Increase your audience - growing retail sales

Growing Awareness for Retail Businesses

The first step to increasing your sales is to grow awareness of your store. In this presentation, we are going to look at strategies - both online and offline - that will help grow your awareness and bring more customers in store:    Online Promotions    Online Reviews    Email Lists    Storefront Visibility    Reasons to Visit your Store 

Retail Signage 2 (binary/octet-stream)

Caption: : Are you doing enough to let potential customers know you are open for business?

Online Promotions

Smart retailers are utilising online methods to attract customers to their brick and mortar stores.  There's no doubt that online behomeths like Amazon are a threat to retailers as the amount of purchases online grows each year.  However, there are ways that bricks and mortar retailers can take advantage of the targeting advantages that online publishers now offer.  Customers can now be targeted very accurately - most large platforms can target online users by age, gender, interests and location.  This means that retailers can run highly targeted and localised campaigns that can attract the right type of customers and a very efficient price point.  The level of targeting helps you get your store in front of an audience that mirrors your existing customer base, increasing the chances that it will lead to sales.  

  Examples of Online Promotions:  Facebook Ads:A video or image banner promoting your store or offers to a relevant audience  Facebook Sponsored Posts:A piece of content - video / blog post - from your site promoted to drive traffic to your website Google Adwords: Targeting specific keyword searches and ensuring that your store appears in relevant searches from local customers Remember, you may have a couple of different objectives with your online campaigns - store branding and awareness, getting visitors to your website or capturing email addresses.  Just ensure that your objective is aligned with the message and the channel   

Online Reviews

Online reviews are now almost as important as friends and family recommendations when it comes to deciding about a retail outlet. Therefore managing your online reputation is of the upmost importance.  85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from a friend or family member 54 percent of consumers used the internet every month to research a local business Not only do you need to monitor what is being said about you, you should be proactively working on building a positive reputation on review sites that customers use and trust.  So start managing the major small business discovery and review platforms such as Google, Yelp or TripAdvisor.  The good news, satisfied customers will be happy to help you    68 percent of consumers left a local business a review when asked Stats source: https://www.bjcbranding.com/blog-posts/top-25-online-review-statistics-2018

Retail Review (binary/octet-stream)

Caption: : Reviews form the social proof element of a sales decision

Email Lists

Capturing customer emails allows you to communicate with previous and potential customers on an ongoing basis.  As you build out more promotions and events to increase sales, it is vital that you have a channel to communicate your activities.  Email is a cost effective way to engage with your customers. Open rates are much higher than traditional advertising methods are you've already gained user permission to interact.  The difficult part is the ask.  Why not offer incentives to customers to make it beneficial to allow you to communicate with them in this way.  Offers such as discounts or special event invites makes them feel rewarded and special   

Retail Email (binary/octet-stream)

Caption: : Email is an effective way of reminding customers of what you offer

Storefront Location & Design

Getting back the traditional roots of bricks and mortar, at the end of the day it all about the footfall.  Obviously, location plays a key role in footfall, so researching thoroughly before choosing a location is a must.  Once you have a location, there is still a lot you can do to influence foot traffic:  ensure signage gives the maximum visibility in the surrounding area    create a great window that tells one story and tells it well    utilise on street signage to maximise visibility for the passing trade 

Retail Signage (binary/octet-stream)

Caption: : Ensure you take advantage of all visible branding opportunities

Reason to visit the store

Give People a Strong Reason to Visit Your Store This advice from retail experts can really help put you on the local map:  “The #1 thing retailers can do to better market their brick-and-mortar stores is to give people a reason to go to their store. I have seen shops that hold exclusive events, limited and only available items in stores and use online coupons to use in-store only to promote their stores.” Bryan Eisenberg Founder and CMO of IdealSpot "You need to run one MAJOR and two to three MINOR events in your store each month. A major event is one that builds traffic and packs your store with customers. A minor event might be a Saturday full of demonstrations and mini-classes. Minor events draw customers to your store but should not take a lot of time to plan or implement." Rich Kizer & Georganne Bender, Founders and Speakers, Kizer & Bender Source: Shopify   

Retail Event (binary/octet-stream)

Caption: : Create a splash with regular events at your store