Physical retail businesses rightly believe foot traffic to be the sole thing that can bring them success. However, they often neglect the role of marketing in encouraging customers to walk into their venues. Avoid following in their footsteps because retail and marketing have to go hand in hand.
Promotional campaigns can spark your audience’s interest and encourage them to make in-store purchases.
However, don’t just go for trendy online marketing tactics. Pay attention to traditional practices. That’s how you’ll enjoy the absolute perks of marketing in the retail industry.
In this article, you’ll learn everything about this marketing type. It will explore the importance, types, and strategies to help you incorporate marketing in retail.
What Is Retail Marketing?
Retail marketing refers to the strategies retailers use to promote their offerings and drive sales in a retail environment. Understanding customer behavior is the main focus here.
Without this step, you won’t be able to create a compelling shopping experience. This might seem unrelated, but providing a wholesome in-store experience is a marketing tactic in itself.
Let’s dive a bit deeper now that you know the answer to “What is retail marketing?” After all, it doesn’t stop at understanding your target customers and creating a worthy in-store experience.
In addition, you need to focus on the marketing mix, which consists of the four Ps of marketing. You need to include these elements in your marketing strategies for effective promotions. However, the modern marketing mix for retailers has six Ps.
- Products are the goods or services you offer.
- Price is the cost you have assigned to your products.
- Place includes the channels where customers can access your products, including physical and digital.
- Promotion includes the strategies you’ll use to communicate with potential customers and raise awareness about your products.
- People include the importance of a well-trained, customer-centric staff who can provide a positive shopping experience.
- Presentation is your store’s overall visual appeal or ambiance and online presence.
The Importance of Marketing for Retailers
When running a retail business, you must promote your products while setting them apart from your competitors’ offerings. What does your product do for your customers that your competitors don’t? That’s the main question marketing for retailers answers.
It ensures that your customer base knows your products and encourages them to make purchases. This, in turn, promotes brand awareness and increases sales.
Moreover, the positive experience you provide in your store promotes customer loyalty for your business. If you maintain a healthy customer relationship, they eventually become brand ambassadors, bringing you even more customers.
Besides, loyalty programs and email marketing for retail do wonders for repeat purchases.
How Many Types of Retail Marketing Are There?
There are three broad types of retail marketing: in-store, out-of-store, and digital retail marketing. Under these categories come different marketing channels, which you can call traditional or digital.
As mentioned, you shouldn’t just follow the latest marketing trends. Instead, your efforts should include a mix of traditional and modern channels. Let’s examine the types of channels in detail to see what they are.
Firstly, in-store marketing includes your promotional activities inside your physical store. For example, you might display digital or physical signage to notify visitors about the latest discounts and essential updates.
Here, you’re combining two channels: in-store displays and sales promotions. Other in-store efforts you can make include interactive boards, events, proximity marketing, sample products, and window displays.
Secondly, out-of-store marketing is all about your promotional activities to reach and engage customers outside retail stores. These can either be digital or traditional. Some examples include direct mail, TV ads, posters, and even word of mouth. Those are the classic retail marketing strategies.
However, newer ways of reaching customers, such as social media and SMS marketing, have also hit the market. While these are a part of out-of-store marketing, they’re so extensive that they deserve their own category.
Lastly, we have digital marketing for retailers. As the name suggests, these are online marketing efforts retailers make to promote and sell their products to customers. Influencer, WiFi, and email marketing are some types we’ll discuss later.
6 Retail Marketing Strategies To Boost Your Sales
According to a survey, 81% of customers research online before buying a product. However, complications sprinkle most customer journeys. Before buying, people might interact with your brand through multiple channels, including traditional means. Many businesses also believe retail foot traffic is the best way to success.
Therefore, it’s essential to use multiple marketing channels to get the word across. With the number of marketing strategies available, it can become hard to focus your efforts. The following sections will discuss the top six strategies and how they help your business.
If you want your retail marketing to be successful, you can’t ignore social media marketing. That’s because people often perceive a brand negatively if it doesn’t have a social media presence.
Besides, social media users are pretty active, so you can reach them anytime, anywhere. It’s not even that expensive if you focus on organic promotions. You also have the option to speed things up by investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Therefore, start by creating accounts on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. These platforms are the most profitable for the retail industry.
Later, you can even start a blog on your website for search engine optimization. This will help you attract local customers while setting you apart from competitors.
2. Influencer Marketing To Reach a Wider Audience
Now that we’ve discussed social media marketing, there’s another aspect to it that can bring you a broader audience. This aspect is influencer marketing, where you leverage the power of social media influencers to promote your products. These influencers have built a dedicated following that considers them experts in their niche.
To leverage this type of marketing, start researching profiles that promote products similar to yours. For example, look for beauty influencers if you sell makeup, fashion influencers if you sell clothes, etc.
Then, approach them and offer an incentive for promoting your products. Once they post honest reviews about your products, their followers will show interest and eventually become customers.
3. Email Marketing Still Brings the Best Results
The third in our list of best strategies is email marketing for small businesses. People might think it isn’t as effective as the more modern means. But those who leverage it know how well it works for retail. Here’s how.
Remember how we mentioned the importance of a wholesome customer experience?
Well, personalization is a substantial part of that experience, and email is the best way to get there. You can set triggers for a specific email and make the customer feel valued. For example, if a customer leaves products in their cart, send them an abandoned cart email.
Besides, it allows you to make repeat sales with follow-up emails. Imagine the numbers when these sales and new purchases add up. That’s the power of email marketing for beginners.
4. WiFi Marketing Brings New Customers and Keeps Them There
Offering free WiFi in retail stores is another great way to promote your brand and its offerings. For one, customers will visit just for the free WiFi. Once they’re inside, you have complete control. You can impress them with quick and pleasant service, free samples, and more.
Moreover, if you implement a captive portal to authenticate customers, you can create customer marketing profiles. They can include email addresses, names, preferences, etc. Later, you can use these to personalize your efforts.
5. Guerilla Marketing Is Memorable and Inexpensive
If you want an inexpensive and effective marketing strategy, try guerilla marketing. It involves unconventional tactics that use surprise and creativity to promote products and services.
The goal is to catch people off guard and create memorable experiences. Without this aspect, you will defy the concept of guerilla marketing.
One of the most straightforward tactics is to hold surprise events like flash mobs. You can also create interactive puzzles for the more intellectual people.
For a more buzz-worthy ad, create life-sized models of your products and place them on the street like IKEA.
6. Traditional Marketing Isn’t and Will Never Be Dead
The last strategy on this list is traditional marketing. But remember, it isn’t less effective because it’s the last one. Some still prefer billboards and TV ads over modern means of connecting with brands. Due to this, you reach a wider audience with traditional marketing.
Besides, there are no algorithms to follow here. The posters, billboards, and print ads will be precisely where you intended them to be. However, traditional marketing can be pretty expensive, so keep that in mind before proceeding. Plus, it’s sometimes hard to measure the results here.
Retail and Marketing Management: Outsourcing vs. Doing It Yourself
After exploring the strategies, you might wonder how you’ll handle retail and marketing management. Should you outsource it or do it yourself? You might even find it tempting to create an in-house marketing team. Let’s discuss all three options in detail to clear up your confusion.
If you go for outsourcing, you’ll get expert help. Retail marketing companies know what they’re doing and can bring you a better conversion rate.
However, this option might get expensive.
An in-house marketing team seems more effective in this case since they’ll be a part of your brand. But remember that this is the most expensive option.
On the other hand, doing it yourself saves you money, but you’ll have to invest time and effort. You might even have to take a few courses on retail marketing. So, this option will only work if you can learn, practice, and apply it while running the other operations.
You’ll need to learn about retail marketing platforms if you decide to market your retail business yourself. Even if you create an in-house team, you’ll need basic knowledge about these tools.
While you’ll have to use multiple tools, consider that WiFi marketing solutions integrate one or more tools. Hence you can save with that. Here’s a list of the systems you need and some of the best names in each category.
- Customer relationship management software: Hubspot and Zendesk.
- Analytics platform: Google Analytics or Tableau (for foot traffic growth).
- Email marketing tools: Mailchimp and Moosend.
- SMS marketing tools: EngageBay and Klaviyo.
- Social media integration tools: Hootsuite and SproutSocial.
- Tools for loyalty programs and rewards: FiveStars and PassKit.
- e-Commerce platforms: Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce.
Other tools you might need will depend on your requirements and business size.
Combine Retail and Marketing for a Successful Business
When looking at retail and marketing, they walk hand in hand. You must build a strong presence, especially in this modern era.
Customers purchasing something immediately after entering your venue have probably already checked everything online. Therefore, focus your efforts on retail marketing to help your customers with this. In return, you’ll spread brand awareness and enjoy increased sales.
Try Beambox to gather customer data and implement effective marketing strategies. This WiFi marketing platform automates campaigns and provides reports to inform marketing initiatives.
Additionally, it integrates email and SMS marketing tools and analytics. Beambox doesn’t require additional hardware and has no hidden fees. Start your free trial now!
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