Wifi marketing in retail

WiFi marketing, the first contact base for a “re-builder”.

You will often hear it said that “the black gold of marketing is data”, and behind this expression lies a reality that it is essential to understand. Indeed, a “2.0” marketing strategy must be based on as much knowledge as possible of its customers and prospects, while each action – promotion or loyalty, for example – implies targeting buyer personas, which will also have been previously defined with the most precise level of detail possible.

Inbound marketing is based on the premise that it is by attracting prospects in a non-intrusive way, i.e. by arousing their interest without them ever having the unpleasant sensation of being “pushed” to buy, that they will be the most satisfied, and therefore the most likely to become loyal customers. But to attract the attention of a potential customer, you have to know them.

At this stage of your reading, you are probably wondering what the link is between digital marketing and a “wifi marketing hotspot installation”. It’s simply a matter of using a service that is remarkable because it’s free – and in fact, let’s not forget that many WiFi networks open to the public are still paid for – to learn more about its users. We can therefore speak of “wifi analytics”, since it is not only a question of collecting the e-mail addresses of a shop’s visitors – although this is already an important first step, as it enables the development of a base of qualified customers and prospects – but also of observing their web paths while they are in a given point of sale.

Of course, and more than ever in the context of the recent RGPD, it will be necessary to have obtained the user’s prior consent, whether it is to “track” them on the Internet using cookies, or to send them commercial communications. However, if the visitor benefits in exchange from a powerful and free wifi shop, he will tend to perceive favourably an unaggressive approach.

Authentication portal and redirection page, communication tools in their own right

You may not think about it, but the simple name of a wifi can be used to send certain key messages to customers and prospects. This is known as a “marketing wifi terminal” or “advertising wifi”, and the idea is easy to understand.

Let’s say you want to promote a product within your sales network, and you have a wifi that is powerful enough to be attractive (compared to the 3G/4G of telephone operators). In this case, renaming your wifi as “Take advantage of product A at 30% off”, for example, is a quick and easy way to convey this message.

Also take the example of a trade show, the “general public” Wifi is often notoriously unsatisfactory. In this case, it may be appropriate to install Wifi terminals and to name each of them after a competitive advantage that your company has, for example “Wifi 1: Made in France”, “Wifi 2: Best coverage rate on the market”, etc.

As far as the authentication portal is concerned, it must be understood that it is essential for the user, and that it can therefore be considered a captive portal. Before the emergence of the notion of “wifi sales”, this portal was clearly under-exploited. The same was true for the redirection page, i.e. the page to which the user is “led” after authentication.

Now it is time to personalise this portal and the links it contains, particularly in order to highlight your inbound marketing strategy in its “social media” component. In other words, if you make visitors who want to authenticate themselves want to go and discover your pages on the various social networks, you maximise the chances of getting them to move down the famous “sales funnel”. From this point of view, it is even possible to talk about “social wifi”.

UCOPIA trusted professionals to optimise WiFi marketing

It is precisely for this reason that it is relevant to call on a real specialist in this field, and since 2002, UCOPIA has been facilitating the deployment of WiFi marketing tools, by acting as a real ally to its clients.

In conclusion, WiFi marketing enables you to boost your sales in shops and networks of shops, thanks to a better understanding of the profiles and motivations of your customers and prospects, as well as an opening up to a new way of communicating (via authentication and redirection pages). It is therefore a concept that is set to develop strongly, and one in which UCOPIA, with its solid experience, will be able to help you evolve quickly and effectively.