How to Get Your Customer Wi-Fi to Pay For Itself
- By Destiny Pearce
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- 31 May, 2018
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Automated marketing through WiFi
You want to integrate Wi-Fi into your restaurant. You know businesses that don't offer free Internet often lose customers to competitors. Actually, one survey showed 70% of customers felt Wi-Fi made their restaurant experience better. You're concerned about the cost, because the Internet will be free for your customers but not for you. As a smart business person, however, you should know it is actually possible to get your customer Wi-Fi to pay for itself. That may not make sense to you at first, but here are some of the ways it can be done to retain loyal customers and keep new customers coming back--both of which will result in more money, which can pay for the free Internet you will provide.
Analytics Can Help Your Business Grow if You Have Wi-Fi
You may or may not realize this, but you can use sensors, gather data and analyze your customers, even if they don't log in to your Wi-Fi.
What are your business goals? Find out how Wi-Fi marketing & analytics can help you achieve them.
It will actually be possible to tell if a customer is in your restaurant for the first time, or is a repeat customer. Wi-f- can help you determine how often a customer will be likely to visit and even what his lifetime value may be for your business.
Restaurants use Wi-Fi to drive sales and visits by rewarding, identifying, and retaining their top customers. It's possible to send targeted promotions and messages, to enable a restaurant to strengthen customer loyalty, engage with those who patronize their business, and increase the chance of return visits.
Use Your Landing Page to Promote Your Business
On your landing page, which automatically creates a customer profile, do the following things to promote your business, retain long-time customers, and bring first time visitors back.
- Promote your security, by having an increased form of security for visitor accounts and password logins, and consider blacklisting sites known to be dangerous to young children, if you cater to young parents.
- Highlight any special events your business is having, as well as your daily specials. Place the name of a special or well-known menu item with your business name, so customers will remember it longer. You might increase profits even more by adding beautiful, big color pictures.
- Provide access to your website or custom mobile app with a link on your landing page. Add links or buttons that say, "Check Out Our Website," or "Download our app."
- Provide a chance to order from your menu online.
Offer Special Rewards
Any rewards program doesn't have to be complicated. It could include such things as giving rewards points, an early notification on special offers, and birthday gifts if customers download your mobile app. All of these will make your customers want to keep coming back. You could follow the example of the Chili's restaurant chain, which offering points that provide the reward of a new menu item. Plus, customers can do this at their table with the kiosk provided.
Use customer data To Build Your Business
This can be done a couple of ways. If a customer logins in with a social media account, you will have his or her name, email address and more. You could also get this information by requiring an email address or phone number to use your free Wi-Fi. You can then send customers email newsletters, coupons, information about specials, and special events.
Measure Customer Behavior
The data you gather from customers will help you make smart business decisions. For example, what times of the day do you have the most customers? What days are the most profitable? Knowing this will help you decide when to use marketing opportunities to gain the most customer attention.
Use Social Media For Your Benefit
If customers engage with your business by using your Facebook page or other social media online pages, you are getting the benefit of free marketing. Use your online presence to present your daily special, popular menu item, or event. Offer a free dessert or beverage for using your page. These kinds of promotions provide free marketing, gather customer data, increase customer satisfaction and profits, and engage the customer.
These are only a few of the many ways Wi-Fi can increase your business and profits, and literally pay for this free service.
Consumers Expect Guest WiFi
When it comes to grabbing a bite at a restaurant or finding a new clothing outlet, more and more shoppers look for guest WiFi as part of their consumer choices.84% of restaurant patrons consider free WiFi as an influencer when choosing an eatery while 96% of retail consumers prefer to shop and return to stores that offer guest WiFi.
Guest WiFi is popular because it’s a fantastic resource for shoppers to stay connected to the internet without worrying about using their mobile data. People also can lose their cell signal, especially in large concrete buildings, so knowing that there’s WiFi waiting for them to keep them connected is a reassuring bonus.
Download the ebook: Turn Up Revenue & Engagement with Guest WiFi
Offering guest WiFi isn’t just appealing to consumers. Many small business owners stand by guest WiFi as a great ROI as well as an additional tool to encourage customer loyalty. Tie these aspects in with the reasonable cost of bringing WiFi into your brick-and-mortar store and there’s really no reason not to have it.
Smart Tip: When setting up WiFi for the first time, ensuring your WiFi signal reaches every corner of your store is important so no guest loses connection. Learn the basics of WiFi setup and how to optimize your WiFi landscape.
Market Your Brand with Guest WiFi
WiFi marketing allows brick-and-mortar businesses to market and advertise their brand to guests that use free their WiFi.
Basic WiFi helps shoppers stay connected to the internet without worrying about using precious mobile data. WiFi marketing goes beyond the basics by providing a branded WiFi login page where businesses include marketing and advertising content to show off to their WiFi guests.
WiFi marketing allows guests to simply and securely access a WiFi network by signing in with contact information such as an email address or social media profile. This sign-in feature helps brick-and-mortar stores that want to build assets such as a CRM list or social media following. WiFi marketing even utilizes a URL redirect feature that takes WiFi guests to a specific webpage after signing in. By using all of these tools, you can market your store in ways you never thought was possible through simple guest WiFi.
Guest WiFi Improves Your Customer Experience
You can use all of the marketing strategies out there to get people to visit your store, but if guests don’t enjoy the customer experience you offer in-person, don’t expect them to return. WiFi is now being used as an analytics tool in order for retail spaces other brick-and-mortar businesses to better understand how guests are interacting throughout the property.
WiFi analytics is great for learning analytics such as how many guests are visiting your store at specific times, which areas of your store receive the most foot traffic, and also how long your guests visit. These insights are invaluable if you are looking to improve operational aspects of your store such as store signage and other advertising pieces, product placement, and even create more efficient staffing schedules for your workers.
Having the near perfect layout for your guests can be a determining factor between guests choosing your store and your competitors. With WiFi analytics, you have more insight into how your average guest behaves.
Ready to start using guest WiFi for your brick-and-mortar store and get the most out of it? WiFi is here to help. Our Smart WiFi platform comes with all of the top-notch Wi-Fi marketing, advertising, and analytic tools to make your WiFi one of the best running utilities for your business.
Click Here To View A Demo Of How Our Wi-Fi Marketing Services Function Or Contact Us Today
How Can Advertising On WiFi Help My Business?
Wi-Fi advertising is used by a variety of different industries including travel, hospitality, and retail. On the surface, it may seem like the only advantage to WiFi advertising is getting your ads in front of your customers. That’s the obvious and most direct use. However, there are several unstated benefits that should not go unrecognized, as they could be the factors that edge out your competition.
Advantages to Using a WiFi Advertising Platform:
Gather customer contact information for follow-up and future correspondence.
Increase customer engagement by offering discounts, special offers, or unique products.
Earn direct revenue every time a guest connects.*
* Direct revenue earned via hosting ad network through your guest WiFi platform.
The potential of WiFi advertising crosses every industry. A large healthcare complex can offset the infrastructure cost of their guest WiFi by offering WiFi advertising while gathering rich presence analytics to improve patient outcome and guest and patient experience.
Imagine a weekend music festival providing guest WiFi brought to you by the festival's signature sponsor. It's possible with WiFi advertising. If an event includes free WiFi, WiFi advertising should be included as part of the premium sponsorship tiers.
As colleges become contained communities, WiFi advertising can offset costs and increase revenue for the school while allowing vendors within the campus to advertise. Extra credit: All those WiFi hotspots are great for WiFi analytics, which helps universities and colleges better track student traffic patterns.
How Does WiFi Advertising Software Drive Revenue?
The landing page for your guest Wi-Fi is the first point of contact before a customer reaches the internet. It is an impressive piece of digital advertising real estate. Organizations can use this space to promote their own brand or earn revenue by offering this space up to non-competitive advertising partners. Your WiFi advertising enables advertisers to reach a highly engaged mobile audience, and you earn revenue every time someone connects.
Beyond the incremental revenue, WiFi advertising helps enterprise venues and organizations offset the infrastructure costs associated with providing free guest WiFi. In this context, WiFi advertising more than pays for itself.
How Does WiFi Advertising Software Work?
WiFi advertising is based upon proximity. As long as someone’s close enough to find your WiFi on their network list, they will have the opportunity to connect and then be served your ads. This means that they don’t necessarily have to enter your business – they could be next door or across the street, depending on how powerful your WiFi signal is.
Benefits of Proximity Advertising
You need to promote your business all the time. By showing people details about your business when they connect to your WiFi, you build up your reputation. It’s all part of your branding – and you get more subscribers at the same time. This gives you a way of telling more people about you and being able to connect with them again and again.
WiFi advertisements enable businesses to:
Target the right audience
Use WiFi advertising to target the right audience with personalized messages or media. Manage what your users see about your business and promote relevant content that will interest them.
Feature relevant content
Display image (of any size) and video advertising (with random or time-based location) in the right moment and target your customers while they are in your location with in-store discounts, special offers and other such promotions on the splash page.
Nourish customer loyalty
Improve your customer retention and engage with your new and returning users when they are using your WiFi – target them with advertisements and customized email marketing to keep them interested and coming back.
Multimedia advertising
Target existing and potential customers using our built-in system for image or video advertisements, or both. Choose the type of advertisements you want to add to your splash pages, the duration of time each add is shown and at what point during the authentication process it is displayed (before, after or during the login process).
These features the capability to add linked images to the splash page. This means, that your splash page can include advertising banners, that link to your own website or page, or an external one.
Advertisement rotation
There are three types of ad rotation that can be set on the splash pages.
- None : Image or video advertisement will be displayed as is.
- Random : Image or video advertisements will be displayed at random rotation (no specific order) on the Splash Page.
- Time-based : Image or video advertisements will be displayed for a selected duration of time only.
