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How to get more customers to your retail business

How to Get More Customers Retail Business

There is no doubt that bricks and mortar retailers have had their work cut out for them in recent years. Take post offices, for instance, many used to enjoy high footfall with many regular visitors collecting benefits cheques, pensions, etc. Much of this is now done by direct debit and, as a result, footfall has dwindled both in their outlets and in their local shopping precincts.

If falling footfall offline is difficult, building traffic to an ecommerce site can be even tougher. Opening an online store is a bit like opening shop in the middle of a desert. The upside is that you are not limited a single road leading to it. You can literally develop hundreds of roads for customers to reach your online store. This road building can be done using a combination of social media tools and even some old fashioned marketing. The good news is you can use some of the same principles and tools to get more customers to your bricks and mortar store too.

Getting started
Personally, I think it’s really important that all roads lead back to a website that your business owns ie. your own website and not Facebook. Ideally this would be an ecommerce site or a blog with content that is updated on a regular basis. Even if it isn’t, make sure that you set up a simple page with some nice images on a domain that is yours. Over time the links to your website are going to be more and more valuable for search engine optimisation (SEO) and will act as a collection point towards which all of your online and offline efforts direct customers. The sooner you start on building this asset the better.

Think of all your marketing and each social media profile you create as funnels that regularly channel engaged customers to your website and / or your bricks and mortar store. You might have 1,000 followers and get say 100 of them to visit your shop and 10 of them purchase £20 of goods each for example. Do you see how the numbers funnel down towards sales? From this example, you can see how each extra 1,000 followers you add could generate another £200.

Content is King
Your offers, insights, tips and humour all form the basis of the branded content (on your website, blog or social media) that you need to produce on a regular basis to drive visitors to your business. Content is becoming hugely important for generating SEO results that point to your business. Start thinking about the ways that people might find your business (E.g. asking friends, social media, Google, etc). Where and how are they looking for what you offer? Target the online search phrases they use (keywords) and search points (such as Google, Facebook and Twitter) in your content creation and marketing strategy. Use these phrases in tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts, website copy and on product listings in your store.

Here are some examples of how you can use content to drive engagement with your customers and others in order to drive more customers to your business:

Images
Great images are key to driving visitors to your door. Pinterest and Instagram are two image based social media sites that are performing very well for retailers. In fact there is evidence to suggest “reverse showrooming” from these sites, where customers visit retailers in store to purchase items they have seen online via these sites. Images also feature heavily in the feeds of Twitter and Facebook, so if you have shots of something funny, interesting or beautiful in your shop do post them online regularly. For example, some of our retailers have cafes and drive footfall to their door each day posting images of their beautiful cakes on social media.

If you are photographing greeting cards it is good etiquette to mention the publisher of the cards when posting. Another neat trick is to position a business card with your logo into the shot you take, just in case the image is shared away from your website and the connection is lost. All of our images have our logo on them for this reason and to protect our design copyright.

Email shots
It’s worth building your mailing and emailing lists because engagement with them is still strong. As an example, over 30% of my customers open my emails and I generate over £1,000 in sales every time I email them. Make sure that you only contact your list with information that is useful, timely and relevant to them. Try to keep your mailings to an acceptable limit, I tend to mail my customers in the run up to the five trade shows we do each year. Our customers often tell me that they love my receiving my emails as they are so useful and informative. The majority of the articles on my emails links back into evergreen content on our blog, trade show listings or social media channels. All of which funnel towards sales.

Events
See if you can speak at events that are relevant to those in your market. For example, I recently spoke at Widdop Bingham’s Summer event for retailers on the topic of social media and I am speaking again at Autumn Fair International next month. I get a lot of publicity, web links and referrals over time from these. If you don’t like public speaking, get yourself to industry events like the GCA or GA AGMs or to local business networking events in your area. You can even hold events at your shop. ‘How to wrap presents’ is a one that would be relevant to most consumers around Christmas for example. Video or photograph these events and add them to your YouTube channel, website and social media channels to drive more engagement with your fans.

Reward Loyalty
More and more retailers are feeding back to me how effective these are for their shops. Buy 10 cards get your 11th free is a popular one that drives customers back through retailers doors. Sometimes you can offer these deals through other outlets like local papers. One of our customers ran a successful 25% off promotion in their local paper, for example, and could track it’s success by people who bought their vouchers into the store to claim it.

Cross Promotion
Try to find local businesses which would be happy to cross promote your products in exchange for a plug for them in your shop. You might also be able to get flyers or brochures into the relevant press or another business’s mailout. All of these are ways of building new roads in to your business. Use Twitter and Facebook to engage with these businesses and to plan events and offers that can be shared. Track which offers work best using promotional codes. With our wedding business, Ivy Ellen, we even have different 0845 numbers in our different magazine adverts to monitor which work best.

Referrals
One of our retailers has built an offline sales funnel leading to her remote store by nurturing relationships with local tour bus companies who literally bring bus loads of customers to her door. She offers the tourists vouchers and finds they almost always spend more money in her shop than she gives away in discounts. Everyone wins. The tourists get a deal and a fun day out, the bus company has happy customers and the retailer boosts her sales. Can you think of something similar you could do in your area?

Social Media
All of these examples can be mixed into and promoted with your social media strategy thereby creating more funnels leading towards sales in your shop. Being overly promotional can drive customers away though. Engage with your customers in a meaningful way. All of these suggestions are ways of drawing customers to you without them feeling like they are being sold to. All will enhance your presence in the market place and help to further your business over time.

To get more customers to your shop, try to focus on what makes your offering important to them. Keeping this in mind, the more useful, engaging and helpful your website and social media strategy the more customers you will find beating a path to your door.

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