Wi-Fi marketing is a tool that is available to businesses thanks to the advent of modern technology. Retailers, restaurants and a variety of other businesses that choose to provide wireless internet access to their guests can use that wireless platform to directly engage with patrons, communicate messages and promotions and, in turn, boost their bottom line. Using information generated by Wi-Fi, businesses can target their customers both on and off-site via text, email, social networks and other modes of communication. Valuable customer data that is generated while they are connected to your network provides ample opportunities to target and retarget your customers, to grow your notoriety, expand your customer base and boost sales. In a nutshell, Wi-Fi marketing puts your Wi-Fi investment to work for you.
Benefits of Wi-Fi Marketing
The benefits of Wi-Fi marketing in a restaurant or retail environment are two-fold – there are very distinct advantages for both patrons and merchants. Let’s explore.
Investing in Your Customers With Complimentary Wi-Fi
From a customer’s perspective, freely accessible, fast and seamless Wi-Fi in their venue of choice is extremely attractive and tremendously convenient. Which is why consumers are more than happy to provide a little personal information in exchange for something of value – free guest Wi-Fi. This may come at an initial cost to restaurateurs and other retailers when setting up the platform but pays dividends down the road. In fact, according to a recent Devicescape survey, almost 62% of businesses report that their customers remained on-site far longer since they introduced free Wi-Fi. This same survey also found that approximately 50% of customers who lingered on the premises longer also spent more money. Even more telling is a survey by Smallbiztrends that reports that one in 10 customers admits they will leave a venue if they don’t offer free Wi-Fi.
Growing Your Business Thanks to Wi-Fi Marketing
From the retailer’s perspective, Wi-Fi marketing offers a wealth of benefits. To begin, one of the primary advantages of Wi-Fi is that it basically automates marketing. That is to say that you can start to deploy your targeted marketing initiatives the very moment a customer, or guest, logs onto your wireless hotspot – oftentimes even before they enter your venue. This in an extremely valuable tool to help capture a potential customer’s attention, promote deals, loyalty programs and upcoming events. Free guest Wi-Fi also allows restaurants and other businesses to gain a better understanding of their customer base, and even of individual clients. It lets you find out about each person’s likes, dislikes, their preferred dishes, what they would like to see more of, and what they are critical of when it comes to your business. These customer insights are extremely valuable because they inform the overall strategy, and help you develop targeted marketing initiatives to enhance on-site experience. This allows you not only to maintain, but also diversify and grow your customer base.
Wi-Fi Marketing to Promote Products, Launch Campaigns and More
Wi-Fi marketing has proven to be increasingly popular in many industries, not the least of which is the restaurant, café and bar sector. In fact, Modern Restaurant Management lists Wi-Fi Marketing as one of the Top Five Restaurant Marketing Trends for 2019 – with good cause. In an increasingly connected world, Wi-Fi marketing grants restauranteurs direct access to their customers – in real-time – while they are on-site in order to promote their brand or products, to offer special promotions and discounts or launch campaigns. Of course, the benefits don’t stop there – once your customer leaves the venue, you are able to continue keeping them engaged with other, more personalized marketing initiatives. Indeed, Wi-Fi marketing goes above and beyond the traditional marketing route in that it allows you to directly interact with your customers, adapting the aim as needed with extremely targeted initiatives, as opposed to merely offering a uniform and unidirectional approach. An added benefit of Wi-Fi marketing for restaurants and smaller retailers is the possibility of promoting a product, sale or event to as wide an audience as possible, with relatively low associated costs. In fact, Wi-Fi marketing is extremely cost-effective and can help level out the playing field for smaller businesses that may not have the same marketing budgets as larger retailers and restaurant chains.
Wi-Fi marketing can dramatically improve the ability of restaurants and other retail businesses to understand and influence their customers. Which is why if a restaurant, café or bar today is not offering free guest Wi-Fi, it’s safe to assume they are losing a considerable number of customers to another venue that does.
Datavalet provides high-speed Wi-Fi network management to guest and staff across your business. We can transform Wi-Fi from commodity to business value.