In the third and final chapter of this series on business strategy revitalisation, we turn our attention to critical marketing ideas.
Create a weekly bag stuffer and hand one to every shopper—it's important to get them into the customers’ hands.
Regardless of the name, if you pre-stuff them into bags, they will not get read. Use your bag stuffers to advertise specific products, events, or anything important that week.
Build a ‘brag sheet’ that lists your store’s services, awards, conveniences, merchandise categories, brands, social media handles, return policy, and hours—everything that’s important to your customers.
Print it on the back of your weekly bag stuffer, and add it to your website, social media, and email blasts.
Send an email blast at least twice a month. Choose a professional email marketing company to create your campaigns. Constant Contact, Email Contact, SnapRetail, and Mail Chimp are retailer favourites offering a free trial. Try them all, and then stick with what works best.
Every email blast should have a clear message encouraging the reader to act by visiting your website or visiting your store.
Collect customer email addresses organically. Place a sign-up sheet at the register and on your website.
Host contests where the winner is notified via email and make asking for the customer's email part of the regular checkout process.
Pepper your emails with large photos and less copy. People don’t like to read long blocks of text, so keep the message short and sweet.
Make every photo clickable, taking the reader to your website for more information or to purchase.
The reader should take at most 20 seconds to fully understand your message.
Research has found that 64 percent of people open an email because of the subject line alone.
Make sure yours are compelling!
Measure your results. Every email marketing company provides detailed reports on customer responses. Keep the techniques that work and tweak those that don’t before sending your next email blast.
Host one major or two minor in-store events each month. A major event builds traffic and fills your store with customers.
Do not confuse a major event with something that takes a long time to plan. A class, trunk, or fashion show can be a big undertaking, but it’s not a major event unless it attracts potential customers who come to watch and buy something while they’re there.
A minor event might be a Saturday full of demonstrations and mini-classes. Minor events draw customers to your store but should not take much time to plan or implement.
If the concept of events and promotions is new to you, then begin by running one major event and one minor event for each month of the year.
If you’re already running events on a regular basis, you can add as many as you are comfortable adding.
Create a marketing and promotions calendar for each month of 2024. List dates and deadlines for each part of your marketing efforts, including in-store events, promotions, Facebook Live broadcasts, classes, email blasts, and social media posts.
Contact local media and pitch stories about your store.
Most of the stories presented by local media come from a press release, so send one for each newsworthy thing you do in your store, including awards, big events, famous visitors to your store, contest winners, and charitable works.
Social media
Ramp up your social media presence. Unless you have a dedicated marketing employee, choose one or two social media platforms and commit to keeping them current.
Your business should be on Facebook and Instagram. Posting daily is the optimal goal; three times a week is the minimum you can do to keep followers interested.
Continue to boost your business online, as online selling is here to stay. Keep your website up to date and choose an e-commerce platform.
Make Facebook Live broadcasts a major of your marketing. If you haven’t tried it yet, it’s time to get on board. Choose a daily or weekly time slot and stick to it.
Instagram is more than just posting photos. Instagram Live is similar to Facebook Live; Instagram stories allow you to post photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours, and reels let you create and post videos—people love videos!
There are even more options available, but it's okay to just post photos on your Instagram grid.
Use hashtags to expand your reach. Posts with hashtags have more engagement than those that don’t. Without a hashtag, your posts only go to the people who follow you, but posts that include hashtags can reach anyone who follows that hashtag.
Google ‘best hashtags for X’ to get you started. Be sure to include a hashtag for your store, such as #nameofyourstore.
Retailers are some of the most resilient people in the world. There is no limit to what you can do when you put your mind to it.
READ EMAG
More reading:
Your business is ready for a marketing makeover: Part I
Your business is ready for a marketing makeover: Part II