Guest WiFi has become a baseline accommodation for many kinds of brick-and-mortar businesses. Failing to provide wireless internet access can compel some people to pass up your client’s establishment. 

As important as customer satisfaction is, the real benefit of offering guest WiFi is the ability to conduct WiFi marketing, an approach that’s proven to help brick-and-mortar locations capture customer data, analyze visitor metrics, and automate loyalty campaigns.

Businesses that offer WiFi access to their guests in an unmanaged way, requiring no password or providing the password to visitors upon request, along with those that allow customers onto their business network, are making some serious mistakes. They’re putting their business’ security and that of their customers at risk, plus they’re missing out on amazing marketing opportunities.

The alternative, a WiFi marketing solution, will streamline the management of a guest WiFi network, one that’s secure, easy for customers to access, and a perpetual source of actionable customer data and insights. 

This article will explain how clients and their customers benefit from a managed guest WiFi service that’s provided as part of a WiFi marketing solution. Let’s start with the benefits that your clients can expect.

What Local Business Clients Gain from WiFi Marketing

For any kind of brick-and-mortar business where people wait or spend time, like restaurants, gyms, and hotels, the potential advantages associated with WiFi marketing are significant. Here’s a list of the main ways that your client can benefit from WiFi marketing:

• Boundless customer insights and marketing opportunities—WiFi marketing is how brick-and-mortar businesses that offer on-premise guest WiFi can collect customer data and visitor metrics to help them automate loyalty programs, present targeted digital ads, and optimize all forms of customer communications.
  
• More secure operations—When you implement a WiFi marketing solution, the guest wireless network will be defined with its own SSID, or Service Set Identifier—that’s a unique name assigned to the network, used to distinguish it from other networks in the vicinity. Allowing guests to use a network that’s separated from the one your client uses for operations is a way to protect the business from malicious or fraudulent activity.
  
• Limit usage—Providing a managed guest WiFi service allows businesses to restrict the bandwidth of customers’ connections. A patron who treats their local coffee shop like a remote office, for example, could easily consume more than their share of bandwidth if left unchecked.
  
• Minimize liability—Requiring users to acknowledge acceptable use policies limits corporate liability. It can discourage misuse of the service and, if the network were used by a guest to do something illegal, the client would be legally protected.

Now, let’s look at how your client’s visitors benefit from the guest WiFi service and the WiFi marketing solution that enables it.

WiFi Marketing—What’s In It for the Customers of Local Businesses?

Access to on-premise guest WiFi is important to customers. Without it, a limited mobile data plan or the inability to get acceptable in-store coverage would leave many visitors frustrated and looking for the exit.

When a WiFi marketing solution is implemented as part of guest WiFi services, internet access is provided in a way that results in several customer benefits, some of which are listed here:

• A safe internet connection—Establishments that open up their business network to visitors or provide access to a WiFi network without requiring the user to log in are putting their customers at risk. A WiFi marketing solution, by requiring users to log in, can help protect visitors from malicious online activity. It also allows your clients to enable blocking of specific sites.
  
• Easy internet access—With a user ID and password, customers won’t have to wait for and bug the establishment’s employees for access. A simple login process will be appreciated, plus, with a managed guest WiFi network, visitors can choose to reconnect automatically the moment they enter the building—a homey touch that makes the visit just a little nicer.
  
• A personalized customer experience—By implementing a WiFi marketing service, your agency can help create a personal connection between a client’s business and their customers. That’s no small feat, and it’s the key to fostering customer loyalty. Using collected customer data and WiFi analytics, you can refine customer outreach, tailoring messages so they’ll resonate with the business’ best customers. 

The Benefits Aren’t Just for Clients & Customers

We’ve looked at how two important groups benefit from WiFi marketing: your clients and their customers. There’s another beneficiary, which we’ll reveal in a moment.

Clients get valuable customer insights, marketing leverage, and more secure operations. Their customers get a safe internet connection that’s easy to access and a personalized customer experience.

Who’s the third benefactor of WiFi marketing? Your agency!

A digital marketing agency can employ WiFi marketing to gather customer data and automate loyalty programs. It’s easy to sell and easy to implement, plus, WiFi marketing can improve many aspects of an agency’s business. Initial campaign success triggers clients’ desire for ongoing marketing initiatives, which can mean a consistent revenue stream for your company.