When it comes to the retail, most online customer attraction guides focus on e-commerce and the art of driving traffic through various means. Nonetheless, what about traditional retail marketing techniques? This art is still alive and kicking, yet, more and more retailers seem to be completely oblivious of various methods and techniques available for attracting more customers to their retail stores.
Unlike with e-commerce, not nearly as many people come to your store just to look around. In other words, since conversion rates are much higher, more visitors always translates into more customers.
Here are several methods you might want to try out.
In the introduction, we’ve mentioned that the majority of people come to your shop to buy; however, some of them prefer to do their research before even leaving their home. This is why you need to have a website or an ecommerce store. Here people need to be able to check out your prices, as well as to get notified of any discount or sale that you’re currently having.
In this day and age, making a website is not that complex. You can either get a beginner-friendly platform or find a freelance web designer to make it for you.
The phenomenon of impulse purchase is something that you, as a retailer, can’t afford to ignore. A lot of people believe that this happens when a customer encounters a product they’ve just realized they need. Nonetheless, this is a process that needs to start a lot sooner.
In order to be influenced by the package or the design of the product, your customers first need to enter the store. This is where your curb appeal plays a pivotal role. In winter, for example, going for Christmas-themed decoration is the simplest way to achieve this.
Improving the exterior of your store is not enough and, sooner or later, you’ll have to work on the interior as well.
Now, some people may be confused by this idea, especially due to the fact that this post is supposed to be about attracting more customers, yet the interior is only relevant to those already inside, right? Well, both yes and no.
You see, with professionally done retail store interior architecture you get to make a strong impression on your customers, which will earn you some WOM (word of mouth) recommendations.
Other than this, if the front of your store is see-through, you also get an additional boost for your curb appeal. Lastly, the images of your store that you upload to your website can be a strong promotional tool.
Sometimes, the best way to get some attention is to go full old-school. We’re talking about billboards, flyers, and brochures. These printed promotional materials can help you out immensely, and they’re simple, informative and quite persuasive.
Other than this, you could also try telemarketing as well as advertising in the local newspaper. Radio and TV commercials also give a surprisingly good ROI, which is why they shouldn’t be omitted from this list, either.
Lastly, if you have a website or an e-store, you can gather emails from your customers and invite them to pay a visit to your brick and mortar store. Even without this, you can create a loyalty program, where purchases (even purchases in-person) award one with some redeemable points. However, in order to award these points, you need some basic information about the customer, including their email.
In this way, you get a way to organically expand your email list and add yet another channel of communication with your audience. Since email marketing has an ROI of 4400 percent, it’s something that you can’t afford to miss out on.
Of course, there are some other marketing techniques that you could try out, yet they’re mostly industry-specific. The above-listed five, on the other hand, are proven to give consistent results.
Use an e-commerce store to work with your brick-and-mortar store. Boost your shop's curb and interior appeal. Test traditional media such as billboards, brochures, newspapers, radio, TV, as well as email marketing.
Signs, banners and welcome mats are also quite consistent, yet they give a minor boost and can’t be used as a core method for your customer attraction strategy. The ROI that you receive from them may depend on your skill and the effort you invest but it’s almost always on the plus side.
He’s a regular contributor to Futurpreneur, RetailNext, and other online magazines.
When he’s not working, he’s reading sci-fi books and playing with his kiddos.