The retail industry is evolving faster than ever before, with new technologies and platforms offering different ways to shop all the time.
Yet what shoppers really want at the end of the day are quality products, friendly customer service, and a positive retail experience.
Most retailers pride themselves on offering top notch items and service with a smile, yet many stores struggle to consistently grow their customer bases.
Some retail traders also have troubles deciding which new online platforms and technologies will work best for them, and then implementing and maintaining them.
A tailored marketing strategy can help your retail business with these common problems by mapping out how to best reach your customers and give them what they want.
Here are some ways that an effective marketing strategy can help retailers:
Develop your online presence
There are a variety of ways to raise the profile of your retail business, but one of the best options today is to build a website for your store.
Having a digital presence is essential for modern businesses, and a website can showcase the quality of your products and customer service to online visitors.
For example, the team at Assemblo built a powerful website for the Camberwell shopping precinct to help local retailers promote their businesses online.
While the old website served about 10,000 unique visits every month, the new website has seen a 40 per cent rise in overall website traffic since it launched.
Retail businesses can also add e-commerce functionality to their website to turn it into an online shop and sell products and services online.
Retailers can also leverage Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms to connect with customers and grow their online exposure.
Make your retail store stand out
A sure-fire way to get shoppers to notice your business and for existing customers to remember your store is to develop a winning brand.
Your brand is essential to your store’s success and should reflect your values while making your retail business more memorable.
It’s important to get your brand design right, as it has been shown to influence perceptions throughout the customer journey.
Our team helped speciality retailer Paper Republic establish a new brand that better reflected the shop, with customers falling in love with the new-look brand straight away.
Gather customer insights
Retailers can learn so much about their customers through digital marketing practices and gain an edge over the competition.
Retail traders can draw game-changing insights about their customers and products from their website, newsletters, social media platforms, and other digital marketing activities.
Let’s say you notice that a particular product or service on your website draws an unusually high number of visitors. You can drill down into the data to see how the visitors are coming to your site, how long they spend on the page, what else they look at, and more.
These insights will mean different things to different businesses, but they could shape your content marketing strategy or how you run your advertising campaigns.
Foster customer loyalty
The arrival of online shopping has ratcheted up competition among retailers, so customer loyalty is paramount today.
Of course, you can develop customer loyalty through a high-quality product range and top service, but you can also engage your customers in other ways.
You can publish insightful articles on your website to help your customers learn more about your speciality, establish your store as an authority, and even drive sales.
Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms can help retailers stay in touch with their customers and respond quickly to issues.
Get expert retail marketing advice now
Are you ready to attract more customers and grow your retail business? If you’re looking for smarter marketing tailored to your store, Assemblo can help.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne that has worked with a number of retailers to develop their marketing strategies and grow their businesses.
To find out how we can help your retail business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.