Promoting businesses with beacons (known as Proximity Marketing) attracts more and more people due to its low barrier of entry and simplicity. All you need to get started are Proximity Beacons and an idea on how you want to promote yourself with beacons.
The most effective way would be building an app for your users which will display notifications once a user enters a beacon's range (or leaves it). An example would be a customer approaching your store and getting a notification with today's best deal, giving them an extra incentive to enter. Another idea would be displaying different notifications as customers walk around — this could include offering additional information as they approach a particular exhibition or showing them which items are discounted on a particular shelf. There are many other opportunities to personalize and automate the user experience and how it will work is completely up to you. To understand how monitoring works, check out our Developer Docs. Building an app is the only option to display push notifications on users' phones.
If an app isn't an option, another way would be to use Eddystone-URL and Physical Web to send notifications to users without an app. This option is only available on Android and it allows you to send links (as silent notifications) to the nearby users. We don't recommend relying only on this solution as it's not very reliable, it's also impossible to customize or get analytics from. You can, however, use it to boost your marketing efforts. Eddystone-URL is in details covered in another community article. You can also read more about Physical Web here and verify your link here. (EDIT: With Google discontinuing Nearby Notifications starting on December 6th, 2018, users will no longer be able to receive notifications through Eddystone-URL.)
If you're not a developer and don't want to hire one, there's plenty of options available for you. Check them out in our guide to working with beacons without a developer.