When it comes to advertising, not much tops WiFi advertising. Who doesn’t love WiFi? And with WiFi ads, you get all types of banners and pop-ups appearing when customers click “join”.
In restaurants alone, 74% of customers want WiFi, so you kill two birds with one stone by advertising on WiFi. Customers get WiFi, and you get a unique and effective marketing platform.
The best thing about WiFi advertising is that nearly any business can use it. If you have a physical in-store location, you’ve got a suitable marketing model. You simply need to personalize your existing WiFi to adapt it to display ads of your liking.
It’s a super simple process. And since you already have your WiFi sitting there, it’s one of the cheapest marketing investments.
In this guide, we’ll introduce you to this lesser-tapped value of WiFi. You’ll soon be up to scratch with this popular marketing strategy.
Just give us 10 minutes, and you’ll be ready to set up your advertising on your WiFi network. Get ready for a solid definition, explanation, tips, tricks, and more!
What Is WiFi Advertising?
WiFi advertising is when you use your WiFi network to display ads. It is great for customer engagement and building customer loyalty, enticing people in for repeat business. The ads can appear as banners, pop-ups, links, and videos.
You have free rein to get creative, simply using advanced captive portal software to design and enable your ads.
Advertising with WiFi is very opportunistic. You are tackling people who are already wanting a service from you: an internet connection.
In this sense, it is one of the sneakiest and most effective forms of marketing. You already have a captive audience, so why not make the most of it?
This is particularly useful for places like cafes and restaurants. These are places where you can expect people to be sat down for ages anyway. If you offer spaces for remote workers, you can triple the effectiveness again.
When asking, “What is WiFi advertising?” it’s important to emphasize how personalizable this is. This differs from traditional pop-up ads you see when browsing social media and the internet.
Instead, businesses take active control over their guest WiFi to give guest users personalized ads. It is a bit of an umbrella term, giving individual businesses free creative rein.
How Does WiFi Advertising Work?
A WiFi ad simply runs off your guest’s WiFi, presenting marketing content on your captive portal or as pop-ups. It is a type of marketing campaign that syncs with your guest internet system.
If you already offer guest WiFi, you need some compatible software to get your ads up and running.
Of course, there are some extra nuances to cover. We’ll take a more detailed look at answering the question, “How does a WiFi advertisement work?”.
Let’s break down how a WiFi advertisement works so that you can take practical steps to start your campaign.
1. WiFi Advertising Relies on Your WiFi Network
The first thing to know is that you’ll need a WiFi network. If you still need to set up a WiFi network, you will need to hit pause and do that.
Specifically, you need secure guest WiFi, which is separate from your staff WiFi, for security reasons.
Make sure your WiFi is super speedy, optimized with extenders and the like if necessary, and secure before starting. It will make the process smoother.
In summary, this marketing strategy piggybacks off your guest WiFi. You’ll need solid foundations with an excellent WiFi network.
2. You Can Customize Your WiFi Through Software
Customizing your WiFi works best through software, although there are WiFi marketing experts you can contact. The cheapest way, though, which is suitable for the vast majority of businesses, is customizing your WiFi through software.
Captive portal software allows you to customize your WiFi. The simplest way to do this is to use your captive portal as a standstill digital billboard.
As you may know, a captive portal initiates a web page when someone tries to join your network. You can decorate this however you like, adding valuable advertising content.
You can look into specific advertising software and contact freelancers or agencies (if you have a larger budget).
3. There’s Also The General Pay-Per-Click Ads
The last thing to know is that you can invest in general pay-per-click (PPC) ads. These are different from WiFi ads but are so commonly confused that we just had to dedicate a section to them.
These are the ads that you see when browsing through Google or on social media. You don’t need your own WiFi for these.
Instead, you can just pay for Google Ads or use Meta Business Suite to set up Facebook and Instagram advertisements.
This is a really low-cost way of using the Internet to market your business. It doesn’t involve using your actual WiFi. Instead of targeting people who join your WiFi, it targets internet and social media users.
Think of it as growing your circle rather than investing in the retention of your existing circle. It is a slightly different strategy.
Lots of people get confused over advertising on your WiFi versus just advertising online through social media and the internet. Hopefully, this clears it up.
Pay-per-click ads are something you organize with third-party marketers at Google and with social media platforms. You can set up WiFi ads and customize yourself on your guest’s WiFi.
There are so many benefits of advertising on WiFi. Investing in suitable software essentially transforms your WiFi network into a personal WiFi advertising platform. And what’s not to love about that? The benefits span from a marketing perspective to a financial one.
In this section, we’ll go to town to ensure you understand the value of proper advertising on WiFi. Get ready for all the juicy, most motivating benefits there are.
1. A Higher Loyalty Conversion Rate
This is a big one. If you have ads on your WiFi, you can entice one-off customers with exciting news about your business. Ads are a great way to increase your loyalty conversion rate.
WiFi is easily one of the most effective advertising networks because everyone uses it. It’s one marketing avenue that you can almost guarantee total attention to.
You could display images of desserts, new products, or upcoming events — all building customer loyalty and retention.
2. Guaranteed Views
With WiFi, you are almost guaranteed advertising views. It is one of the best marketing campaigns because everyone uses WiFi.
If 74% of people want WiFi in a restaurant, that’s an awful lot of eyes on your marketing content. The more the merrier, right?
3. Milking an Existing Resource
A real benefit is that you’re milking an existing resource. Most businesses offer WiFi, so you aren’t running a drastic campaign. You are just building on something that’s already set up and running.
Choosing to advertise through your WiFi is incredibly convenient.
Finding Free WiFi Advertising
Finding free WiFi advertising is a tall order. You’ll have to get creative. It certainly won’t look like outsourcing but more like finding low-cost and budget-friendly software.
However, we have some good news: You can find a selection of free captive portal software. We’ll provide more details about captive portals below, but basically, they give you digital billboards that you can customize.
Certain software like pfSense offers free captive portal software that pairs with your WiFi to create marketing opportunities.
We’d suggest going the captive portal route if you want to advertise on your WiFi for free.
Beambox: Understanding Captive Portals and WiFi Advertising Software
When you start looking to make your WiFi ads a reality, you’ll need great WiFi advertising software. This often comes in the form of captive portal software, which helps you better control how people use your WiFi.
Captive portals are pop-up forms on web pages that appear when customers click to join your WiFi network. They’re single-handedly one of the best ways to collect customer data, such as email addresses and SMS numbers.
You can almost barter with your guests, saying yes, you can access our WiFi, but only in exchange for your details. That’s not all captive portal software is useful for, though.
You can also use this type of software to personalize and enable ads on your WiFi network. You could even display your latest social media post or a banner on the portal itself. It is like a digital billboard that guests wanting WiFi have to look at.
At Beambox, we can help you with this. We offer all-in-one WiFi marketing software with a fantastic captive portal system. Start your Beambox free trial today and find the perfect way to tackle WiFi advertising.
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