Change! It’s always happening. Even John F. Kennedy once said, “Change is the law of life.” For the past twenty years, the internet has fundamentally changed the face of retail.
But today, Wi-Fi is behind the next wave of change. No wonder numerous retailers have started to appreciate the impact of having free Wi-Fi at their stores. Reportedly, more than 90% of consumers now use their smartphone while shopping in-store. It follows reason, therefore, that most businesses are planning to increase Wi-Fi capacity by at least 20%.
And according to Deloitte, Wi-Fi has become the medium of choice. Over 66% of US consumers prefer Wi-Fi to Cellular. Indeed, retail customers need and expect to find in-store Wi-Fi internet available, everywhere and all the time. Where it was available, 70% of customers would visit again, stay longer and visit the store more frequently. Additionally, it contributes to improved customer delight and loyalty.
You would agree that most of your clients appreciate these facts, and that’s why many more are installing Wi-Fi within their business premises. You no doubt feel good to be at the heart of this transformation!
Retailers Stand to Benefit More by Installing Wi-Fi On Their Premises
However, you probably encounter potential clients with hesitancy to install Wi-Fi hotspot. Likely it is because they do not see a direct benefit to themselves. But adding free Wi-Fi shouldn’t be just a perk for their visitors; it’s also a benefit to their businesses. Why, retailers are embracing Wi-Fi to redefine the shopping experience from merchandising to customer care. Just how? By merging Wi-Fi for retail and proximity marketing!
Merging the two ideas works perfectly together and would mean higher investments for the business. For many years, Wi-Fi has traditionally not been a location-based marketing solution. However, with more and more businesses offering Wi-Fi in their stores, it is no surprise that this technology has become a highly embraced channel for proximity marketing.
How Proximity Marketing Works With Wi-Fi
The idea behind this marketing concept is to broadcast your message in the proximity of your store. Once the customer hops onto the free Wi-Fi network and starts using it, some great product offers are broadcast to them based on their physical location. Of course, you do it subtly.
These contextual, geo-sensitive, and behaviorally-targeted messages are available to them as long as they are logged in and using the free Wi-Fi network. Individually targeting customers with personalized messages means that they are 19 times more likely to be receptive to future messages.
Integrating proximity marketing into your Wi-Fi sales can have a profound impact on your business. Here, we discuss five ways you can succeed as a proximity marketing reseller.
1. Impress Your Clients to Win More Business
Most potential Wi-Fi clients may be completely new to or have very limited knowledge of proximity marketing. The ball is in your court to present informative and compelling facts and statistics to convince them to take it up. Facts as those presented here at the onset may be helpful to help answer their questions such as, “Does proximity marketing work?”, “How can it help me?” or “How much will it cost to set up and maintain?”
Elaborate what proximity marketing is, how it can be used to drive sales, and why it’s a must-have for every brick-and-mortar store. Explain why it is beneficial to integrate proximity marketing strategy along with the other traditional methods of marketing. A demo could go a long way to pacify their skepticism about proximity marketing.
2. Debunk the Myths
Some who may have a general idea of proximity marketing solutions may harbor misconceptions that may be a roadblock to your marketing efforts. It is vital to invite your potential customers to air out any of these and then turn them around with hard facts.
Let’s take one example. Some may think that implementing Wi-Fi marketing is expensive. So help them to appreciate that, unlike many other proximity marketing solutions such as beacons, they require no additional hardware, development or maintenance cost. There’s no mobile app to build or maintain. Hence, they shouldn’t be fazed by the installation. It’s friendly and simple. Make it clear that the technology relies on the existing Wi-Fi technology they have or will install.
3. Highlight the Benefits
No business person can pump their hard-earn money into a project they cannot understand nor appreciate its benefits. It’s for this reason that you’ll not only have to explain how Wi-Fi marketing works, but also feature its benefits. Let’s outline a few ways they can profit:
Growing Their Revenue: By capturing their visitors’ attention with a message delivered at just the right time and when they are most likely to buy, this marketing will definitely trigger impulse purchases. This, in turn, will increase their basket size.
Encouraging Return Visits & Customer Loyalty: Ensuring that their customers always receive information that they find helpful and valuable will make them look forward to receiving them. Once they can achieve this level of loyalty, customers will return effortlessly.
Automating Cross-selling & Up-selling: This technology allows users to create marketing automation by delivering different personalized messages to each customer based on their actions and profile.
User-Friendly For Their Customers: Their customers will get immediate Wi-Fi access simply by entering their phone number. After that, messages are broadcast instantly. They don’t need to download or install an app neither is Bluetooth required.
Rich Media: Depending on the nature of their customers, retailers can include colorful images, GIFs or videos in their messages. A picture is worth a thousand words, so using such media will leave lasting impressions on their visitors mind.
Promoting New Products & Special Offers: By syncing their messages with in-store displays or signage, they can make the most important promotions impossible to miss.
4. Run Campaigns Tailored to Your Clients Needs
For you to succeed in winning over new clients with proximity marketing, you need to understand the dynamics and nature of their businesses. The needs of hotels and restaurants, for instance, may be way different from a fashion outlet. While having Wi-Fi has been standard practice for coffee shops and cafés for a while, only the biggest department stores and flagship shops tend to have it as standard. Most small and medium-sized retailers shy away from.
So sit down and understand their businesses, the challenges they face and map out possible solutions with Wi-Fi proximity marketing. This will help you to optimize your campaigns for better client engagement, and they will no doubt find the products relevant to their business.
5. Manage Clients Expectations
After compellingly presenting the facts as discussed in the first point above, it is normal to find some clients get carried away and expect a high click-through rate based on the number of notifications sent. Therefore, it’s important to ensure that potential customers understand that simply sending out the messages will not automatically translate into increased sales. Many factors and forces come into play.
Highlight to them that as with other marketing strategies, proximity marketing requires patience and constant improvement to sharpen its effectiveness.
Thankfully, Wi-Fi marketing comes with an intuitive dashboard that provides real-time analytics for monitoring overall performance. They can track and audit all notification activities in online reports. This analytics will be extremely helpful to them in determining how to improve their overall strategy.
As with any other marketing technique, it calls for patience, creativity, and ingenuity before any organization can get their act together.
Sow Proximity Marketing to Your Wi-Fi Sales And Reap Abundantly
Among numerous existing location-based marketing solutions, proximity marketing via Wi-Fi has been a compelling choice. One research revealed that 94% of people surveyed cited that Wi-Fi is the most important amenity. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that 75% of people say one week without Wi-Fi would leave them grumpier than one week without coffee.
With visitors expecting brink-and-mortar businesses to offer free Wi-Fi services, understanding and appreciating proximity marketing might be the entire nudge needed to convince reluctant retailers to change with change. It’s a win-win situation. By encouraging your customers to tap into Wi-Fi marketing, their visitors will be happy and turned into repeat customers and loyal fans. Which means your customers will benefit and you will also reap abundantly.
