There was a time when recurring retail customers in mom and pop shops were greeted by the shop owners and suggestions were made according to the earlier transactions of the customer.
The conversation could probably start with greetings and could further go on like “there has been a new addition in our winery as per your love for premium Italian wine we have some of the best, imported directly from Italy. As you don’t have a thing for sweet wines this could be the perfect one for you. The conversation would probably end with the customer buying some of the classic Italians. This insight of the customer preferences was totally dependable on how much the retailer noticed the customer’s needs also it wasn’t possible to recollect each customer’s preferences.
This prospect was functional but with larger stores, changing time and busier schedule on both ends limited the amount of conversation between the two parties. Now retailers needed a tool that can replace the number of words exchanged to let the customers know about the add ons in the venue.
The target audience for retail businesses mainly consist of people in a particular vicinity and also these customers are recurring thus for such business hyper-local marketing was something to be focused on and this was perfectly assisted by the introduction of wifi analytics and marketing where the customer’s trajectory could be tracked as soon as they enter any retail location. This exchange of interest can be done in a very subtle or organic manner by giving the customer free internet access.
The analytics helps us understand the needs of the customer which can be classified as what he/she buys or at which section they spend the most amount of their time, also billing of the customer, this would create a unique profile of the customer and when the same customer walks inside the outlet again various schemes, discounts, coupons or newly added products/services can be pushed to the customer through notifications. This amenity works on both ends the customer is satisfied with the automation in the process and so is the owner.
The amount of granular information the retailer can learn about the customer enables them to upgrade their operations and services accordingly to satisfy the customers.
Customer Experience.
The customer is the most important prospect in any marketing plan or business. Therefore the question arises will the customers equally benefit from this added amenity in the retail market? Internet access won’t be the only amenity to enjoy at retail stores for the customers as with better insight of the customers better facilities can be provided to the customers according to their personal as well as for different categories decided on the basis of common interests.
This smart way of approaching the customers in retail stores will help the customer in a million ways, consider an example of someone visiting a supermarket regularly but now the supermarket has wifi analytics working in the location and now the supermarket knows his/her interests or why does the person come to the supermarket for, consider it a huge store and people often find it difficult to find their preferred items at one go but now through the location accuracy of wifi a person can be tracked at various sections can be suggested best offers to avail and also promote similar products.
Consider people finding it difficult to find washrooms but now through analytics, the store knows this constraint and can work accordingly which makes finding washrooms an easier job helping the customers ultimately benefiting the store.
Individual preference can also be targeted considering a person buying a particular wine from a particular store now the venue knows what is your desired choice but can enlighten the individual regarding different brands offering the same serving may be better and cheaper. Also, venue owners can grant various offers like buy one get one according to the loyalty of the individual.
This is the beauty of digitalization which makes life easier on both ends also makes it look fancy as well as an amenity to be habitual of. Free wifi Free wifi Free wifi Free wifi
Challenges to overcome.
Setting the conditions in such a manner to gain insights into a retail customer’s preferences and habits come with a ton of challenges. It requires a certain application and technology to help it.
Speed of the internet or you can say the reliability of the network is something that needs to be at a certain level so that an individual using the service should not bump out of the network and use cellular data instead. If this happens nothing of the above can be achieved.
Another challenge can be to run the analytics without any hassle and to sort the data in such a manner that further actions can be taken following it. Such skills can be hard to master and can consume a lot of time with all the competition around thus any team with expertise in the same can shake hands with and this constraint can be resolved.
Despite these challenges which are literally very less compared to the advantages it offers to the ecosystem, wifi analytics is something to get hands-on and businesses have in fact started investing their resources in this technology to help boost their businesses by a smarter way of marketing.
To continue reading about Free WiFi check out another post we recently published.
