Many venues now offer access to the internet via their WiFi network. Whether a retail store, restaurant, hotel, airport, shopping mall, or even a stadium they all tend to provide a wireless connection to the world wide web for free. And customers routinely sign-in giving brick-and-mortar companies an opportunity to target customers with WiFi marketing.

Unlike online retailers, physical venues don’t have direct access to cost-effective digital marketing and analytics tools. Fortunately, social WiFi has opened the opportunity to access the same types of tools as their e-commerce counterparts in order to capture customer demographics and market to them.

What is Social WiFi Marketing?

Using a smartphone to sign onto a WiFi network at a retail location is nothing new. Many retailers still give out a password for customers to sign in but this leaves a lot of potential profit on the table. More-and-more retailers are setting up their network with a sign-in splash page asking customers to connect to the hotspot via their social media accounts. Signing in through a social network is what’s known as social WiFi. While that may seem like an insignificant difference from the password based approach, it is one of the most powerful options a physical space can implement for the most cost-effective and highly targeted digital marketing available.

By signing in with Facebook, a customer provides you with an almost embarrassing abundance of demographic riches. You’ll be able to see who your customers are and what they like along with their names and contact information. This allows you to effectively target and retarget your customers through email, surveys, and their social networks.

How does Social WiFi Work?

Most social WiFi providers use their own proprietary hardware which means the entire wireless network infrastructure needs to be partially or completely rebuilt. Aislelabs Connect is an entirely cloud-based solution and works with any access point provider. After a quick setup process, you will be ready to start putting your WiFi network to work for you. Here’s how it works:

1. Encourage your customers to sign into your hotspot with their social media accounts. Post signs around your retail space or even offer a small discount to incentivize them to use the WiFi.
2. When they sign in, your customers will be presented with a splash page. Encourage them to sign in via Facebook to get the most out of your WiFi marketing. You can also offer connectivity with other social sites and email.
3. After they sign in, you’ll have access to their behavioural information such as how often they return to your venue and how long they spend on the premises. By signing in with Facebook you also have access to their likes, demographic data, and contact information.
4. With this information, you can now effectively market to your customers. Provide incentives to have them return to your location, have them fill out a survey, ask them to review your retail space on user recommendation sites such as Trip Advisor, and conduct multi-channel marketing through email, Facebook ads, and Google ads. You can target users by any demographic and/or behavioural pattern maximizing your ROI.

How Does This Benefit Customers?

Logging into a guest WiFi network can be a bit of a hassle especially when signing in with a form or looking for the password. Social media authentication, on the other hand, gives your customers a one button sign in option. Aislelabs Connect takes that even further by not only automatically signing users onto the WiFi network every time they return to that location, but every time they visit other locations you may be running the Connect social WiFi platform — whether they have ever been there before or not.

How Does This Benefit Your Business?

WiFi social media marketing dramatically improves your ability to connect with and understand your customers. You can collect demographic and behavioural data, increase customer engagement, and market to your visitors. This increases the number of times they return to your venue which in turn increases sales. Here are just a few benefits you’ll experience with social WiFi:

1. Increase your branding presence. Stay fresh in your customers’ minds through digital marketing and email campaigns. Ask them to like your social media accounts to increase engagement.
2. Know your customers. Understand who your customers are, what they like, and what their behaviours are. Use these insights to create hyper-targeted user lists to market to.
3. Grow your CRM. Add these customer names, contact information, behavioural, and demographic data to your user database. Grow your database from hundreds to thousands to millions of active customers.
4. Understand how locations influence each other. See whether you have customers who visit multiple locations. Cross promote venues by offering incentives for customers at one location to visit another location.
5. Build valuable relationships. With demographic and behavioural data on your visitors, you can reach out to them via digital advertising and email marketing. Craft messages and deliver them to specific types of customers or target them by how they interact with your physical space — such as send an email an hour they’ve left the premises to thank them for visiting.

How to Get Started

Most social WiFi providers require purchasing their proprietary hardware solution for each and every venue. Aislelabs Connect provides a complete software-based solution which works with a venue’s current wireless access points. No new hardware is needed. That makes set-up quick and easy and allows you to link multiple locations across the city, country, or around the world. Learn more about how Aislelabs Connect’s WiFi marketing solution can help you by clicking the link.