WiFi marketing is often overlooked by small brick and mortar businesses, but it’s a powerful tool to collect customer data and generate more online reviews.
If your business isn’t yet using WiFi marketing, you might want to consider it. Activating your WiFi as a marketing tool gives you the ability to collect customer information and build up customer loyalty.
In this article we’ll cover the basics of WiFi marketing and how to use it to get more customer reviews for your business.
What is WiFi Marketing?
WiFi marketing is simply the use of your in-store WiFi for your marketing strategy. It started out as a way to push out your message to passers-by with stores that had WiFi signals extending beyond their walls. But since it’s evolved into something much more.
Now WiFi is used for a variety of goals from brand discovery through to purchase and customer retention.
“To compete in today’s digital landscape, brands need to do more than just push content to customers’ phones, tablets and laptops. If leveraged well, managed Wi-Fi can help make brands omnipresent.”
– Forbes
Setting Up Your WiFi Marketing
WiFi Marketing is simple in theory, but when executed improperly it can go very wrong. First, establish your goals for using WiFi marketing. In our case, we want to generate more reviews. However, some other goals to consider include:
- Build a Customer Loyalty Program
- Boost Email List Opt-Ins
- Promote Special Events and Offers
We’re going to look at how WiFi marketing can generate more reviews, but there are some general best practices for WiFi marketing to keep in mind as well. You want to make using your WiFi seem less like a marketing ploy and more like a useful tool for your customers. In order to give you customers the best WiFi experience you can, keep these best practices in mind:
- Find a system that allows multiple login methods to give your customers options for the opt-in. Don’t force them to use Facebook or Google, but rather give a choice.
- Make sure your opt-in page is easy to use and aesthetically pleasing.
- Make sure you are compliant with local privacy laws. GDPR is a good standard to keep in mind when setting up your privacy policies and opt-ins.
- Be transparent on your opt-in page. Make sure that people know how often they will hear from you and what kind of content you will push out.
- Provide a clear benefit for opting in, like an instant coupon or the promise of exclusive future offers.
- Use the data you collect to customize your messaging.
How Can WiFi Marketing Generate More Reviews?
If your goal is to generate more reviews, manage your reviews, mitigate negative reviews, or anything related to reviews, then your WiFi marketing system needs to have some sort of feedback or review feature. You could choose to use a simple WiFi marketing system and simply include links to your review listings, but there are many that have reputation management features built in.
One thing you might want to consider is a gated review approach, meaning your review system will help to stop negative reviews from being posted online. Rather than send your customers straight to an external review platform, these systems will first ask about the experience then send the customer to the right spot.
If the experience was bad, the customer is asked to leave internal feedback. If it’s favorable, the system will then ask the user to leave a review publicly and share their experience.
Zenreach is one example of a platform that has review management built in.
Whichever approach you choose to take, make sure you’re using the data you collect from customers to send them a follow-up review request soon after their visit.
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4 WiFi Marketing Platforms to Consider
There are tons of WiFi marketing systems out there. Choosing one depends on your budget and your overall approach to WiFi marketing. Here are 5 that we find useful to help you get more reviews.
Zenreach
Zenreach is a full email marketing platform with the ability to collect customer feedback and encourage online reviews. It gives you the ability to send customers emails based on their demographics and in-store visits.
SO Connect
Similar to Zenreach, SO connect is built specifically for review marketing. It allows you to automate your email flow to customers based on their activity, request reviews after a visit, respond to reviews, and more.
Purple
Purple is a much more robust platform than the previous few. It has an API and a multitude of integrations and allows for you to connect with an external email service, like MailChimp. This platform also has review features through Trip Advisor and Trust Pilot that can help your business build your reputation on those platforms.
Social WiFi
Social WiFi works similarly to Purple. It has a few integrations and works in a variety of ways depending on your business’ needs. The most important feature is that Social WiFi has review management built in.
How Are You Using WiFi Marketing?
Generating more reviews is just one reason to use WiFi marketing. There are a wide range of solutions out there and which one you choose depends on your goals and your budget. How do you use WiFi marketing? Tell us in the comments.