How well is your town connected?

With cities across the country now offering free Wi-Fi within their town centres, has the Wi-Fi revolution reached your local town? With Birmingham Council announcing last week that it is the latest city to jump on board the Wi-Fi wave, following on from London and York, are local towns ensuring they are as up to speed as the big cities?

Pilot schemes like the Portas bid have breathed new life into smaller struggling towns with multiple unoccupied stores. Using display banners within empty stores to encourage new ownership and ensuring the current stores have inviting store displays and the marketing support they need to survive.

But is Wi-Fi really that big a pull? Absolutely, not only does offering free Wi-Fi allow customers to use their mobile devices, tablet or laptop around the town but, it also encourages publicity of the town itself. With people mentioning the town across social networks, tweeting about the deals that they have got whilst in town that day or a local event or even a new store. The free publicity alone can easily pay for the initial outlay of installing a Wi-Fi hot spot.

And local businesses can also use the network to advertise their latest deals, sales and promotions. Offering a code only available if you’re connected to the local town network not only ensures that stores can track where the promotion has come from but will also, again, encourage local footfall in order to gain from the offer.

The free Wi-Fi can also help smaller coffee shops that may not be able to offer the service independently but need to compete with chains such as Starbucks and Costa. The same goes for smaller boutique stores who don’t get the marketing boost that larger chains do.

But it’s not just stores, which can benefit. By introducing free Wi-Fi at local children’s skate parks, youths are encouraged to utilise the towns facilities whilst parents can rest assured their children can always be contacted via their mobile device. Homework can be completed in the local café as a treat while the parent enjoys a cup of coffee and can save on expensive home broadband tariffs.

If your local town is not connected, ask them why not and encourage them to connect to drive traffic back to our local towns and businesses.