How Much Is Your *FREE WIFI* Paying You?

If you offer *FREE WIFI*, it’s probably because you know customers demand it.  You saw them, with their eyes glued to their tablets and smartphones.  If you don’t, the numbers say you should.

Recent surveys found that daily access to WiFi is VERY important to 74% of American consumers.  Even more surprising is that 52% of adults find public wi-fi convenience outweighs cyberthreat risk.  And that doesn’t include their kids.

So, again I ask: 

How Much Is Your *FREE WIFI* Paying You?

Small businesses that offer *FREE WIFI* might do it grudgingly, knowing that some customers will go elsewhere if they don’t.  It’s another “cost of doing business”.  And that’s the same reason some businesses still don’t.   Some businesses charge for it, to defray those costs. 

Airlines, for example, have been offering “pay for play” WiFi for awhile, and at least one major airline, in particular, is “upgrading” to satellite WiFi, and passing the increased cost on to passengers.  At 35,000 feet, it’s unlikely that they can go somewhere else.

But your customers can.  You’re in a fixed location.  “Brick and mortar” as it’s called. 

Shopping centers are getting into the act offering public Wi-Fi access for shoppers, “meeting customer expectations”.  They know that the data they gather wi;; on “how shoppers spend their time and other valuable customer behavior” will make it possible for them to “provide insight to retailers for that will create future engagement opportunities”. For them, it’s a “comprehensive retail Wi-Fi solution” they can charge you for. At the least, makes their shopping center locations worth more in the lease market.

You bite the bullet whether you offer *FREE WIFI* or not.

 

So, once more I ask:

How Much Is Your *FREE WIFI* Paying You?

Because it can.

Your *FREE WIFI* can be more secure, and pay for itself.  And YES, it can actually PAY YOU.

CALL: 602-618-6626, and we’ll come show you a live demonstration.

Never before. NEVER AGAIN if we have anything to say about it.

American Entrepreneurship: Dead or Alive

America now ranks 12th - not 1st, 2nd, or 3rd - in business startups.

As noted by Gallup: "We are behind in starting new firms per capita, and this is our single most serious economic problem. Yet it seems like a secret. You never see it mentioned in the media, nor hear from a politician."
 It's NOT that more businesses are failing.  Business closings are holding their own.  It's that startups have decreased by nearly half.

As recently as 2008, startups exceeded business failures by six-figures.  But currently available data show what Gallup describes as "an underground earthquake".  Mind you, the "currently available" information from the U.S. Department of Census and Small Business Administration is two years old.

Gallup's Chairman and CEO has a hunch that the revolving door between New York and DC are the reason we don't hear much about statistics like this.

 On one side of that door is an institution that needs votes (no matter who's "in charge" of that institution), while on the other side of the door is an institution that needs the stock market to boom, by illusion if nothing else.  Hence, all we hear is "The economy is coming back."

 This is, as Gallup put it, "the biggest issue of the last 50 years...". Small and medium-sized businesses are and always have been the engine of job creation.  Economic growth and and jobs can't come from innovation until a business model for innovation becomes something customers will buy.  But we follow these pied pipers for the same reason the rats in the German folk-tale did:  the melody is pleasing.

 There's entirely too much in Gallup's Business Report to cover in one update, so as a late night show graphic used to say,

"MORE TO COME".

They Couldn’t Find Their Way Across The Street

Like it or not, smartphones are “the go-to guy” for everything in the digital age.  

A friend (and business associate) recently told me this about a spur of the moment project meeting that took place after our weekly entrepreneurs collaboration event.

This was a meeting of particular people who had each decided to align their unique skills to make a specific project a reality.

“When the meeting place was announced, most of them went straight to their smartphones to look it up online instead of just asking where it was.”

When I mentioned “but that’s straight across the street”, my friend’s exasperated rely was “I know!  They couldn’t find their way across the street!”   

For better or worse, technology is in control of your holiday business revenues.

Take a July 15 “industry” article about information reported by Statista:

“The holiday season accounts for more sales than Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Halloween, Easter, and St. Patrick's Day combined.”

Most “industry” websites focus their attention on “e-commerce”.  So it’s fair to wonder

 How does this affect local “brick and mortar” businesses?

An earlier article (June 28), was about a “shopper survey” that found

42% of shoppers will make Amazon their primary destination in 2016.

And another 16 percent said they “don’t know”.

Among the strategies that your “big business” competition will rely upon for the holiday season are:

1. Use data to know your customers better than anyone else

Our Saguaro Hotspot^® “Social-Wi-Fi” opens up opportunities for local “brick and mortar” businesses to capture holiday dollars by compiling social data from the 40% of consumers who say “online” is not their primary holiday shopping destination.

This “first-party data” gives local “brick and mortar” businesses a growing customer insight deeper than even Amazon can, through building rich, deep customer profiles that help you understand each customer better than any competitor to give them more relevant and intelligent suggestions.

Your “big business” competition will also:

2. Make shoppers’ lives easier

“Big data” shows that only 8% of shoppers use smartphones as their primary way to actually make a purchase, and even less use tablets. Even if six out of ten of them choose buying online, local “brick and mortar” businesses are uniquely able to provide shoppers with the highly personalized, relevant information they want (especially during the holidays). Saguaro Hotspot^® “Social-Wi-Fi” allows those shoppers to trade their data – for their own convenience – in return for that “genuinely helpful information”.

3. Personalize digital advertising

43% of shoppers say that digital marketing influences purchases. Saguaro Hotspot^® “Social-Wi-Fi” can help your local “brick and mortar” business do better at something e-commerce will never be able to achieve: You see customers as people, not impressions or cookies, rading their date helps them get discounts or deals.

With as many as six out of every ten holiday shoppers planning to spend “from the comfort of home”, local “brick and mortar” businesses need every edge they can get.

Our Saguaro Hotspot^® “Social-Wi-Fi” is that edge.

CALL or TEXT “Tis the season” to 602-618-6626 to start building the rich, deep customer profiles that help you capture holiday dollars.

Make Free WiFi A Revenue Generator

#FreeWiFi isn't "free".  As a business owner, you know that.  But that doesn't mean it has to stay in the "Good Will Expense" column.  

With Saguaro Hotspot, you're #WiFiMarketing.  

“Failure Is Not An Option.” But It IS A Choice.

Which excuse is good enough? Which is acceptable? To you?

This blog contains numerous posts about how #mobilemarketing can and will impact local small businesses more powerfully than it has large businesses; “brands”.

Several posts cover how it already has. Some of those – perhaps most – arose from article by “bigtime” writers, writing about “bigtime” marketers, seeing local small businesses cutting into “big business” profits.

Several posts have been about the fact that almost sixty percent of local small businesses still don’t have a website; how a large percentage of those that do have only achieved last years “standards” for mobile accessiblity, even though others have related that most “online search” happens on mobiles. That, too, started last year.

The technology doesn’t “require” local small businesses to “go mobile”. But more and more of your market does.

 Your choice. Just like it’s your choice to spend your time watching videos (hopefully, as inspiring as this one):
WARNING: This video contains language that will be “offensive” to some.   (and there’s even some cussin‘!)
 
Watch it anyway.

ANNOUNCEMENT:

 Local Motive Marketing is proud to announce becoming the “title sponsor” of Entrepreneurs’N Fuego,debuting on KFNX 1100 on Sunday, September 25th. It’s on early (but if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll be up anyway). Check out their YouTube page to get a sense of what to expect. 

Local Motive Marketing. Providing locals with motive to spend local with Smart Marketing on Smartphones.

 602-618-6626

Store Visits: The UNIVERSAL Bottom Line

Local Small Businesses GROW With Local Data

*They* use terms like “cross-channel” and “omni-channel”, and other jargon that would be more impressive if small business owners actually understood it.  (I first wrote about this more than a year ago, and several other times since, on this blog - check the archives.)  Ironically, it’s because they’re writing for each other, not for you.  Local small businesses are not even on their radar.

Because *mobile* and “mobile marketing” are growing in bursts, the information about both tends to come out sporadically (and I have to “mine” for what’s relevant to local small businesses), I had occasion this week to review articles I received over the past months, from  Marketing Land (4/15/16, 2/3/16 and 10/15/15).

“Mobile” has been the primary access point (more jargon) for the internet for nearly a year (maybe longer; the data was published in September of 2015).  But now, enough time has passed that “the experts” have been able to discern that *mobile*

“enables… an apples-to-apples comparison of performance across channels.”

They’ve determined this because

“analytics/store visits can operate as a kind of “universal metric for media”.

Translated, that means it’s now possible to measure the actual impact of “traditional” advertising.

Historically, it was difficult or impossible to accurately measure what medium provided the biggest “bang for your buck”.  Print and direct mail came closest, but only when they included coupons that were mandatory.   Billboards and television were “institutional” or “name recognition”, and untrackable “except through call tracking, which is useful but incomplete”.

Thanks to mobile data, pretty much ALL media, print, billboards, direct mail and television, can now be tracked to mobile, and to "real-world" store visits and sales.

The most important statement was:

 “For marketers, mobile is the nexus between the digital and physical worlds for impact measurement.”

For local small business owners that point – where  digital meets physical, “where the rubber meets the road” – is even more important, because “clickers and buyers are not necessarily the same when it comes to offline conversions.”

Let us help.

CALL 602-618-6626

EMAIL info@localmotivemarketing.com

DO IT TODAY.

LONG LIVE THE KING!!!

I've been promising a blog-link all week in a series of Facebook posts.  It can be found at http://www.localmotivemarketing.com, but it's duplicated here. 

"Content Is King" is the new chant, the new mantra. So what? A sovereign without a realm doesn't rule much. Fortunately for "King Content", a "Kingdom" does exist. That kingdom is "Context".  

"technologies... allow for more profound relevance and connection... insight into context..."

The right message is important, right? But how does a business know what the right message is?  That depends on a number of factors: Who? When? Where? Why?
How?  Context.

Who's looking for your product or service?  Someone who needs it? Now?  Someone who wants it (or might, someday)?  Are they even in your market area?

All of these newly-available insights - type of device, channel, location, even brand - make it possible to deliver the right message at the right time.

All of these newly-available insights make it possible to avoid "scaring off" someone who only wants to look for now, but might buy someday; to avoid offending a buyer by a perceived lack of interest in their business.

The King maintains the Realm with notoriety.  "Known throughout the world" used to be a difficult description to achieve. And one of the most effective ways to achieve it is, to this day, LINKS. Links are Caesar's Legions. Links are Arthur's Round Table.

Relevance is important on 2 levels: to the Customer and to the search engines. King and Realm - Content and Context - exert their influence on both levels.  But Links - "authority" - have been the means of determining how authoritative a website is for most of Google’s existence, and remain so.

People want information.  Google wants to deliver the best - the most authoritative - information possible.

And "Content" maintains "Context" with its own Knights, In the workd wide web, they're known as "Links"

LEARN MORE about how adding mobile to deliver the right message at the right time - by understanding why a Potential Customer visited - to multiply the power of your marketing.

CALL TODAY!!!  602-618-6626