Cutthroat competition between
retailers isn’t going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s likely to become even
more severe. Here are 7 great promotion ideas for your retail store.
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| image:pixabay.com/photos/shop-store-open-shopping-retail-2607121 |
1. Put a Loyalty
Program in Place
Customers in loyalty programs are
100% more likely to return. You’re encouraging repeat visits by creating a
rewards program. One good example is a sticker or punch card loyalty program.
This gives customers an incentive to keep coming back to your business.
You could opt for a mobile solution
instead of traditional paper punch cards to make your operation more appealing
to younger customers. There are a lot of online platforms who offer this
service.
Keep the program as simple as
possible no matter how specific your business is. Everyone is very busy these
days and might not be able to decipher your complex meaning, catch your joke
or read your unique sign. It’s best to keep it short, simple and concise in
almost all retail and point-of-purchase environments. A
POS system(by POSQuote.com) would prove pivotal to this end, also
helping manage your loyalty program.
2. Target Review
Websites
Today, lots of businesses gain
traffic via review sites, especially Google and Yelp. Explicitly targeting
this traffic with promotions specific to review sites helps drive traffic
through the door. It also motivates the customer to have a good experience
and, in turn, leave you an excellent review. Yelp makes this especially easy
by allowing you to publish deals on your review page. Those show up on initial
searches by people on Yelp.
3. Improve Your
Online and Digital Marketing Professionally
Professionals can help you augment
your online presence by means of digital solutions, website design, display
ads, search engine marketing and optimization, digital listings management and
other services. Other things you might want to look into include social
campaign creation, social ad campaigns, and management and monitoring.
To this end, you could host a
competition on Facebook, Instagram, or another social network and interact
with your consumer base. This is a good way to maintain existing customers’
loyalty and gain new ones.
This approach has been applied in
practice with great outcomes by many companies, including the fashion retailer
QKiddo. The company makes accessories for children. They invited followers on
Instagram to participate in a competition, which involved asking families to
send pictures of their children. The company reposted them on its official
page. Then, all competitors tried to invite people to come to the company’s
page to like their pictures, whereby one vote was awarded per like.
At the end of the competition, the
company counted the number of likes. The child with the most likes won and got
a luxury handmade accessory. There were hundreds of visits during the four-day
competition, and visitors also clicked the web link to check the website and
bought accessories from the company.
Sell All Your
Products Online
One way to increase sales and
promote your products is to sell them both at your physical location and
online. Some sites let you create a gorgeous ecommerce store so you can sell
to customers irrespective of their location. E-stores have the added benefit
of integrating with POS systems and the main payment processors. Your
inventory is automatically updated when items are sold. Depending on the
provider, your e-store could make it possible (and easy) to sell your products
on Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more, all through one
central dashboard.
4. Employ
Seasonal Merchandising
To promote services and products
all year round, create special decorated seasonal and holiday displays and
change them at least once per month. As you clean and dust, move your displays
and products around. Make sure last-minute product displays are available at
your checkout counter or reception desk and are changed every month.
5. Enter into Local Partnerships
Some of the best promotions happen
when local retailers enter into partnerships in their neighborhood or city.
This might be perceived as working with competitors, but it is recommended
because it brings awareness to shopping in your area to locals. If you bring
all local retailers together, no matter what they sell, to support local
traditions and events – ex. a local choir or fall – it will pay off because
there is strength in numbers in competing against major franchises.
6. Build Personal Relationships with
Customers
Personal interaction with customers
helps create relationships and encourage long-term customer loyalty. Your
marketing can be a natural continuation of this, which means you don’t always
have to be selling. Send out anniversary greetings, thank you and birthday
emails, and other relationship-building communications.
7. Mind your
Advertising
Sending the wrong message is one of
the worst mistakes you can make in retail promotion. Having poor-selling items,
a very low discount on a good-selling item, or out-of-season merchandise will
produce little traffic. The whole point of advertising is to get customers to
your store, not just buy the one discounted item.
Lack of signage is a common problem
in this respect. A lot of great shops go unnoticed because of poor or no
signage at all. Very often, you’ll have a great shop selling lots of wonderful
things, and then a tiny little sign on cardboard indicating its existence,
which is not noticeable if you’re driving past in a car and sometimes even if
you’re walking past. You have signs that were blown over by wind, rolling
around in the dust by the side of the road.
To have a successful promotion, you
need very effective, noticeable signage that will attract attention. Stanley
Tan, Digital Marketing Specialist at Selby’s, writes about one time he walked
into a store because it had a sign saying “Closing Sale.” There were a lot of
great designer brand products in there, wines and perfume beautifully
presented in glass boxes. It emerged the shop had been there for decades, but
never had a single sign, so nobody really noticed it until it was closing down
and put a closing sale sign up.
Related source: Operating an eCommerce Business during this pandemic
Conclusion
Thank you for reading! Good luck
with your promotion and tell us what you think in the comments section
below!
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