it out. Bear in mind that most phones won’t sound an audio alert when your device tries to transmit to them, so catching people walking around isn’t going to work. Best places to try this are where people are sitting down, for example in cafes and bars. You’ll also need to be around a LOT of people, because most phones will refuse a connection, and others will time-out before the owner notices the message. Depending on the country you’re in (Australia seems to be the easiest) a 10% successful transmission rate is pretty good.

To be honest, sitting around a food court with one of these devices for a few hours probably isn’t going to be a good investment of your time, simply because the numbers are so small. But if you really want to make money out of this idea, try persuading your local cafe or bar owners to buy one of these babies off you (or rent it) to advertise to their own customers (and next door’s customers). They’ll be able to leave the device on all day, and if only a handful of people respond to their ads (free cake when you buy a coffee, for example), it could mean an extra few grand for them in income per month. Offer them a week’s free trial then hit them up for a couple of grand if they want to buy it. Your outlay on the device shouldn’t be more than a few hundred dollars, leaving you with a nice ROI, and possibly a monthly support contract.

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