Google already crowdsources user location data to show store traffic in search engines. What will happen next, when drones can add additional data to complete the picture? New data types can be collected such as facial recognition matches, license plate numbers, vehicle types, and more.

Store Surveillance Provides Customer Traffic Data

Google already crowdsources user location data to show store traffic in search engines. What will happen next, when drones can add additional data to complete the picture? New data types can be collected such as facial recognition matches, license plate numbers, vehicle types, and more.

How great would it be if a management team could view a chart showing the monthly store traffic for each of its locations or competitors? This insight could drive strategy in countless ways.

Drones Will Conduct Facial recognition on your customers

What if we could conduct surveillance on your competitors customers, match their faces on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts, then serve them advertisements on those platforms at a time which is just prior to when they would likely head to the store?

That is the power of drones and big data in the new world of internet marketing.

Drones can monitor your supply chain

Supply Chain Competitive Surveillance? Just think of the possibilities. Want to know where your competitors get their inventory? Maybe the source of their lower prices lies in the manufacturer, supplier, or distribution channels.

What if you could follow your competitors supply chain by identifying the trucks which offload at their location back to their originating location? That could allow some businesses to locate a competitor’s supplier and allow them to make the jump and get a lower rate.

Search engines and ecommerce website already show store inventories for many businesses. What if that data was combined with video surveillance to monitor competitors and identify products which are out of stock? Having loads of data on their supply chain could allow you to create projections and alerts for shipments. In the meantime, why not geofence their location and run display ads to users in that location for those out of stock products?

Predicting these product shortages with artificial intelligence and capitalizing on them will provide an unfair advantage to any business that invests in this data. The possibilities of application are endless.

The Collection of Vehicle Data Will Provide Additional Analysis

Capturing the license plate numbers, vehicle year, make, and model data will provide additional data for marketers. What is their percentage of new vs returning customers? How many visits per week or month do most customers make?

Are the cars new, old, cheap, or expensive? What is the average salary of my competitor’s customers, based on projections from the valuation of their vehicle? Where did they buy the vehicle? From TV commercials to website content, most companies often broadcast weekly sales, offers, or promotions. How effective are those campaigns? Are they getting an ROI out of that television commercial or online sale?

In the past, this data was only collected by the business, if collected at all. Now with drone technology, it may be possible to monitor a competitor’s store traffic to draw a correlation between any sale or promotion and store traffic. Collecting store traffic data over time will allow marketers to identify the best sales, promotions, or offers for increasing store traffic.

These are just a handful of the potential applications of data collected by drones. What other types of data do you think marketers will try to collect?