Offering free WiFi in retail stores is a winning formula that can lead to happy shoppers, the ability to stand out from the competition and long-term brand loyalty. However, there’s a big difference in simply offering free WiFi and how you can use WiFi marketing tools to help you to get to know and appeal to more customers.
From utilising apps to taking advantage of social media, here’s how you can use a WiFi marketing platform to connect with your customers and learn at the same time.
Social Media
Platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are always used by shoppers for questions, complaints and everything in-between. So, you need to have a well-established brand and following on social media for shoppers to want to associate themselves with you.
When it comes to starting a conversation, create a community and a brand identity which remains consistent throughout. Have everyone using your social media channels adopt the same tone of voice so that your messaging remains perfect each time. By keeping everything consistent from the images and tone you use, shoppers will instantly know which brand they’re engaging with right away.
You can get users to login to your in-store WiFi using their social media credentials and then use the demographic data to understand the type of audience you’re attracting to your venue. This will let you adjust your in-store strategies to appeal to the right demographic that has shown an interest.
Apps
The likelihood is that customers will download apps that they don’t necessarily need if there’s an incentive to do so. That’s where you can step in and offer things like exclusive discounts that aren’t available to regular shoppers and even loyalty schemes that will not only entice members to download and use the app but to also keep it in the long run.
An app allows your logo to appear on customers’ devices at all times, so they’ll never miss you when they scroll past your app. This app can be promoted on your WiFi User Experience (UX) login page, or for existing customers, they could login using their app credentials into the WiFi. With the WiFi data you gain from your loyal customers, you can tweak your content and messaging.
For instance, you might find that 90 percent of your shoppers are females and are aged between 18-25. So, you can schedule female beauty products on the UX by using targeting messaging at the right time.
Again, customers will prefer to have options for the way they interact with businesses. Some might prefer the face-to-face interaction in person while others might prefer back and forth email or social media messages.
Another option is to use chatbots, so customers can get answers from home or on-the-go at any time or even in store from their devices to quickly get answers. Through chatbots, you can collect useful data such as email addresses and see the types of questions and queries your customers have.
This can allow you to show them more of what they want to see, from stock queries to online lookbooks.
Websites
Although the point is trying to leverage WiFi marketing tools in-store, your website actually plays quite a big role in getting to know customers. Around 50 percent of buyers actively search for products videos, testimonials and reviews before they even think about buying a product in-store.
So, having an effective website is important as it can be used as the final convincing point that customers need to head to your store and buy a product.
Studies have shown that 92 percent of shoppers are influenced by what they see visually. A poorly designed website can leave customers unimpressed - as can a poor store layout. An in-store experience can work hand-in-hand with an online experience with actionable data you can use.
You can see the patterns they create online from product to product and see if changing the store layout can have the same effect and keep shoppers in your store for longer. As tracking your website can help you see how long visitors are on your websites and boost customer engagement, making necessary changes from the online data you collect can also impact other areas of your retail store, such as where the popular areas are, dwell times and more.
Integrating this data with your WiFi usage data will build a powerful analytics tool that gives you a complete end to end understanding of your online to in-store shoppers.
In-Store Tablets
One popular device that many retailers tend to use is an in-store tablet. The main use of this is so that customers can easily browse product ranges to see where an item is located, scan barcodes and see whether items are even in stock.
Using a fully-branded tablet gives your company logo prominence and keeps it fresh in the mind of a customer, all while searching for the answers they need. This is highly beneficial because - as we mentioned earlier - not every customer wants human interaction. This gives customers the option to either approach somebody in store to ask questions or get all of their answers instantly from a tablet in-store.
By using in-store tablets, it gives you a chance to get customers in your database to see how they interact, display promotions and lets you push certain products based on previous interactions to leave customers even more impressed with personalised touches.
However, in-store tablets can only be easily navigated on if there’s a stable and reliable WiFi connection. A patchy connection or that one continuously drops can lead to customer frustration rather than making their experience seamless.
Customers expect answers instantly when using technology and devices like tablets, so the last thing you’d want is a poor WiFi connection letting you down where it’s challenging to get customers in your database. If they stop using them entirely after one poor experience, then they won’t see any future promotions or products you push in the future.
The Importance of Branded WiFi
To utilise these marketing tools most effectively, you need the right WiFi provider that can design brand-specific user experiences, with powerful data analysis capability so your brand isn’t lost in the shuffle alongside other companies. Each of the ideas highlighted gives you a chance to get users into your database so that you can learn about their shopping habits.
With the information from the WiFi usage as well as the data from the other marketing tools, you can create a fully-branded experience for each customer which helps to increase both loyalty and engagement.
With the right WiFi provider, you can stretch this even further to help with your advertising, introduce loyalty schemes, relevant promotions and keep returning customers informed through the use of collected data.
From an end user functionality perspective, one desirable feature of a WiFi platform is if it offers the single authentication process. For example, your customers might only need to authenticate their devices once with your WiFi. This means if they return, the WiFi will recognise their device and greet them with a welcome back message. This is convenient for both the customer as they don't need to sign in multiple times and for your business so you can learn more about the behaviours of loyal customers vs new customers and plan your marketing accordingly.
You can also take advantage of WiFi analytics to see where people have travelled from and how far they’ve travelled to the retail centre. You can then make a decision on where to locate your outdoor marketing campaigns based on this information.
Find Out More About How You Can Boost Customer Engagement Through WiFi
By getting smarter about your marketing tools and integrating them through WiFi, you can enhance your brand awareness, improve shopper satisfaction, increase loyalty and more.
To find out how you can increase repeat business, what the public expects in 2019 and some useful tips and tools to help you improve your offering, download our customer engagement guide.
To get your free copy, click on the link below.
