WiFi is not just for your IT department to concern themselves with. In the marketing team, you should be using your WiFi to promote your brand. With nine billion WiFi-enabled devices in the world today and 82 percent of customers using their phone while shopping, there are plenty of opportunities for you to promote brand marketing and reach out to them on a WiFi connection at the same time.
However, it all depends on the WiFi provider you use as not all of them allow you to actually own the data from your visitors. By picking a provider that does let you own the data and analytics through the use of WiFi, it can bring plenty of benefits, including:
Keeping Your Brand at the Centre of Promotion
WiFi marketing means you treat your customers to free WiFi as a channel to keep them engaged. However, it’s also the perfect opportunity to promote your products and services by keeping the limelight on your brand at all times.
Brand awareness is an underlying benefit that works in tandem with improving customer experience. However, you must be sure to choose the right WiFi provider. If you choose a ‘concession WiFi provider,’ you’re choosing one that delivers the same, generic service at all venues.
This means that the experience that your shoppers and visitors get is not optimised for your brand and won’t help you to improve the awareness of your core messages. The issue is that if you implement a concession provider in your retail stores and customers are using the WiFi, your brand won’t appear on any of the splash, login or landing pages.
Instead, it’ll be the concession WiFi provider’s brand and products that demand the attention, so they’re the name your customers will remember.
That’s why using a WiFi provider that offers a fully-branded service is the best route to take. By using a provider that lets you brand your solution, your logo and messaging will be prominent and won’t be hidden, as can be the case with concession alternatives.
Instead, your brand will be the main focus and you can market your own products and services even further. This shows your brand in a positive light while delighting customers and keeping your key messages fresh in their minds.
Providing Free WiFi as Concession WiFi isn’t Always Free
Two major costs can come with concession alternatives.
Firstly, customers expect free access to WiFi now and there’s no guarantee that concession WiFi providers will offer free and unlimited access. Secondly, there can also be an additional cost for you as a business as you might be required to pay for customer analytics and data.
Customers now expect free WiFi and if you implement a concession WiFi provider that does charge customers to use it, then that reflects negatively on you as a retail store, as customers will believe you’re implementing the cost.
With a WiFi provider that lets you own your data - and doesn’t charge your customers to use it - the data stays exclusively in your hands. By having this insight, you can learn more about customer behaviour so you can improve your offerings a lot easier. Remember, if you choose a concession WiFi provider they can choose to sell your customer data to other companies - even your competitors.
By working with the right WiFi provider, you can enhance the customer experience with free access to WiFi and also you can own all of the relevant data, for unbeatable insights into your visitors, so you win both ways.
Data and Analytics Let You Learn More About Your Customers
A WiFi provider, like WiFi SPARK, lets you interact with your customers on a personal level as they shop, so you know exactly what makes them tick and how you can best serve them by analysing the data which you own.
The types of data you’ll have access to includes:
- Ability to monitor footfall.
- How customers move throughout your stores.
- Where your customers spend the most and least amount of time.
- Identify the busiest and quietest times.
- Analyse repeat and unique customers.
- Visitor demographic data like age and origin.
By having all of this data in your hands, you can effectively improve your in-store operations and promotions following your analysis.
For example, when you identify the busiest and quietest times, you can see the times where you’ll need more staff or even improve certain areas in your store where your customers tend to spend the least amount of time by optimising physical spaces.
All of this data also helps you change content, signage or even amend the user experience (UX) such as changing banners and images when your customers are in a certain area in your retail centre. You can even perfectly-time targeted marketing when they’re using their WiFi-enabled devices while shopping.
Owning this data and understanding what your customers want means you can use these smart analytics to increase dwell time, customer experience and engagement in your centre. The changes you make can also encourage visitors to return. With providers like WiFi SPARK enabling you to integrate your loyalty programme into WiFi service, it can also help you maintain customer loyalty so you can continue to best serve them.
By promoting your brand on a WiFi connection, you can eliminate the guesswork and target your shoppers perfectly while continuously promoting your brand at the same time, so you stay top-of-mind with customers likely to return.
See How You Can Improve Customer Engagement With WiFi SPARK
Free WiFi for your customers isn’t just a perk, it’s a beneficial marketing tool that you can use to improve your customers’ experience. More than 60 percent of businesses say customers spend more time in their locations when they offer free WiFi, so how will you start a conversation with your customers and improve communication with them to maintain their loyalty?
We’ve created a free guide on customer engagement so you can improve how you communicate with customers and maintain their loyalty.
To find out more about how you can get brand exposure through a WiFi network, actionable tips on increasing repeat business, upselling to current customers and so much more, then click on the link below to download your copy.
