Retail Store Marketing Ideas

You're wearing a lot of hats as a retail store owner.  Here's what to focus on for your marketing for the best return on both your time and money.

1. Get people to come into your retail store

2. Get existing customers to come back more often

3. Sell more to your existing customers 

4. Encourage existing customers to refer others

5. Attract new customers to your retail store, especially customers who will be most profitable and pleasant to serve longer term as customers

TIP:   Buying psychologists have learned that when a person in a store decides they want to buy one thing, they will then start looking for other things to buy. 

Ravi Dhar of the Yale School of Management, calls it 'the shopping momentum effect.' There's a certain amount of guilt that most people experience when spending money, but having opened our wallets the first time, with each additional purchase the guilt ebbs. "Research has shown that just paying for something has some pain attached to it, even though you get something back in return," Dhar says. "But after you've bought the first item, the second item doesn't hurt as much."

 

Retail store marketing "must do" list

 

Before you rush off to try some new innovative retail marketing idea, make sure you are doing all the things on this "must do" list for marketing.

• Small Business Marketing Must Do List - the 12 most important things for success in marketing a retail store small business.  What's on this list?  Collecting and updating your customer email and cell phone information.  That will allow you to send email and text messages and call people.  These are all the least expensive (and most effective) ways to contact people. You'll also want to set up a customer contact plan to keep your retail store top of mind.  You need to contact customers at least six times a year with some type of relevant message or offer.  Ideally, you are contacting customers monthly. Your contacts can be through email newsletters, email alerts, personal emails or cards, text messages, calls or direct mail postcards, Facebook posts, letters or catalogs.  Mix it up.  Use a variety of ways to contact your retail store customers to stay top of mind.

• How to Select and Hire a Marketing Consultant
  
• Find Marketing Experts to Hire

Is your retail store marketing and merchandising planned to capitalize on the consumer mindset throughout the year?

The big box retailers increase sales by understanding and capitalizing on offering what consumers want throughout the year.  They anticipate the consumer mindset and adjust their in-store displays and marketing to promote what will be most relevant. 

Is your marketing set up to capitalize on all these seasonal marketing opportunities and the mindset of consumers during each of these months? 

People are generally willing to spend more during special seasons.  A key goal is to use your advertising and marketing and in-store displays to get people to buy impulsively.  Once a customer has one thing to buy, they generally find other things they want too. 

• Seasonal Marketing Ideas has specific ideas for key holidays and selling seasons

Help your customers be great at gift giving! 

• Gift Giving Ideas to Help Retailers

 

What's new in retail store marketing?

Behavioral tracking and optimization coming to a retail store near you...

In-store sensors and motion trackers will watch and track what you do in stores to help retailers and merchandisers optimize in-store experiences, packaging and store and shelf layout. It's like combining Google Analytics + Microsoft's Kinect's motion-sensing software and using it to create usability labs in retail stores.  See the MarketingZone blog post