Information is easy to get on the internet. That can mean a lot of good things for your business. Anyone can search for your business by name, product, or service, which brings in more customers and positive reviews. However, there’s also a dark side to “easily accessed” information. Negative reviews can make your business look bad, and also lead to poor visibility on the web. And that can mean competitors getting more customers – your customers or your potential customers.

65% of internet users think online search is the most trusted source of information about companies.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 65% of internet users think online search is the most trusted source of information about companies. What people see online about your company has a lasting impression on their decision whether to become or remain a customer. 

Mastering the art of being found on the internet, and in maintaining a positive online reputation, is the latest “dragon to slay” in the marketing and branding arenas. Reputation management is the key to controlling your online presence so that it reflects the way your business should be represented.

A Yelp survey found that 85% of customers use the internet for research before making a purchasing decision.

Having a say in what customers find about you online can make or break your business. A handful of negative reviews, or a drop in search engine rankings, however minor, can have a big impact on the sales your business brings in. There are many ways to make reputation management a part of your marketing plan. And you’re probably pretty good at it already. 

However, you may have wondered if there’s an easy and more effective way to reach your “ideal customer” audience. We want to let you in on a secret that will incrementally boost your reputation online with little to no effort on your part.

What If It Was A Simple Is Offering Free Wifi?

Customers always appreciate free wifi. In fact, it’s so commonplace now that they have come to expect it. However, most businesses are offering this free service without getting anything in return. 

How can a business get the most from their customer’s usage of their in-house internet and improve their online reputation?

The answer is the remarkable local business marketing helper – Aspire Smart WiFi. With this technology, your customers can engage with you through the comprehensive communication channels of the web, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and more.

When users opt in to use Wifi at your business, Social Powered Hotspot will lead them to a designated landing page of your choice. The benefits of installing a Social Powered Hotspot are numerous. Grow your email lists, increase your followers on Facebook, build customer loyalty, gather social data, and of course, increase or improve your online reputation.

You might already put every single reputation management tactic into practice every day at your business. Aspire Smart WiFi just makes it easier than ever! You can set up Facebook contests, mobile wallet coupons, mobile app downloads, or other marketing and promotional campaigns, and let your Social Powered Hotspot deliver it to every single person who uses your free wifi service. 

It doesn’t get better than that!

How exactly does Social Powered WiFi improve your online reputation?

To make it clear just how effective this method is, we’ve put together this list of 10 specific ways that Aspire Smart WiFi can help your business maximize that online reputation. You’ll be amazed at just how many angles you can attack the problem of maintaining an online reputation with just one Social Powered Wi-Fi Hotspot: 

• increase your websites’ rankings 
• gain new customers on autopilot
• harvest good reviews
• grow page “Likes”
• build Twitter “followers”
• Multiply social media engagements 

All with a quick and simple setup that will change the way you look at marketing forever.

Ready to learn more? Keep reading…

1. Encourage Positive Reviews

Online reviews on websites like Yelp or on your Facebook business page, boost your online reputation in the most concrete way. 

The more five star reviews your business gets, the higher your overall ranking, and the more likely on-line visitors are to use your services or visit your store locations. Aspire Smart WiFi can redirect WiFi users to your review pages, and ask them to leave a positive rating if they enjoyed their experience. 

Why Are Reviews So Important?

The fact is that people rely on ratings to make their purchasing decisions. A study conducted by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Luca found that a mere 1 star increase in a Yelp rating leads to a 5 to 9% increase in revenue.

 73% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more. With the Aspire Smart WiFi hotspot, you will start racking up the points in no time, rising above the ratings of your competitors.

2. Overcome Negative Reviews

While positive reviews help bring your business to the top of search engine rankings and make your business a top choice for consumers, negative reviews could bring you crashing down.  That means most customers are making their decisions based on just a few other customers’ experiences.

How can you overpower any negative reviews you may have? 

Set up a Social Powered Wi-Fi hotspot that redirects users to a landing page asking for a  rating of their experience, “good” or “bad”. The system will send “Bad” feedback to an online form that alerts you and your management team to address, rather than straight to a public review site. “Good” reviews are sent right to Yelp, Facebook or TripAdvisor broadcasting your awesome reputation to the world.

3. Influence Customer Opinions

If you can get your customers to give you their email address, you’re then empowered to build loyalty and prove your brand’s value through regular communications. Sending your customers personalized targeted messages – coupons, promotions or surveys will optimize their customer experience, making it more likely that they will be return customer’s and leave you a positive review.

Aspire Smart WiFi Hotspots are an easy and non-invasive way to collect email addresses of the visitors to your local business. By offering a special, a promotion, or a coupon as an incentive to log into your WiFi with their social media account or email address, you gain their contact information, so you can effectively build customer loyalty by providing them with additional goodies and targeted content. 

PaperStyle, a paper goods e-commerce provider, used this tactic to increase their revenue per email by 330%. But first you’ll need those email addresses, and Aspire Smart WiFi can get them for you.

4. Increase Facebook Likes And Twitter Followers

In a recent survey, an event promotion company discovered that 78% of small businesses attract new customers through social media. Getting consumers to “like” or “follow” your business on social media will empower your business to connect with them on social media on a daily basis in their news feed.

With the Aspire Smart Wi-Fi Hotspot, you can prompt customers to subscribe to your social media sites and create social media content like photo shares.

For example, when a user logs into (or out of) a Social Powered Hotspot, they can be sent to a page that prompts them to “like” the business, or “share” about their visit on Facebook. The more “likes” and “shares” your business gets, the more interest you can generate from future customers. Especially 20-year-olds, who are two to four times more likely to seek information or advice from social media than previous generations (according to a BuyerSphere Annual Survey).

5. Improve Global Reach With TripAdvisor Reviews

Is your business in the travel industry or hospitality? From tour companies to hotels to local restaurants – all are highly dependent on TripAdvisor, the leading travel review site, to attract new and returning customers. 

TripAdvisor has more than 150 million reviews, with 26 million unique monthly visitors to the site, and 90 reviews posted every minute. A good reputation on TripAdvisor is invaluable for any type of business that appeals to travellers.

With Aspire Smart WiFi,  your business can build its global reach by increasing the number of positive reviews on your TripAdvisor page. If you run a hotel, for example, you could embed a TripAdvisor widget into your Aspire Smart WiFi landing page. When a guest connects to your Social Powered Hotspot Free WiFi, they will be redirected to a TripAdvisor review widget that prompts them to leave feedback about your business. 

These reviews make a big difference. Trip Barometer found that 93% of global travellers say their booking decisions are very much influenced by online reviews.

6. Gather Company Testimonials

Use a Social Powered Wi-Fi hotspot to collect reviews, and put the best of them on your website’s testimonial page or success stories. When users log into your wifi, you can redirect them to a testimonial form, obtain their permission, and later publish their statement on your business website.

Ask if they’d be willing to share their name and a photo it has even more impact. Including a face and a name personalizes the review, and gets closer to the feel of being a recommendation from a friend (that readers should trust). 

Hint: Cherry-pick testimonials to place on your site that demonstrate the value that your business offers, and which also include important SEO “money” keywords for your product or sevice.

Did you know that 79% of consumers place an equal weight on both online reviews and personal recommendations? Adding a testimonials section to your website can have a powerful impact on your public image and perceived trustworthiness.

7. Promote Brand Presence And Market Impact

People post all kinds of information on their social media pages, including where they’ve been. It’s a kind of bragging right to “tag” oneself at local businesses while on vacation or going out with friends.

For many users, this is just part of their regular social media routine. If you have Social Powered WiFi installed at your business,  you can request visitors to “check-in” on Facebook or Twitter, after logging into your free Wi-Fi. Being tagged on social media shows off how many customers are visiting your business, and using your products or services. 

These “check-ins” serve as a form of “social proof” – a Facebook business page will show how many people have visited your business location. Perhaps the biggest impact comes from the customers own social media pages, where their friends and followers will see your business name, and may become customers themselves. 

8. Get More Content On Third-party Sites 

The more your business’ name or brand is mentioned on relevant sites anywhere on the web, the better it will be for your SEO rankings too. (That’s why 92% of marketers believe content creation is either “very” or “somewhat” effective at improving SEO). However, you don’t have to be the only one putting content out on the web about your business – this is where third-party sites come in.

Achieving more reviews and mentions on social media through a Social Powered Wi-Fi hotspot increases the rate at which content is added to third-party sites. Getting more content posted on third-party sites like Facebook, Yelp and TripAdvisor in the form of reviews and other mentions, will help you rise to the top on Google.

In addition, it can make it more likely that consumers doing online searches will see you. 50% of consumers say they are more likely to click on a search engine result if a brand appears multiple times on the results page (according to the Digital Marketing Journal).

9. Collect User Data

User data is invaluable information that can make your business more effective in reaching your target audience, and providing products or services that will generate increased revenue for your company. 

“If a business knows who their customers are, they are more equipped to give them an optimal customer experience” which according to the Walker Customers 2020 Report, “will soon overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.”

By investing in a Social Powered Wi-Fi Hotspot, your business will be able to legally collect user data from all services that your customers use to connect to your free WiFi. 

For example, when people log into your Social Social Powered Hotspot and are prompted to “like” or “share” on Facebook, you can gather that data from Facebook Insights which tells you about who your ideal target customers are – and use that “audience profile” to help Facebook better target your campaigns. 

Another option is to lead WiFi users to a landing page with a brief survey asking for details like their demographics and buying habits which enables you to even better target your ad-spend. 

This information can be used to identify who your business’ typical customer is, and fuel ad campaigns that target those individuals. Knowledge is powerful. The insights you will gain from this data will help guide your every move as a company – from the products and services you offer, to how you deliver them.

10. Engage With Customers

“Marketing is everything” is still a true statement but the game has changed. It’s not enough just to put out an ad and wait for business to come in. To stay profitable, your business must actively engage with your customers to get the message across, and convince them that your product or service is the best among many options and competitors. 

Only by a consistently reaching out to your customers and quickly communicating responses to their feedback, will your business be able to attract and keep customers.

By increasing your social media following, and having their email contact details, this gives you more opportunities to effectively engage with your customers. 

Your Aspire Smart WiFi Hotspot can even run your loyalty program and run SMS campaigns. It also integrates with FB Messenger ChatBots. That is what Aspire Smart WiFi automation affords – better customer engagement.

According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, 63% of consumers need to hear things at least three times before they believe it.

Those are just 10 of the many reasons to use Social Social Powered WiFi to help your business get ahead and stay there.

At this point, you may be wondering…

How do I invest in a Social Powered WiFi for my business?

We’ve put together this quick video to show you more about how to secure a Social Powered WiFi for your business, and be up and running within minutes. The setup is painless.

If you have existing WiFi hardware, it installs as an invisible layer over your present network. No additional hardware required. Cloud based so you can design and run from anywhere.

If you don’t have a WiFi network, but you do have an internet connection, for a small investment you will have your own Aspire Smart WiFi Hotspot for your business up and running in seconds. Plug-and-Play. It’s as simple as plugging in the pre-configured Social Powered WiFi Wireless device into your internet connection port. All done!

There are other benefits for your business…

• It protects your network from attackers – high network security features
• Keeps your eftPOS on a separate network for faster transaction processing
• Enables you to easily block users who are abusing your free WiFi service
• Has a “Safe Search” content filter – in many countries a legal requirement
• One less thing for staff to worry about – no password requests
• You are legally protected – Fully Compliant with data collection and protection laws