| 4/16/08 - Due to mistakes made by Google, Earthlink, Sprint and other big companies in the broadband wireless industry, many members of the press seem to have lost their appetite for wireless Internet service provider stories. Regardless of the media who now frown on the ability for broadband wireless technology to provide high-speed Internet access, the truth is that there are literally thousands and thousands of wireless providers that providing broadband wireless Internet access successfully around the world.
The difference between the big guys that failed and the little guys that are still making money is understanding the nature of broadband wireless technology, the fact that Internet backbone connections are not free and that regardless of what you promise state and local governments, it costs a lot of money to proactively manage a network and provide good technical support. And while many Wireless ISPs are doing well, one area they stumble in dramatically is marketing their wireless Internet access service.. The majority of wireless companies can effectively manage the costs of planning, building and installing a broadband wireless network. The problem is that they spend all of their money building the network and do not do a good job of promoting the wireless network and its benefits to customers. A good example of this is Wi-Fi hotspots, hundreds of thousands of bars, restaurants and other retail outlets now have Wi-Fi Internet access points available to use, but they promote the service with one small sign in the window by the front door that is hardly noticed as customers walk through the front door. Ever see a small sign by the front door trying to sell Budweiser or Coor Light at the front door? Nope, they promote their beverages with large neon signs and sexy models. Why can't Wi-Fi be bright and sexy? If I was restaurant or a franchise owner, I would put a fairly large neon sign on the top of my roof that profiled the image of a wireless cell tower with a halo of wireless signal flashing to get people's attention. If 7-11s and Circle Ks can sell beer to drive-by customers, why not train them to look for Wi-Fi hotspots? In fact, one of the most overlooked opportunities in the whole broadband wireless Internet industry are franchises and strip malls. Most franchises have at least one T1 circuit providing phone service to their franchise locations. And most only use a fraction of their available bandwidth. The classic example is Starbucks. The only reason they started offering Wi-Fi in the first place was because every one of their stores had a T1 circuit that was costing them $1,000 per month back then. Multiply 1,000 stores times a $1,000 per month and it is easy to see why they wanted to monetize this huge expense. They simply put in wireless access points to provide service that would draw in more customers and cut their losses. Their program was very successful. There are hundreds of thousands of franchises in the same boat today. Talk to a franchisee about putting in a Wi-Fi hotspot right now and you'll learn that they cannot make up their minds if it is a good or bad idea. They struggle with the return on investment for installing a wireless access point. Does increased traffic provide a good return for the added wireless network investment? What they do not realize is that the increased foot traffic on the inside is not where the money is at. If they simply installed some broadband wireless antennas on their roof, they can easily reach customers within a half mile of the restaurant's location in the neighborhoods that back up to their locations. If the franchise is located in a typical L-shaped strip mall that is located next to a neighborhood with no DSL or cable modem service, they are sitting on a potential gold mine. It may not sound like much at first, but if they signed up 100 customers at $40 a month, that would an extra $48,000 per year in revenue. Rolling out a broadband wireless network like this in 20 new franchise locations and they would suddenly have $1 million in extra revenue per year. What does it take? You might get by with just one access point with a directional antenna. But franchises would be better off building tiny mesh networks with only 10 Wi-Fi access points, which might costs $20,000-$30,000. Mesh networks are good because once you turn them on customers can automatically sign up and provision themselves with a credit card. You never touch their computers, so mesh networks can skip a lot of problems with dumb customers that break their computers and try to blame it on the wireless ISP. You also circumvent expensive truck rolls that fixed wireless ISPs perform to install customer premises equipment. But once the network is built, how do they reach customers with marketing messages?? Pretty simple. Provide marketing literature with every drive through order, such as a scratch off card good for one free hour of Internet access. If 20 customers drive through per hour, that is over 160 potential customers per day. If only 5 signed up per day, that would be 150 customers per month. The same model can be applied to property management companies that manage hundreds of thousands of strip malls in the United States. They can serve as the wireless Internet wholesaler and give their tenants a percentage for marketing their wireless service. The last point I want to make with this article goes back to the first point I mentioned. Most small companies think that they don't have enough money to generate successful marketing programs. Spending money on advertising is expensive, but writing a press release and putting it on the newswire can cost as little as $140. If written correctly, a press release can generate a free feature article in the local newspaper or business journal. The value of this article is usually about 10 times greater than what you could afford to buy with advertising dollars. If you do decide to become a wireless ISP and you build a network that is successful at signing up several hundred customers, please take some time to sit down and write a press release about your progress. Since the wireless mesh network melt down in the press, news on wireless Internet service providers have stopped completely. This is a bad trend. All magazines, especially the major business books like Fortune, Forbes and Business Week constantly monitor the newswires for the next big thing. When they are deluged with press releases from the wireless industry, they respond by covering what the industry is doing. But when the flow stops, they simple move on to the next hot topic. If you are a wireless Internet service provider of any type, do the industry a favor and issue one press release a month that focuses on how broadband wireless Internet access is helping local businesses grow in your area and how this growth is the key to economic development in your town or state. If you need help with marketing or generating public relations, we highly recommend working with Front Page Public Relations, a PR firm that specializes in broadband wireless technology and wirelss Internet service providers.
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