Restaurant Marketing & Customer Experience Blog

The History & Future of WiFi Marketing

Written by Shannon Harper | Dec 23, 2020 8:02:39 PM

 

As we embark on a new year, it's hard to believe how far WiFi marketing has gone since it began gaining popularity in 1999. Thanks to WiFi, we are no longer tethered to cables to connect with loved ones 24/7.

Not surprisingly, WiFi has become even more important to consumers since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Guests rely on WiFi to stay connected while being apart. 

At the same time, customer behavior has changed. It's more important than ever for physical locations to connect to insights and marketing technology.

The History of WiFi Marketing

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Five years ago, brands relied on WiFi technologies for WiFi marketing. Customers would visit an interactive landing page to access the internet at a location. Then, they would provide information (such as their email addresses) to connect to WiFi. Brands would then use this gathered data to send promotional offers, updates, and more. Then, they could review campaign analytics to evaluate marketing successes and opportunities.

The Future of WiFi Marketing

All of these capabilities still exist. Today, WiFi marketing is more powerful than ever. However, additional segmentation and insight capabilities are moving WiFi marketing technology into the future. Here's how this new restaurant WiFi technology works.

Segmentation: 

It's a proven fact that different demographics respond to messaging in separate ways. For example, studies show that women are predominately more emotional than men. Locations can gather customer profiles from guests. Companies can then segment individual campaigns based on certain factors such as age, sex, zip codes, and more. These segmentation capabilities result in higher conversions in most cases. What's more, in addition to marketing analytics, brands can track improvements to their customer's spending in correlation with their marketing.

Insights:

Just a few years ago, brands were unable to track important visitor insights without guessing. Bloom Intelligence changed this. Now, regardless of whether or not a customer logs into WiFi, brands can view real-time daily traffic, first-time visitors, average dwell time, popular visit times, and dwell time by the hour. Restaurant and retail locations can use this information to make more informed staffing, management, and marketing decisions. For example, quick-serve restaurants that want customers to stay in their restaurant for no longer than 45 minutes can track this data in real-time. If customers visit longer than 45 minutes, management can then determine opportunities in food preparation, staffing, and more.

The new year promises to bring even more innovations to WiFi marketing. Restaurant insights are now just as important as Google Analytics for websites. When choosing a WiFi marketing provider, it's crucial to select a universal solution that provides various solutions in one place. Customer behavior has changed. Restaurant technology is no longer an option: it's a necessity. 

The following statistics from 2020 can help prepare restaurants for 2021:

  • Orders placed by smartphone and mobile apps are projected to bring in $38 billion by the end of 2020.
  • Eighty-four percent of people trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends
  • Local Google searches on mobile phones are growing 50% faster than overall mobile searches.
  • Ninety-five percent of restaurant professionals say that online restaurant technology improves their business.
  • Restaurants are receiving 2-10x more orders online than via telephone.

As restaurants move toward technology in 2021, they should partner with companies like Bloom Intelligence that offer:

  • A centralized solution
  • A white-glove experience
  • Innovative technologies
  • Marketing and customer behavior insights in one place
  • Segmentation capabilities
  • Attribution features to track ROI

When looking into the future of WiFi marketing, it's easy to forget how far WiFi technology has evolved in the not-so-distant past. At the launch of Bloom Intelligence about ten years ago, WiFi marketing was a brand new technology. Today, Bloom uses technological WiFi innovations to create even data management options, insights, marketing technologies, rating acquisitions, and much more. 

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