A Smart City Must Engage Citizens With Smart Programs
Often a City will begin their Smart City Initiatives with large infrastructure projects such as smart lighting, smart water meters, security, etc. but many of these programs have no direct influence on local citizens, visitors or help local businesses. Directly engaging citizens with information programs and helping local businesses to grow through smart programs have shown to have positive impacts on adoption and acceptance of Smart City projects.
The Smart City Citizen Engagement Program
The Smart City citizen engagement program starts through the provision of contextual, proximity based, information delivered to locals and visitors mobiles through the City’s App. It expands to include local business advertising and proximity based offers and evolves into a network of valuable local information that drives and supports local businesses. Our smart initiatives turn this smart city venture into a cost neutral / profitable program and in addition provides insightful analytics to city planners.
Our Smart City Citizen Engagement Program
The Citizen Engagement Programs commences simply, at low cost and expands to offer increasing information for visitors and locals and expanding opportunities for local businesses.
STAGE 1: Proximity Based Information Services
he Smart City Citizen Engagement Program commences with the establishment of proximity triggered information services for locals and visitors.
Information may include tourist and historical information, way finding, self-guided tours, etc. for visitors and information on local events, planned infrastructure upgrades, building applications, etc. for locals.
This information is delivered via the City’s App to mobile phones and tablets and the content is triggered by the placement of smart beacons in the desired locations.
The program can be supported through the establishment of a City’s private advertising network, which allows local businesses to place banner ads on information pages to contextually target both locals and visitors based on their precise location.
STAGE 2: Engage Local Businesses
Local Businesses should be at the core of a Smart City engagement program. One of the best ways a City can assist these citizens is by enabling systems that help businesses to interact with locals and visitors.
In Stage 1 of the program we introduced the concept of allowing local businesses to advertise on information pages displayed to visitors and locals. In Stage 2, we extend the proximity Beacon network to local business, allowing them to promote offers to visitors and locals when they are in proximity of a participating business.
This low cost, self-managed program delivers each business with proximity targeted opportunities to attract new customers through deals and promotions. The platform has sufficient safeguards to ensure that locals and visitors can control the type and quantity of promotional offers they receive.
STAGE 3: Build with Loyalty and Coupons
Building a strong install base of a City’s Smart App will take some time, this process can be accelerated by ensuring that quality content is presented to visitors and locals. Our program also includes mobile coupons and mobile passes that can be distributed without an App.
In fact, we leverage the capabilities of the new mobile wallets, the same wallets that support the new pay by mobile systems like Apple Pay.
Coupons and passes are be distributed by social media, email, SMS, web link or QR codes and once saved into a phone’s wallet they can be triggered by the proximity beacon network. These same passes can be used to create a city-wide Loyalty program where locals or visitors can each have a single city pass store on their phones to receive loyalty rewards from individual store programs.
STAGE 4: Assist Local Business Target Customers in Social Apps
To extract the highest value from the Smart City Citizen Engagement Program we need to acknowledge that visitors and locals are going to spend more time interacting with social media apps like Facebook and Instagram rather than in the Smart City App.
Our program automatically extracts the anonymous location data of locals and visitors derived from the proximity beacon network and makes this available to the City’s authorised local businesses. This allows local business to target their advertising on social media to citizens that are close by, or have previously visited the store.
The City remains in complete control of which business can access the data and this data can become a valuable additional revenue source for the City.
STAGE 5: Network with Other Cities
Can you imagine how painful it would be if visitors had to download an App for each City! By joining the OPEN ZONE program your citizens can discover the proximity information services in partner Cities just by using their home City App.
As your locals become visitors in another City suddenly your City’s App begins to deliver proximity based information services just like a local.
So your Smart City App is now powerful, informative and of even further value to your citizens. Now that’s true engagement!
Generate Amazing Statistical Insights
Underlying the proximity information services and business generation initiatives of the Smart City Citizen Engagement Program is an amazing opportunity to collect accurate data about people movements. This real-time data can provide you with amazing insights of visitors, locals and the impact this program is having on local businesses. One of the benefits of a digital program is that everything is measurable! Some data insights may include:
- What are your tourist hotspots, exactly where do visitors go, in which order and how much time do they spend at each location
- Which parts of your City are not being discovered by Visitors or Locals
- Measure attendance at city events, amenities, walking trail or mountain bike track usage
- Allow local business to measure the impact of this program by accessing their individual statistics
Real-time data can be published within your existing Business Intelligence platform or combined with the data from your WiFi program.
The Smart City Citizen Engagement Program
Our program delivers locals and visitors with contextual information based on their precise location, new customers for local businesses and insightful analytics for City planners. It’s a source of new engagement and future profits. Learn more now!
Smart Solutions In Action
Smart solutions allow visitors to receive native language information via their smartphone based on their precise location, at anytime!
Smart proximity information solutions can wake a visitor’s smartphone to ensure delivery of location based information of any media format. The solution also provides real-time visitor analytics, allowing you to understand the number of visitors, their actions and subsequent movements around your attractions.
Our Smart City solutions operates across a wide range of mobile technologies to ensure the widest possible adoption, they are also dynamic allowing you to update the digital content across all your locations from the comfort of your office.
Examples include:
- Self-guided tours – walks, museums, art galleries, gardens etc
- Historical information
- Local information with way finding
- Points of interest and must know information
Keeping Local Citizens up to date can be more dynamic with proximity based information rather than relying on the local newspaper!
Proximity based information for Citizens can be a key weapon for delivering accurate update on the City’s plans and initiatives.
Information may include:
- What’s on at local events, markets and special events
- Updates on in-progress or forthcoming capital works or local developments
- Road closures and subsequent information
- Changes to parking
- Information of building permit applications
Smart City programs can help connect local business with Locals and Visitors
The Smart City Citizen Engagement Program offers great benefits for local businesses trying to attract and engage with consumers by:
- Offering targeted advertising solutions on attractions information pages
- Delivering proximity offers and information to potential customers that are close by
- Allowing local businesses to use the City’s location data to help the business to target potential near by customers using social media Apps
- Choose a self-managed or fully managed service
- Access all these services directly from the City at a low cost
Smart City Information Downloads
Learn More About The Smart City Engagement Program
Download the Program Fact Sheet
Smart City IoT Overview Fact Sheet
Learn More About Some Programs
Smart Visitor Information Centres
How to Deliver Digital Information
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Source: Smart City Citizen Engagement Programs – iProximity
