What is Retail Marketing?
Retail Marketing is the sales strategy that is created and used to get your customers to feel emotions when they visit your store. It is known by all, that on many occasions human beings are guided more by emotion than reason. Therefore, the product with the best quality price is not always the best sold. Emotions, loyalty to the brand, and previous experiences come into play. The goal of this type of marketing is to create short and long-term plans so that your customers feel satisfied with the shopping experience. This will increase your loyalty and passion for the brand.
To achieve this, all sorts of strategies are used, everything counts. From lighting, aromas, audio, commercial equipment such as furniture, baskets, or cars …
The store sale process consists of 4 phases:
- Visits
You have to attract as many customers as possible to the store. The more visits, the more sales opportunities are generated.
- Sales
This is the main goal of marketing, but to achieve it, you must first get many visits.
- Recurrence
Before, we said that the most important thing is sales, but surely the most important is that your customers return to make a purchase in your store. In this way, you can get to get the customer to be loyal to your brand.
- Ambassadors
The fact that your customers talk about your brand to their friends and take pictures of your products is a form of high-quality free advertising. It is because the users themselves are so happy with the products that they generate the content themselves. Today, the advertising generated by the brands creates distrust. The opposite happens with this UGC (content generated by the user).
The 4R of retail marketing
RELATION
It is essential to forge a relationship with our clients. Whether through store personnel or through social networks, the brand has to connect with its customers. The main goal must be their satisfaction so that in the future they can purchase again. To get this, you have to understand and get to know your customers very closely. It is essential to know their needs in order to offer them the solution they are looking for and provide them with a unique shopping experience.
For example, customer service strategies, content marketing as well as the presence of the brand in events and media obtain very good results. Do you wonder why? Well because in this way, you will get to be at the top of mind of the users. This means that when they require a product that you sell, your brand will be the first one that comes to mind.
RELEVANCE
The client has to feel like a fundamental part of the growth and success of the brand. For example, the advice of a good sales assistant is a good strategy to make him feel that way. However, it must be done in its proper measure to not overwhelm him and create the opposite effect.
REWARD
How to reward your customers while you get benefits from it? Well, a usual way to do it is with loyalty cards, coupons, or reward programs. In this way, your customers will be happy to be rewarded with gifts or discounts, and your brand will get more sales and the recurrence of their customers.
COST REDUCTION
In order to obtain the desired results, we must take into account the ROI (return on investment). Knowing what we invest in capturing new customers, for example, we must account for what net profit we have left. To save on these expenses, we must bear in mind that human resources can be reduced if we automate processes.
Retail Marketing Trends 2019
VOICE SEARCH
In the past years, we have seen how the use of voice activation applications and hardware has become popular. iPhone Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant are already part of the lives of many. It is predicted that voice activation and command will be implemented in the physical retail world next year. For example, French Monoprix supermarkets teamed up with Google to create an application where users could make their shopping lists with their voices. At the same time, a chatbot recommended the best products for each client.
It should be noted a change in the way of searching by voice commands. Users use more colloquial language and the accent of each one comes into play. However, in written searches, users typically focus on keywords and minimize the use of words.
OMNICANALITY
Nowadays, we are already used to this term. The synergy between communication channels allows users to jump from the physical to the digital store and vice versa, passing through the brand’s social networks.
In order to achieve this, brands will have:
- To collect and save your customers’ information in order to offer a much more personalized shopping experience.
- Features such as picking up orders online at home
- Returns in-store and house
SOCIAL E-COMMERCE
Social e-commerce is the ads that appear in the user’s feed based on their preferences and hobbies. Users can comment on the ad, so it provides very valuable information for all users. But, why sell on social networks?
The answer is that users are more likely to interact with the ad because:
- they are usually related to the user’s preferences
- they increase engagement with the brand thanks to the comments, suggestions, and doubts of other users that generate more confidence in the consumer
- the extensive segmentation of these ads can help us reach our target audience
According to Instagram Business, 60% of users of this social network say they discover new products through the platform. Here we can see the average expenditure on each social platform:
PHYGITAL EXPERIENCE
It is believed by many that the experience in the physical store has the days numbered. However, we see how retailers are enhancing the best of both worlds, the physical and the digital. In this post, you can see the latest market trends.
POINTS OF SALE THAT INCREASE THE PURCHASE EXPERIENCE
We have recently seen how retail giants have teamed up to share synergies and reinforce the convenience and accessibility of their customers.
An example of this is the upcoming opening of a LIDL supermarket in the commercial area of an IKEA in Portugal. In this way, consumers are encouraged to approach the physical stores where they can make their purchases at both stores without wasting time commuting from one place to another.
Another example, which we are already used to, is the IKEA restaurants. Who does not know the famous Swedish meatballs of the giant retailer? Offering affordable menus attracts many users who, in addition to shopping for furniture and decorative objects, can eat at the same establishment.
TRY-BEFORE-YOU-BUY VS BOPIS
Today, we are familiar with BOPIS, which means buying online and picking up at the physical store. This strategy has achieved very good results since normally the consumer does not have to pay shipping costs and is not limited to a delivery time slot. Facing the retailer, this tactic saves costs in shipping costs. In addition, it attracts consumers to the physical store, which can be transformed into more sales.
However, the trend for this year and the next one is the TRY-BEFORE-YOU-BUY. The British ASOS has already been implemented and has seen a large increase in sales. With this service, the consumer can order all the items he wants, receive them at home, and only pay for the items he decides to keep. Once decided, he returns free of charge the items he doesn’t want.
Nowadays, only 17.5% of companies have adopted this modality. This is because the free refund formula could become a dizzying increase in costs.
CUSTOMERING
The traditional retail model offered a very personalized service to its clientele. From knowing their names, their previous purchases, their preferences, etc. The evolution of technology, big chains, and globalization have been ending with this type of store. However, as often happens with everything, the old always comes back. That is why the big retailers want to offer personalized shopping experiences as they used to. To do this, they must be able to use the technology in their favor to:
- store the personal data of each client
- know your preferences and tastes
- know your purchases made
All this information must be available to the shop assistants since they are the ones who have direct contact with customers and are the ones who can offer an incredible shopping experience.
As you can see, there are many tactics and strategies of retail marketing to increase sales in your store. Everything is a matter of implementing them and seeing the results.
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