Marketing Strategies for Retail Stores
The New Retail Landscape
Recent events have changed the landscape for retail businesses, which means your business must pivot, expand, diversify, and ultimately work even smarter to remain relevant and beneficial to your customers.
This page will highlight key marketing strategies and solutions for implementation, which help you become a stronger and more profitable company. In addition, we will cover the specific services you can utilise for both your marketing and fulfilment needs.
The Physical Retail Experience
As convenient as online shopping can be, there's nothing like touching, feeling and smelling an item you're considering buying - that tactile element is an obvious differentiating factor compared with e-commerce. Therefore, the experience shoppers have when they visit your store is paramount.
From beautifully crafted shop frontage displays to intriguing hand-assembled point of sale (POS) items, through to the luxurious branded bags the shopper proudly walks away with - all these must make the buyer feel special and appreciated.
E-commerce Meets the High Street
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the use of e-commerce shopping. As a result, many forward-thinking retailers have diversified the purpose of their stores to incorporate online collections and returns.
This omni-channel retail marketing approach gives customers the option to shop online, with the convenience of collecting or returning items in-store. Not only does this add value for your customer, but it also gives them another reason to visit your store, where they may well go on to purchase other items in-store.
According to a 2021 article from Business Reporter, "...retailers have seen their online sales increase up to 30 per cent since they started using their stores as fulfilment centres, we can see that the process of converting stores to this new hybrid model is very much underway."
Implementing the Retail Experience
1. Increase in-store experience
To increase the in-store experience, consider each element that a customer interacts with and how it can be improved. We design, print and assemble unique point of sale items, which can showcase your products. Further, we offer heat bending to create pricing strips, product holders, and much more.
When it comes to making a customer feel valued and appreciated, make sure to gift them with a beautiful branded bag - and as so many people are more eco-conscious than ever before, re-usable and eco-friendly bags are most appropriate.
Include gift cards, vouchers, a thank you card, and other small branded gift items to demonstrate appreciation.
2. Increase curb appeal
For people to enter your store, ensure you invest in enticing window displays and prominent and professional signage.
Our in-house design team can mock up your store's look and provide the print and installation to create your wow factor. This could include swing boards and other items which can feature on the pavement to direct people in.
3. Increase footfall
For people to see and experience your incredible retail store, you need to market to them. So absolutely make use of social media, but don't rely on it - instead, run your social media marketing in conjunction with print-based marketing - leaflet distribution and direct mail.
The more touchpoints a prospect has, the greater the likelihood they will take action and engage in your marketing. Leaflet distribution is an excellent strategy for reaching people within a set radius of your store.
We provide complimentary demographic targeting to ensure you reach your ideal customers, and we cover the design, the print and the actual leaflet drop.
Similar to leaflet distribution is our direct mail service. Direct mail is more targeted, going to individual addresses rather than postcode sectors.
Where possible, retailers utilise their existing customer database (with those also offering e-commerce having more data on customer addresses). Still, we can also purchase your data of people who meet your exact buyer persona. So again, we provide a complete package for you.
Implementing the E-commerce Approach
1. Build an e-commerce store
If you don't already have an e-commerce element to your business we strongly recommend a Shopify store. We are partnered with Shopify to provide the fulfilment element.
2. Pick and pack fulfilment
The crucial and often complex element to providing an e-commerce arm to your retail store is fulfilment. Once again, however, we provide this for you. We offer a comprehensive pick-and-pack fulfilment service for e-commerce businesses.
Your e-commerce site will link seamlessly with our fulfilment software, which in turn lets our staff know what items you would like to collate for your customer and where to post them.
They are then dispatched directly to your client from our fulfilment warehouse without you needing to worry about anything - it is all automated.
3. E-commerce in-store section
Consider creating a section in the store specifically for e-commerce collections and returns. Depending on the size of your store, this may simply be a different section at your till area.
Alternatively, you may dedicate a section of your shop for collections and returns. The key here is to clearly show the service is available.
Next Step
To find out more about how we can help you build your retail business, please get in touch with us today and speak with one of our Sales Consultants.
Services we provide for Retailers:
- Marketing with leaflet distribution campaigns
- Marketing using targeted Direct Mail
- Co-packing to create and hand assemble all POS items
- Heat bending for pricing strips, display holders, and so much more!
- Shrink wrapping for your products
- Pick and pack for e-commerce fulfilment
- Graphic design for all in-store, online and marketing artwork
- Printing absolutely everything through a personalised portal
