Marketing a small business means making tough choices when it comes to dividing your budget across campaigns.
It’s tempting to focus only on what you think will be the highest-ROI strategies, but it’s important to diversify your approach to make sure you’re reaching your target audience.
You want your customers to love your brand, regardless of how they shop. In-store? Online? Who cares, as long as they keep coming back!
In reality, it’s not a question of whether to prioritize in-store or online shopping; it’s all about creating a magnetic shopping experience. Most shoppers are using both channels on a regular basis, as well as mobile and social media. You need to be sure that wherever they go, they’ll have the best possible shopping experience.
For shoppers, the holiday season is best described as joyful chaos. We all love a good family gathering and an excuse to overindulge in food and fun, but these festivities also tend to bring a flurry of shopping and rushed decision-making.
Your customers are feeling the pressure to buy the right gifts and deliver a flawless holiday celebration. To do it, they need your help.
Data can tell you a lot about your online customers: what products they view, which purchases they make, and what their wildest hopes and dreams are. (Okay, we’re not quite there ... yet.) But many brands are flying blind when it comes to understanding their brick-and-mortar customers.
This doesn’t have to be the case. With a few changes to your physical store, you can start gathering data similar to the kind your online store automatically provides, which will allow you to create personalized marketing for in-store customers.
Every retailer counts on strong sales during the holiday shopping season. But small businesses can’t always count on a major advertising budget to compete with the retail giants like Amazon.
However, whether you have one store or 100, you can delight shoppers by giving them a memorable shopping experience and personalized service.
With so many online shopping options and so much social media out there, it’s easy to get distracted and forget just how important brick and mortar is to your business. With all that constant competition for attention, it takes more than the old retail playbook to attract visitors to your physical store. You’ve got to consistently reach out and experiment to keep growing.
Your customers want quick, responsive customer service. But the expectation of prompt customer engagement can be a burden on your limited resources.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands like Glossier and Warby Parker have become huge success stories by going outside of traditional retail channels and focusing on online sales.
Don’t let the Debbie Downers discourage you; it’s an excellent time to start a boutique retail brand. Small businesses now have unprecedented access to technology that can help them connect with customers like never before.
You’ve built up a steady flow of customers (congrats!), but you need to keep them coming back so you can keep growing. Inspiring and retaining those customers has big implications for your brand’s future success. But how do you do that, exactly?