Marketing Basics for Retailers
For retailers, marketing is one of the hardest tasks to tackle on a consistent basis. Sure, it’s important, but it always seems to come after the pressing things like staffing, inventory, and reports management.
But, even though you may not feel like you have a lot of time to manage a grand marketing campaign, you simply MUST find the time to put on a targeted marketing effort.
Pick a segment of your customer base and use your reports to understand what they like to buy. Rather than hoping they’ll come back to buy more, send them all a postcard with a promotion on similar items, or a new line of items from their favorite vendor. This not only increases the potential that they’ll come back to buy something, it increases your brand status with those customers and makes them feel special.
On that note, make them feel so special that they tell a friend. Give them an incentive to bring a friend in next time they come. If they bring a friend, maybe you give them a free small item or a trinket. Maybe you give them a free service or a discount. Whatever it is, reward the behavior you’re looking for, and make the reward tangible.
Market consistently to these customers, and periodically to new customers, and you can be sure that you’ll have better store traffic than you would simply by having nice displays or a well stocked inventory.