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