So, you are a brick-and-mortar retailer wanting to grow your business but every strategy and idea you encounter, requires you to have marketing dollars that you simply do NOT have.
Well, this article is designed to help that group of retailers. So firstly, we will establish that it would not be fair to compare this strategy to other strategies (e.g. paid ads, influencers etc) that can be highly effective but requires $.
1) FOCUS ON YOUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS
Everyone talks about creating great customer experiences. That is because when a happy customer walks out the store, they remember your brand and are 3x more likely to come back.
Imagine if you have 30 customers this week, and each of them were to come back 1x in the coming month. You would have doubled your sales. Sounds overly simplistic, read on.
2) CREATE HAPPY EXPERIENCES
Creating unique, and great experiences doesn’t need to be expensive. Smile, treat them well, of course.
But what if you could give them a thank you gift as they leave your store. Regardless of whether they shopped / did not shop in the store. Not only are you showing them that you appreciate them visiting your store, you just significantly increased the chances of them coming back / converting in the store.
More importantly, thank you gifts don’t always need to cost you money and can be a “Win-Win” for you and the customer.
3) CREATING A “WIN-WIN” FOR YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMER [restrict]
Creating a thank you gift is simpler than you think. So long as you are willing to be creative with it.
- A promotion E.g. 5% off your next visit, $15 off your next visit with min spend of $100
- An event invite: You are invited to a preview of our line
- Personalized experiences: Personal shopper experience
- Upgrades: Free upgrade to next tier of service
- A Free trial: 10 mins free facial massage
- A sampler: Try out our new line of products in your next visit.
Save on printing costs too by avoiding physical vouchers. Instead, make the thank you gift a digital voucher and give it out to the customers as they leave the store in a matter of seconds. You can create a digital voucher for free here.
In this example, the retail assistant is requesting for the customer’s mobile details to automatically provision a digital voucher to her via SMS (SMS costs are usually free for digital vouchers)
In another example, the retail assistant is getting the customer to scan A QR code to download the digital voucher on her own.
4) COLLECT YOUR CUSTOMER’S CONTACT DETAILS
As a retailer, there are 2 things that you ought to value. Your customer’s contact details and “hooks” to get your customer to come back to the store.
When your Customer downloads a digital voucher, not only are you creating a great customer experience, you are collecting contact details that is immediately stored for you.
With the details, you can start building up a customer database with actual information on which promotions they are interested in and whether they do come back to the store.
More importantly, you can also opt for cheaper marketing strategies in the future, such as email or even SMS marketing without having to constantly go out and win new customers.
5) DOUBLING SALES BY GETTING THEM BACK IN-STORE
Having all this data is important. When you know who your customers are and whether they have returned to your store, you can actively re-engage them. This would not be possible without actual information on your clients.
For instance, by the end of the first week, you have given out 90 vouchers. You have collected 90 new contact details and with the digital voucher, you are able to track which of your customers have not returned to use the voucher.
You can automatically send off an email blast or a personalized SMS reminder to get them back in-store. Combining vouchers with a personalized reminder can drive up to 3x more customers.
Or maybe you want to share these Digital vouchers with prospective customers on your Social Media, Line, Whatsapp, why not.
The trick is to get creative with how you use your “free resources” and digitizing your promotions so you have more mileage and runway from every effort.
For tips and ideas on how other retailers are getting creative with free resources and “hacks” when you have minimal resources, join our Private Facebook Group for Retailers.
Want to create great customer experiences? Start by digitizing a “thank you token” that you can give your existing customers here.
