eCommerce spending is expected to reach $36 billion in 2023. The growth of retail and eCommerce is on the rise.
While there’s a lot of advice for eCommerce businesses, we want to help retail brick-and-mortar businesses monetize their retail marketing efforts easily.
This blog will help you get started with the basics of retail marketing and get you equipped with the right strategies.
Ready? Let’s go.
What is Retail Marketing?
Retail marketing is the process of getting your in-store products in front of customers to improve sales. Marketing your retail businesses will help you promote your products and increase profits. It involves improving your in-store layout as well as promoting your business online.
It’s important to market your retail business to:
- Build customer loyalty
- Increase profit and revenue
- Strength your brand
There are different types of retail businesses you can start.
Types of Retail businesses
In-store Marketing
In-store marketing is selling and promoting your products in your store. It’s the best option for you if you want to improve customer experience and promote your product physically. You can focus on engaging more customers as they come and bring easy sales.
Examples:
- Displaying price cuts or discount percentages on banners
- Offering free samples or trials
- Giving free product demos
- Using interactive boards
Traditional Marketing
If you want to connect with your local target audience, then setting up billboard ads or distributing prints and posters might be a good option for you. Traditional marketing is good for nurturing offline customers.
Examples:
- Distributing brochures and flyers
- Direct mail
- Radio and newspaper ads
- Referrals, etc
Digital Marketing
Marketing your retail business online can help you boost your sales, and increase brand awareness and reputation significantly. With the onset of digital marketing, your retail business can reach customers worldwide, while using both organic and paid methods of marketing.
Some best digital marketing practices include:
- SEO, or Search Engine Optimization
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Email Marketing
- TikTok, SMS marketing, etc.
How to monetize your retail business efforts?
1. Increase Curb Appeal
You need to upgrade the way your store looks to increase sales. Why? Because with an attractive storefront, you can influence customer behavior. The look and feel of your curb will determine if someone will enter your shop or not.
Here are some steps you can take to improve your curb appeal:
a. Nice signage
Nice signage can help communicate your message to the audience passing by. It can improve your sales by 60% just by changing and adding nice signage.
b. Window displays-
Window displays are a great way to attract customers if your store is located in a heavily trafficked area. For instance, on a Black Friday Sale, you can create banners and posters to display on your window panels to attract passersby.
c. Use lighting-
Make sure that your outdoors is well lit and has an attractive entry and sidewalk area. You can match your outdoor lighting with the theme of your brand or the products you sell. For example, on Halloween, you can have dim lighting outside of your store to attract customers while displaying your holiday theme.
2. Use Your Existing Space
You don’t have to go all out to revamp your retail shop. By utilizing the present empty space in your shop, you can organize your display items, monetize your POS system, and create a comfortable environment that boosts your store engagement.
Let’s talk about each one of these in detail.
a. Organize Your Retail Products
If you want to boost sales of certain products, or want an effective way to lure customers into your shop, organizing your products is crucial.
Effective product placements can help you boost sales, showcase new and seasonal products, and highlight customers’ buying impulses.
When you put your new and best products in the front of the store, customers are likely to buy them, as well as make some other purchases while moving down the aisle.
You also want to make sure that the products least purchased by customers should be on the back. As these products drive away traffic, you do not want them in front of the aisle.
These small things often lead to positive impacts.
b. Monetize Your POS
For retail store owners as well as wholesalers, the POS checkout section can be used to generate more sales. You’ll often notice that near the checkout center, the smallest or the least expensive products are displayed.
This is called a down-selling marketing strategy. Often when customers reach the checkout section, they find cheaper products. This increases their impulse to buy cheaper products in addition to their cart.
This strategy is not just for retail shops, but also for restaurants. Restaurants can use the POS checkout point to distribute offer coupons or sell small takeaway items like gums, mouth fresheners, etc. You can discover the Best Restaurant POS systems| 25 Systems Reviewed to find the right one you need.
c. Create a Comfortable Environment
To make your customers spend more time at your shop, you need to create an aesthetic and comfortable ambiance inside your shop. You can make minute additions, like adding a few chairs for customers waiting outside of your store, adding in a music player, or a TV area to keep the waiting customers engaged within and outside your store.
d. Boost In-Store Brand Engagement
You can also engage customers with the help of social media. You can encourage your customers to tag you on social media with one of your products, to receive an additional discount or offer.
This will help you with word-of-mouth marketing. Your customers will advocate for your products on their handles, and the people following them will make a count of it. You’ll have more store brand engagement and customers.
3. Sell Custom Products
If you want to create a unique identity for your brand, custom products are the way to go. Why? Because your own manufactured products can’t be found in some other shop. Only you have the right to sell products manufactured by you. This helps you increase customer loyalty and increase brand recognition.
There are two ways you can go on about it.
a. Sell Private or White Label Products
If you don’t want to take the burden of manufacturing your own products, then you can sell private products. These products are manufactured by another supplier but are sold under your name.
You get the same benefits here, sans the burden of creating your own products.
b. Create Brand Equity Through Private Label Brands
You can manufacture your own products and sell them at a higher price through private-label brands. These products can’t be found anywhere else. This will encourage more customers to buy these.
4. Develop Your Online Presence
Having a digital presence can improve your sales dramatically. With over 2 billion people shopping online every day, it’s important you use Social Media to promote your retail business.
You can use different social media handles like:
- Google My Business
- Reddit, etc
To promote your products and build a brand name. Doing this will put your business in front of customers all over the globe. Your business won’t be limited graphically, and you’ll be able to cater to a worldwide audience.
You can also build out different sales channels with eCommerce platforms like Shopify. Nomz is a great example of building an eCommerce store on Shopify.
5. Invest in Local SEO
A very popular myth in the retail industry is that only online retail businesses can benefit from SEO, but that’s untrue. Your physical business can also benefit from SEO.
You can set up your retail business for success by investing in local SEO. Optimizing your business website for “Near me” searches will put you on the radar of local customers.
According to a 2019 survey by Google, the number of “near me” searches has increased by 200% in the past few years. To start with optimizing your business for local SEO, you need to update your Google my business profile.
This includes your business name, website, address, opening and closing hours, contact info, photos, and a description of your business or the products you sell.
When you add specific keywords related to your local community, in the description part, you’ll start showing up for local searches, increasing store visits and sales.
6. Create a Pricing Strategy
Your product pricing plays an important role in monetizing your retail business. You need to be very strategic with your prices, as higher pricing may drive customers away, and cheap pricing can make customers doubtful of the quality of your products.
The key is in maintaining a balance.
While pricing your products, you need to consider your market position. You need to conduct competitor analysis to find how your competitors are pricing their products. Once you’ve got an overview of their pricing, check which products are selling exceptionally and which ones are lacking.
Reason? If some products are selling well, you’ll be able to increase prices. This is the same with white-label products. You’ll be able to charge high for those.
But, if your competitors are charging low, and certain products aren’t selling well, then you need to lower your pricing.
7. Stay Connected With Customer
Your marketing strategies don’t end with the customer making a purchase. You need to continue your marketing efforts if you want to turn that customer into a business advocate.
Your customers are your biggest treasure. To stay connected with them, you can send them emails once in a while, offering promotional discounts and sending customer surveys to understand the experience of your customers.
To go forward with email marketing, you can use your POS system and collect customers’ email IDs, and continue nurturing them.
Our 2 Cents
To build a long-lasting retail marketing strategy, you need to put your focus on the kinds of products you want to sell, how you’ll sell them, and how you’ll nurture customers post-sale.
Having a clear idea of how to implement these three things will help you stay at the top of the game, and the minds of your customers.
Remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy anymore. In order to stand out from the crowd, you need to find something that works for you, and double down on that.
