Retail Traffic
When you talk to a retail store owner about their needs one theme is constant. Every retailer is looking for ways to bring more traffic to their location. As our world has shifted and changed over the last few decades the competition challenge has gotten bigger and more complex. Most retailers will tell you that they have been losing customers over the past few years.
Why?
In following the Wal-Mart model, many retail companies are offering a much larger breadth of product selection. That creates more competition for the smaller, niche retail stores. We no longer have to go to the butcher for our meat, the grocer for our grocery staples, the hardware store for light bulbs and nails, the pet store for our pet supplies, and the electronics store for our electronics needs. Using light bulbs alone, it is obvious why footsteps are harder to come by! They can be purchased at general merchandise stores, big box discount stores, grocery stores, drug stores, convenient stores, dollar stores, office supply stores and dozens of online retailers.
The independent retailer has to get smarter and better to remain relevant. I know this sounds extremely cliché, but you really have to think ‘outside the box’ to capture more customers. The following is a short list of some local marketing ideas to bring in footsteps.
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Connect with a community charity
- Social responsibility is a very hot topic right now. Hopefully it will continue to be a hot topic as a regular course of business. Identify a charity in your community that you can partner with. Hold a special event or series of events to support that charity. It would make sense to choose a charity that would be logical for your business. For example, if you are a restaurant you may want to partner with the local food bank. If you are an apparel store, you may want to partner with a local charity that helps families who have clothing needs.
- The community loves businesses that give back. This will generate a great deal of good will for the charity you champion, for your store and the icing on the top is that you will feel great about the alliance!
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Get students involved with your store and the parents will follow
- Donate one of your display windows to the local high school. Allow them to come in and decorate the window in the school’s colors and theme using your products. The kids will love it and they will want their parents to see what they have done.
- Go a step further and turn this into a contest where you have different groups of students decorating your window each week/month and the customers come in and vote on the best window. Now the students will be sending people your way to vote on their window!
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Have a coloring contest for the elementary school children. Make your brand/logo part of the contest!
- Set a specific time frame where you will hang the children’s pictures up in your store to be voted on. Create an event environment for that day/time frame to really make it memorable.
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Create or join a Facebook or Linked In group.
- Scan the groups that are available in your area on Facebook. There are some fantastic business owner groups and event announcement groups in my neighborhood. Get connected and start having conversations and making alliances with other businesses in your community. It is amazing what that type of networking can do for your store!
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Sponsor a little league sports team
- Another fantastic way to bring footsteps into your store is by sponsoring a little league team. Parents love to frequent the businesses that make their children a priority. Besides, it just feels great to be part of sponsoring a youth team!
This is just a small list of ideas that you can use to drive footsteps. The world is changing and as a result our marketing strategies need to change to remain relevant.
Happy Selling! And as always, I am here to help!
Engaging Retail 