Retail Marketing Archives

Without the big budgets and limitless resources of their global counterparts, smaller brands have to get a little more creative to make a name for themselves.

Traditionally, small businesses have looked up to big brands and industry leaders for inspiration on processes, productivity and creativity. However, with faster decision making and less approval stages, small brands actually have many hidden advantages. When time is of the essence, they can use their speed and agility to achieve big results in a relatively short time frame.

What are the key differences between small and large retailers?

Aside from the obvious larger workforce and bigger budgets, there are a number of other differences between the inner workings of large organisations compared with small businesses.

Leadership

Larger organisations tend to have more complex management layers than their smaller counterparts. Closer relationships are able to be formed between business owners, managers and employees within a micro-enterprise.

More direct communication makes it easier for employees to interact with key decision-makers, as they are more likely to be interacting on a daily basis.

In small businesses, leadership generally has a more obvious impact on a brand’s core values as they are often created in line with the personalities and aspirations of those who run them.

Structure

Due to the more cautious nature of large companies, ideas need to be signed off by committees, sub-committees and other managerial higher-ups before they see the light of day. While key stakeholder approval is vital, bureaucracy and hierarchy can get in the way of responding to consumer demands ahead of the competition. As small businesses are usually independent, this is not often a challenge for them.

Siloing

Teams within larger businesses are able to specialise in specific areas due to the larger workforce. However, a heavy reliance on this approach can leave siloed employees unaware of what other teams are doing and what’s going on in the wider business.

This is much less of a problem for smaller organisations as the actions of individual employees tend to have a much more noticeable impact on the business.

Brand perception

Having strong associations with a brand is inherently a good thing for ingraining your company’s products in the minds of consumers. However, years of brand awareness can be lost if a retail brand is steered off track, fails to adapt or becomes associated with negative connotations.

Lesser known retailers with a relatively small share of the market are freer to take new opportunities and experiment with new concepts and ideas — whether that’s in their advertising, the adoption of new technology, or the way they work.

6 things large retail brands can learn from small businesses

#1 The personal touch

A vast majority of consumers are disappointed with the lack of personalisation they receive while shopping in-store. On average 71% express some level of frustration when their experience is impersonal.

Small retailers often have a more independent feel to the in-store buying experience, due to their ability to be less uniform than supermarkets and chain stores. Even as retail becomes increasingly digital, small brands are able to bring their personal touch online — with various CRM tools to help them.

For example, with a team of just 36, New York-based ‘Deathwish Coffee’ uses MailChimp to deliver personalised email marketing to a list of over 400,000 recipients, with messages reflecting personal preferences.

In an article by Fast Company, owner of Death Wish Coffee, Michael Brown had this advice to share; “Keep that one-on-one relationship. If you can find tools that help you create that or make it feel that way, it is powerful.”

#2 Don’t let going viral compromise on quality

The most successful viral marketing is usually a complete accident, or at least somewhat unexpected. However, a brand’s immediate response is often what determines whether it has a positive or negative effect.

Small business lesson:

When Pastry Chef and Bakery Owner, Dominique Ansel, infused his French heritage with the classic New York donut, he created what many would describe as a modern-day delicacy.

The resulting ‘Cronut’ was picked up in an article for Grub Street (New York Magazine’s food and restaurant blog), causing traffic to the bakery website to skyrocket by around 300%, with hundreds of people queuing up outside before its 8am opening time.

Because every batch of cronuts took Ansel’s team three days to prepare, they were limited to 350 cronuts per day. Instead of upscaling production at the cost of quality, Ansel focussed on maintaining his traditional baking methods to ensure the cronut secured a permanent place on the menu instead of becoming a short-lived fad.

#3 Embracing micro-influencers

Many smaller companies start their influencer marketing with micro-influencers due to their lower price tag. However, micro-influencers can have a huge impact on big retail brands too.

Small business lesson:

While it may seem counterintuitive to use an influencer with a smaller following than the brand they’re promoting, their audience is more likely to have followed them purely because of their interests. This means that after conducting research into finding the right micro-influencer, you have a more effective platform for reaching a targeted audience.

One growing retail brand who have benefitted from this method is BarkBox — a monthly subscription service for dog toys, treats, and goodies. Instead of looking towards influencers with the biggest following, many of whom may have an affinity with dogs but not necessarily a fan base of dog owners, BarkBox focussed on partnering with Instagram dog influencers who come with a guaranteed following of dog lovers.

#4 Being part of a local community

64% of people in the UK want to support local businesses and buy local products

Both family-run corner shops and multinational corporations can impact local communities in a myriad of ways. However, hidden behind a faceless logo, it’s more difficult for brands to engage with their customers in the same way.

Retail brands can replicate the more human feel of locally-run small businesses with a pivot towards more community-focused advertising such as sponsored posts on community platforms and by looking at how they can build community spirit on a national (or international) scale.

Small business lesson:

British supermarket chain, Morrisons, has made it their priority to source more local produce where possible and aims to reduce the distance that food travels to get to its stores.

Through their ‘Local Foodmakers’ search, Morrisons aims to recruit new local suppliers and ensure that more customers are able to buy products that have been grown, made, picked or packaged within approximately 35 miles of their local store.

#5 Sustainability and product transparency

42% of U.S. and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their day-to-day purchasing

With environmental impact influencing buying decisions more than ever before, smaller retailers have benefited from building sustainability into their business model from the ground up. It’s meant that startups have been paving a more sustainable path for larger brands to follow.

One of the key takeouts for big retail brands trying to replicate this approach is to build more transparency into their supply chains, explore new packaging strategies and do more to back up messaging surrounding environmentally friendly products.

Small business lesson:

Sustainable clothing company TALA, has made it their mission to cut the notoriously high energy usage and material wastage associated with the fast-fashion industry.

By partnering with facilities across the globe, TALA makes use of the very best in sustainable technologies, processes and materials. Even the tags on their clothing contain seasonal seeds and are attached with biodegradable hemp twine. This means their customers get a different plant with each tag they grow.

#6 Find the freedom to take risks

Sticking to a tried-and-tested formula may seem like the safest way to ensure that your brand makes an impact. However, there are countless examples of relatively unknown retailers and startups that have become big names overnight because they dared to do things differently.

Small business lesson:

The Dollar Shave Club may have taken male grooming by storm, but its humble beginnings were founded on taking a risk.

At the time Dollar Shave Club started out, 71% of the market share belonged to Procter & Gamble. To most people, competing with this would have seemed unthinkable, or even delusional. But not to Michael Dublin.

With a simple subscription model starting at $2 a month, as well as a marketing video in which he features putting his improv comedy to use, Dublin gave male grooming a new look and claimed 41.6% of the online razor market in just three years.

How global retail brands can gain the agility of small businesses

With Brand Activation Management, BAM by Papirfly™, you can bring thousands of employees closer together. By organising your in-store promotions, briefs and timelines through an intuitive campaign planner, global brands can empower their teams to respond faster to opportunities in their local markets.

Table of contents:

What are the key differences between small and large retailers?
6 things large retail brands can learn from small businesses

Holidays are coming. Holidays are coming.

Even during quiet periods, frantic briefing and hurried collateral creation is commonplace. So during times where there’s a much higher demand placed on marketing teams and stores, it’s important to have a plan of action.

Understanding the importance of striking a balance between speed, accuracy and the need for creative, persuasive and powerful promotions is a fine art many big retail brands have mastered.

But, that doesn’t mean that things never go wrong. In fact, most retailers face the same challenges time and again. Here, we’ve outlined 5 of the most common pressures that the fast-paced nature of retail places on teams across the globe.

How to overcome 5 key retail challenges

#1 Executing cross-platform promotion

The time, budget and effort it takes to get promotional collateral delivered can be significant if you don’t have the right tools and resources.

Let’s take a typical ‘Buy One Get One Free’ offer.

You may need to promote the offer to your database via an email, print in-store brochures or flyers, create digital signage, website banners, POS, social posts and more. But the promotion only lasts a week and the budget is limited, so how do you ensure that all stores have the correct assets, in the sizes they need, delivered on time? And avoid wastage and duplication of effort?

The answer is having a centralised creation platform where your creative templates are readily available. A single place that’s accessible by teams, to adapt, edit and create the exact marketing materials they need in sizes tailored to their needs. This is called Brand Activation Management (BAM) – you can learn more about the BAM for retail marketing solution here.

#2 Time-to-market

When there’s a trend or small window of opportunity to increase sales, time is of the essence. Teams need to be empowered at store level to be reactive and not have to rely on head office or any external agency to make decisions and deliver the assets they need.

By having pre-defined templates and locked-down elements, teams can create what they need in-line with brand guidelines and still have the flexibility they need to customise as they need to.

#3 Pricing errors and PR nightmares

When there’s a rush or mistake made before go-live, this can sometimes result in the wrong information being pulled in. Wording on a promotion may be unclear or open to interpretation, the small print may have been missed or the wrong promotion put in place altogether. There are two things that can be done in order to prevent this.

This first is to put in place digitised approval processes, but this only provides a single layer of protection. In order to give your teams extra confidence in avoiding costly mistakes, you can have your marketing creation software integrate with your PIM and ERP to ensure that all product and pricing data is up-to-date, accurate and updated in real-time. BAM offers both of these solutions in its retail marketing creation platform.

#4 React to trends, competition and season promotions

No matter how much preparation you make or how far ahead you are with your promotions, there will always be a need to be reactive:

react to competition and seasonal promotions in retail

Being able to react once again comes down to your team having autonomy and flexibility, but within a specified, agency standard design framework. With no additional skill required, BAM allows individuals and teams to create as many assets as they like with a single license cost. This means that regardless of different budgets for different store sizes, there will be a level playing field at a national level.

#5 Brand consistency

In the haste of getting promotions over the line, it can sometimes be that corners get cut to meet deadlines. On the face of it, the odd promotional poster created in the wrong shade might not seem the end of the world, but if you have 200 stores nationally all rushing to get assets ready, you could soon find yourself with a wildly inconsistent retail brand.

BAM allows you to do many things, but 2 in particular will ensure your brand is never compromised.

Firstly, you get to pre-define locked down elements in all your assets. So whether your teams are given the freedom to create videos, emails, POS, brochures or any other digital or print asset they could need, you define how much flexibility they have. You can pre-select brand colour palettes, logos, imagery and more to ensure that only on-brand, consistent designs appear online and in-store.

No matter how big a retailer grows, the way consumers think and behave should always shape the way they adapt their communications, stores and customer journeys. Consumers are overwhelmed with choice; buying decisions are becoming harder to make and shopping experiences are becoming ever-more sophisticated both in-store and online. Introducing marketing personalisation into the mix is something that was once considered complex and costly, but today personalisation isn’t just a benefit to consumers – it’s an expectation.

Furthermore, 49% say they have purchased a product that they did not plan to buy after receiving a personalised recommendation from a brand.

Think of each personalisation as an interaction, each one slowly building a relationship with the consumer. As more is learnt about the individual, their experience becomes heightened both online and offline. The brand becomes familiar, a trusted ‘face’ amongst the noise that always appears to have their best interests.

Soon familiarity turns into purchases, and as the post-purchase communication continues, this breeds loyalty. But how far exactly does personalisation need to go in order to achieve this? Where is the line drawn between meeting customer expectations and perhaps a step too far?

Creating a custom retail experience…online

When data is used responsibly – and for the benefit of the consumer – retailers can create a seamless, enjoyable shopping experience. Whether it’s building brand, making recommendations, or ‘handholding’ the customer through their purchasing journey, small yet significant touches can work wonders to make the user feel special, understood and encouraged to buy a product.

Collating information about an individual such as age, location and shopping habits can help you shape their experience. Many of these experiences are now the norm, and those who aren’t implementing them online are missing out on some great opportunities.

Here are our top 5 tips for personalising your customers’ online experience:

Personal greetings

Having a customer’s name present in your navigation not only makes them feel acknowledged, but assures them that their experience is going to be tailored to them.

Retargeting ads

Reduce abandoned purchases by giving your customers a second chance to see their desired products on other sites they visit.

Adding value through email

Send offers and products relevant to the individual, notify them when their favourite items are back in stock and send follow-up emails post-purchase to make sure they’re happy.

Use localisation

Amongst all the other data that can be collected about a user, one of the easiest to obtain is their location. Firstly, a user shouldn’t ever have to select which country they’re from – it’s simple enough to recognise and prevent them from having an additional step to reach the website. Secondly, being able to promote location-specific offers can be valuable. For example, if an area is affected by torrential weather, you might look to promote your wind-proof umbrellas on the homepage as opposed to sun cream.

Pick up where they left off

There’s nothing worse than making carefully curated selections, getting distracted and then coming back to an empty basket. Keeping products available to a user reduces the chances of them abandoning the purchase altogether.

Hyper-personalisation in retail

According to a Salesforce study, 51% of consumers expect that companies will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they even make contact. This is where hyper-personalisation will likely take centre stage, and consequently take personalisation in retail to the next level.

Hyper-personalisation uses insights from user behaviours and artificial intelligence to interpret real-time and historical data about an individual. Ads, emails, website content and in-store experiences can all be hyper-personalised with relevant content based on individual browsing history, location, CRM data and more.

It’s worth mentioning that, even though hyper-personalisation in retail can and will be incredibly effective, it’s not something that can be implemented overnight. Your organisation will need to have the right skills to hand, an effective way of centralising and managing data flow, and have plans in place for ongoing maintenance of these intricate marketing efforts.

The level of thought, planning and management is extensive, and though the results will justify the expense for many, it has left lots of industry experts asking is retail really ready for hyper-personalisation AI at all?

Creating a custom retail experience…in–store

Despite the cries of the tabloids, many retailers are managing to entice customers to their physical stores and bringing different levels of personalisation along with them. These opportunities may be viewed as restrictive compared to the digital world, but there are many ways to keep people engaged in-store. In some ways, the physical environment provides a much more effective space to convert. The customer is right there in the flesh and the marketing materials are supported by real salespeople.

Here are our 5 tips for in-store personalisation marketing:

Stores aren’t one–size–fits–all

The more you understand your stores’ locations, the greater the opportunity to enrich the shopping experience. Too often, retailers try and fail to bulk send marketing promotion materials from their head office. Harnessing detailed data such as weather reports can ensure stores present relevant promotions. But when you have hundreds of stores in locations across the world, it’s a monumental task to stay on top of this.

What many big retailers are choosing to do is put the power back into the hands of individual stores with brand activation software, which provides pre-defined on-brand templates for digital signage, printed materials and POS, so that stores can react accordingly to topical and local events.

Regularly review display effectiveness

Encourage managers and employees to walk in the shoes of customers – give them scenarios they can re-enact to test whether signage and wayfinding are sufficient. Introduce customer surveys to see whether they noticed certain products or promotions as they navigated the store and incentivise them with offers or prize draws.

Additionally, you could assess product placement by A/B testing your displays. For example, if you keep your merchandising blueprints on record, by changing it over time you can monitor how many products were purchased based on each display over a certain period and analyse why you think this could be. These are just a few ways you can help to validate your store layouts and campaigns.

Entice customers with mobile offers

Technology makes it fairly straightforward to send personalised offers or information when a customer enters your store. If they have your brand’s app installed, are connected to the store’s WiFi or they are on your SMS geofencing list, you can instantly know when they are near or in the area. How much data you hold about the individual will dictate whether you can send them a generic offer or a more personalised recommendation.

Connect offline activity to online

There are lots of different ways to introduce multichannel marketing to your customers, and two effective ways of getting physical visitors into the funnel is by introducing email-based receipts and electronic loyalty/points cards. The virtual receipts enter customers into an ‘opt-in’ email marketing funnel, while a loyalty card allows you to learn about their buying habits to further tailor your promotions.

Bring online in-store

Utilise collective data about your online audiences to adapt in-store promotions. For example, if a specific trend is selling well online in Edinburgh, it could be worth exploring this further in-store.

Importance of personalisation in retail marketing

Either bringing personalisation into your existent marketing and customer journey or elevating what you already have will only serve to help you connect even further with your audience. The perception of a retailer can switch in an instant, from a negative encounter with a sales assistant through to a discount code being invalid, every element of a retail experience – online and in-store – will shape the way people feel about your brand and your products, and ultimately whether they go on to buy them.

Brick-and-mortar retailers need to do the best they can to ensure that they can be both proactive and reactive in their in-store marketing. As previously mentioned, personalisation in retail is no longer a point of differentiation, but an expectation. And as technology becomes more sophisticated, so will the consumer.

The key to success is insight, and having the tools in place to effectively act on this insight. Brand Activation Software makes it possible for businesses to create pre-defined templates that can be tailored by employees with specific messaging, imagery and more. These marketing materials include everything from website banners, digital in-store signage, email templates, social media assets – the list goes on. Tools such as this one make the seemingly impossible task of personalisation in retail not only achievable, but simple.

Table of contents:

Creating a custom retail experience…online
Hyper-personalisation in retail
Creating a customer retail experience…in-store

Today more than ever before, it is difficult to underestimate the value of customer brand equity. It is what separates a generic local soft drink in your supermarket to Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It’s the value that a brand adds to comparable products.

Customer brand equity (also referred to as Customer-Based Brand Equity, or CBBE) relates to how your customers’ attitudes towards your brand influence the success of your business overall. If customers recognise, understand and connect with your brand, performance goes up (provided experiences are positive).

It appears a straightforward concept to understand, but building customer-based brand equity isn’t anywhere near as clear-cut. It takes a lot of effort and nurturing your audience, but the rewards for getting it right can make a big difference to your business prospects.

Plus, measuring CBBE in retail can offer valuable insights into your company’s performance and play a key role in guiding your marketing strategy.

Here, we dive deeper into customer brand equity and why it’s so valuable for companies to strive towards. This includes a breakdown of Keller’s brand equity model, and techniques you can apply to enhance your brand equity moving forward.

What is customer brand equity?

As noted earlier, customer brand equity represents how much the success of your brand is directly related to the attitudes of your customers towards it.

It’s no shock that customers play a vital role in the success of any brand or organisation – without consumers, it would be impossible for these to get anywhere. But their influence extends far beyond simply how much they’re buying into your products or services – it is as much about how they perceive your brand.

If customers have a positive association with your brand and use it regularly over your competitors, this will naturally have a positive effect on your business. Conversely, an overall negative perception of your brand by consumers will have the opposite effect.

And, with the rise in people’s ability to publicly review and critique a brand’s quality of products and service, paying attention to the strength of your customer brand equity is as crucial as ever.

In essence, customer brand equity plays a vital role in depicting brand loyalty towards your business. As acquiring a new customer is 5 times as expensive as maintaining an existing one, having a strong CBBE is likely to benefit your bottom line.

Plus, having loyal customers that understand and resonate with your brand will help generate new leads more naturally. Brand-loyal consumers are more likely to act as advocates for your services to loved ones and friends – especially valuable considering 90% of consumers claim a word-of-mouth recommendation is a leading influence on their purchase decisions.

This makes the value of your customer-based brand equity essential to the strength of your company as a whole. If this is managed well and harnessed effectively, you can make a big impression on how successful your business is operating.

Equally, an understanding of your customer brand equity can provide insight if your brand is not connecting with consumers in the way you anticipated. Identifying this can encourage a change in strategy or approaches that develop a stronger, more positive association between your target audience and your brand, leading to repeat business and loyal advocates.

Brand equity vs customer equity

Brand equity illustrates the worth of the brand, i.e. the value added to a product by branding it. Customer equity relates to lifetime values that are important to consumers.

Both are linked by a strong focus on customer loyalty, and the value of having a dedicated customer base in determining the overall worth of a brand. But, what makes customer brand equity a key focus is its direct connection to the financial impact customers have on an organisation as a whole.

Therefore, building customer-based brand equity achieves the critical aims of raising the value of your brand, while also giving insight into what your customers want and expect from your company.

The Keller Brand Equity Model

The standout CBBE model was developed by Kevin Lane Keller, a Professor of Marketing, in his 1993 book Strategic Brand Management. Through this model, Keller looked to illustrate the journey of customers’ relationships with brands – from recognition at the bottom, through to resonating with the brand at the peak.

As depicted in the above image, Keller identifies 6 components that contribute to customer brand equity, and thus how customers think and feel about a brand overall:

Salience
Performance
Imagery
Judgements
Feelings
Resonance

Here, we’ll cover these in greater detail and the role each plays in creating customer loyalty towards a brand.

At the foundation of the brand equity pyramid is salience, which represents how aware people are to the existence of your brand in general. This is the essential first step in building customer brand equity – if people don’t know about your brand, it will be hard for them to form an opinion about it one way or the other. This section carries the weight of the rest of the pyramid.

Of course, this stage is about more than ensuring people have some recognition of your brand; it must be the right recognition. At this first instance, it’s important you give people a clear, consistent and accurate depiction of your brand’s identity, as without this they will have little chance of progressing further up the pyramid.

To make the biggest positive impact on your customer brand equity at this level, you should conduct thorough research to get a clear understanding of your target audience, and what they are looking for out of a company that provides your products or services. How do they decide between your brand and another competitor?

Once you have established this, it is important that your awareness efforts:

Hone in on the pain points/interests that matter to them;
Are placed on a platform that they interact with often;
Are consistent across all channels you choose to market on.

This is your opportunity to let people know who you are as a brand and why they should know you, so presenting an accurate and authentic image of it is critical. This is why BAM by Papirfly™ is designed to maintain total brand consistency across your entire marketing collateral, allowing no room for misinterpretations.

The second level of Keller’s CBBE model is divided into two segments – performance and imagery. Performance covers the actual features and capabilities of your products/services. This encapsulates:

Functionality
Reliability
Style/Design
Price
Durability
Customer Service
Customer Satisfaction

Consequently, if your product delivers on the promises highlighted in your brand awareness campaigns, then it should lead to positive experiences which, in turn, drive customers further up the brand equity pyramid. If it doesn’t deliver on their expectations, then you risk them falling away altogether.

This is why authenticity is more than just a buzzword when it comes to customer-based brand equity – it is central to encouraging loyalty and establishing long-term relationships.

Alongside performance is imagery, which is more about how your brand meets your customers’ social and psychological needs. Think of your brand as if it were a human – what would they be like? Is it strong and tough? Is it sensible and sophisticated? Is it quirky and exciting?

Brand imagery is what people think when they see your brand. It is about how happy they would be to be seen associated with your products as a result of its reputation.

How effective this proves for you will come from initially discussing your brand values and which you consider relate to the interests of your customers. How important is the environment for them? Do they care about their local community? Finding the answers to these and other questions will help you project an image customers can get on board with.

The third strand of the customer-based brand equity pyramid is also split in two, covering both judgement and feelings. These both relate to what people feel towards your brand, and the impact this has either positively or negatively.

First, judgement is about the opinions that people form about your brand. This could be good, like if someone considers your products reliable or handy. Or it could be detrimental, as in somebody judging them to be cheap or ineffective. And while you might disagree with their assessment, they still carry a great deal of weight.

Typically, the judgement of a brand breaks down into four segments:

Quality – the brand’s actual/perceived quality
Credibility – the brand’s reputation
Consideration – the brand’s relevancy
Superiority – the brand’s status against competitors

Plus, someone doesn’t have to even experience your brand first-hand to be affected by judgements – they can form an opinion simply through word-of-mouth.

To combat the potential problems of negative judgements, it’s essential your company is responsive to any complaints or issues that customers may have. Having access to software that can quickly turn around relevant marketing materials is extremely helpful in these circumstances.

Also, if these persist, it gives you just cause to reassess your brand and if it is delivering as it should be.

The other half of this equation is feelings, which unsurprisingly covers how people feel about your brand. According to Keller’s brand equity model, there are 6 positive brand feelings that companies should be aspiring to:

Warmth
Fun
Excitement
Security
Social approval
Self-respect

While your brand might not appeal to all the emotions listed here, it should focus on at least one and make sure customers feel that when they interact with or consider your brand.

Associating your brand with positive feelings and judgements is crucial for building customer-based brand equity – it grows trust and helps form a strong, lasting relationship between your company and your customers.

Remember – eliminating negative feelings and judgements is a tall ask once they’ve planted roots, so trying to instil positivity from the outset is very beneficial.

Finally, we reach the ‘Holy Grail’ of customer brand equity – resonance. This is the stage where customers are more than just aware of your brand and buying what you’re selling – they are advocates for your brand. These are the customers who go out on your behalf to introduce others to your company.

It is unquestionably the most difficult level to reach, but it comes with the greatest benefits. In Keller’s model, he breaks resonance down into 4 categories:

Behavioural loyalty – how habitually a customer buys from your brand
Attitudinal attachment – the love and connection people feel towards your brand
Sense of community – the bond that customers feel towards others who use your brand
Active engagement – how engaged people are with your brand even when not purchasing from it (e.g. social media follows, marketing events, online chats, etc.)

Achieving resonance with customers is a tall order, but there are numerous incentives that you might want to consider to encourage lifetime loyalty with your audience:

Exclusive offers for customers who have signed up for emails
Loyalty cards
Points-based rewards
Free/limited-time experiences
Shareholder potential
Community forums
Charitable donations/events

These are just some suggestions of what you can do to achieve this rarefied level of relationship with your customers. As highlighted earlier, it doesn’t take many people to reach the summit of the customer brand equity model to make a significant difference to the strength of your brand and your business as a whole.

Measuring, managing and perfecting customer brand equity

Now you have a deeper understanding of what customer-based brand equity is and what Keller’s model represents, you can start to consider techniques and approaches to track this information and help move people onto the pyramid and up the tiers over time.

Conducting regular research into the changing trends and feelings of your audience, as well as distributing feedback surveys, can help you determine whether your brand is leaving a positive impression on your audiences. Alongside this, when measuring customer brand equity, you should turn attention to your:

Financial metrics
Brand ‘buzz’ metrics
Consumer metrics

These will give you a clearer sense of how your brand is perceived, and the impact this is having on your business prospects. By keeping tabs on these insights and focusing on the four tiers of Keller’s brand equity model, you can make a significant uptick in customer loyalty and subsequently expand your company’s bottom line.

Beyond that, it is simply a case of delivering branded materials frequently, authentically and consistently. Each of these characteristics is crucial for enhancing your customer brand equity over time, so finding ways to make this seamless and straightforward for your company should be a top priority for your marketing teams.

And that is where our team at Papirfly can help. Through our sophisticated BAM solution, we empower marketing teams across the globe to maximise the reach and power of their branding.

Table of contents:

What is customer brand equity?
Brand equity vs customer equity
The Keller Brand Equity Model
Measuring, managing and perfecting customer brand equity

Every retail marketing campaign has several steps in place to generate leads, grab the attention of customers and make the final pitch for a potential sale. Understanding the importance of every step and how to properly execute each separates businesses with the strongest bottom line from the rest.

If you run a physical brick and mortar facility, in-store marketing makes up a key component to the final step in your marketing campaign. It should function as the closer for the advertising team.

However, before you dive headfirst into in-store marketing specifics, you need a wider understanding of your marketing strategy and identify how each step leads consumers to your doorstep.

The varying steps of a full marketing campaign

In any great marketing campaign, there are several steps in play. You need to wow customers with a product or deal, promote them into visiting your store, and then close the deal by presenting the consumer with an item they simply can’t live without. With all of these important steps, how can you possibly cover it all in a single advertisement? You can’t.

Each of these different steps should receive attention in varying stages of the marketing campaign. The wide advertising net you cast initially, whether it’s social media, Google Adwords, on local television stations or even billboards, should showcase a product or service you wish to sell. You may also decide to include extra incentives for consumers to visit your store by mentioning your special offers.

The final stage of your marketing strategy should focus on customers inside of your store. The previous steps of the wide advertising approach have brought them into the store, you now need to close the deal using in-store marketing. The customer is already interested in what you have to offer, after all.

How in-store marketing is used

The customer is interested in your product. It’s why they are inside the store. So what should this final bit of advertising do to secure a sale? Realistically it should do whatever it takes to just nudge them over the edge. This may depend on your key demographic and what is important to them.

However, there are a handful of common retail marketing staples you can pull from in order to make sure each of the varying demographics finds what they are looking for using retail advertising.

Nearly every retail outlet will see at least some share of thrifty shoppers. These are individuals who only purchase discounted products or extreme deals. They will not necessarily spend much time looking for the specs of an item or what it can offer. Instead, they just want a great deal. While other consumers are interested in saving money, these individuals will only purchase the product if the deal is greater than usual. In-store advertising is needed to direct these shoppers to deals with attention-grabbing signage.

Other shoppers want the decisions made for them. They don’t want extreme choices as it may confuse their shopping ability. Due to this, highlighting the best of all available products is beneficial. For those shopping for gifts (someone shopping for someone in your key demographic), make it easy for them to understand and point out why the target audience likes the product.

Testing marketing posters

In-store advertisements, such as marketing posters, should be rolled out on a small scale initially to see what draws the attention of customers and boost conversion rates.

Be mindful of lighting, positioning and viewing angle. Does it catch the eye from where your customers will be passing? People who are looking for a deal are using their eyes to orient themselves so make it as easy as possible to identify and interpret your offer. Will they quickly understand which product is advertised and what the deal is?

How would you measure poster campaigns? The simplest way is to look at the sales figures for the relevant products before and after you make the change, but ensure all other offline and online campaigns are stable. This ensures the data is clearer to compare.

Also, training is key to maximise the benefits from an in-store campaign. The people in your store obviously need to be aware of the campaign but also know how to respond to customers who are interested in the deal you are proposing. They may also need to be ready to answer questions such as how long the offer lasts. Interacting with curious customers is also a good opportunity for upselling and add-on selling and by being aware of all current campaigns the salesperson can help the customer add more good deals to their purchase.

When you run a physical storefront, retail posters make up a key component to the strength of your campaign. By implementing storefront posters as not just a way to attract already interested consumers but as a means to closing sales, you’ll unlock the true power of retail advertising.

So keep in mind the full breadth of your marketing campaign and use each detail as a building block towards improving the foundation of your advertising presence.

Table of contents:

The varying steps of a full marketing campaign
How in-store marketing is used

Marketing and selling have taken a rather drastic turn in recent years. While advertising online has existed in some shape or form since the 1990s, social media has turned it on its head. Social media serves as an incubator for relationships of all kinds. While initially started for the primary function of connecting with friends, successful businesses fully take advantage of the selling potential found within social media.

Known as social selling, the process develops a relationship between the buyer and seller. With so much effort directed towards social selling, how can a more traditional shopper marketing campaign survive? Very easily, to be honest. It just takes some careful planning and proper execution.

The difference between consumer and shopper

Retail marketing focuses on brick and mortar retail but is not limited to in-store marketing and takes into account that the shopper and the consumer may not be the same. If the wife buys the food on her way home from work and the husband cooks supper (or vice versa), clearly the shopper and the consumer are two different people. If a child wants a new collar for the dog but the parents are buying it, there is another split between roles. This affects how the consumer plans ahead and what the shopper actually buys.

During a “store pickup” customer journey, where an online consumer is also the shopper during the initial stages of shopping, and may have been converted through social selling, the shopper who actually picks up the products at the local store may be a different person. This is where traditional brick-and-mortar sales and marketing tactics can really shine.

Upselling to the shopper by introducing upgrades and cross-selling where the shopper adds additional products to the basket before proceeding to the final checkout are tactics that can make “store pickup” a very valuable strategy. Upselling and cross-selling are not limited to interactions with a salesperson, such as “would you like a belt with those trousers?”. Displays and packaging, category management, posters and store layout all play a role in increasing the value of each customer.

Social selling needs to be an integral part of the brick and mortar shopping experience. For shopper marketing, the social part will be more targeted towards the consumer who may or may not be the shopper, while the in-store experience is 100% focused on influencing the shopper. Social selling can help the consumer direct the shopper to your stores and may even help the consumer by providing a pre-made shopping list for the shopper.

Remember analytics

One of the beautiful aspects to the Internet is all the data it provides. Analytics can provide a lot of information about the interests of consumers and the buying habits of shoppers. Using this information can help you develop campaigns that convert both consumers and shoppers.

In the age of social selling, you don’t need to completely rely on Google and Facebook to market your storefront. All you need is to properly understand your demographic and design customer journeys that cater to consumers and shoppers alike.

Table of contents:

The difference between consumer and shopper
Remember analytics

The world of retail marketing is fast paced and ever-changing. Whether it’s at the store or head office level, marketers in this industry often deal with very limited time constraints, constant adaptation to trends and increased pressure on resources. In order to introduce more effective ways to manage campaigns for retail marketing, we must first understand exactly what it is…

What is retail marketing?

Retail marketing is the tactics and strategy of promoting your business and products to consumers.

The traditional retail marketing definition – a product, at a price, being promoted and then sold from a place of business – has given way to a more consumer-focused model. And the retail marketing strategy has changed to keep pace.

Now technology sees an ever-evolving shift in what products are made available and how they’re sold, delivered and promoted. In-store marketing has become more inclusive. And retail brand marketing has developed into a dominant force.

But how do you develop a brand? And get that to market in as crowded a space as retail? Here we look at retail marketing objectives and strategy in more detail.

Why retail marketing is important

Why is retail marketing important? Because quite simply, people want products. Your role as a retail marketer is to get your products to your audience, and how you market them goes a long way to achieving that aim.

You’re not waiting for the consumer to find you. You’re bringing the product to the consumer. And in an increasingly competitive landscape where consumers are spoilt for choice over virtually every product – if you’re not marketing your products effectively, they will find alternatives.

But there are other reasons why retail marketing is valuable for your brand beyond the long-established cycle of buying and selling:

1. It helps you connect with consumers and close the sale

Consumers tend to need multiple touchpoints with a brand, and a decent understanding of the value the product brings to them as an individual before making a purchase. Retail marketing allows you to speak to consumers on a variety of levels, at different stages of the buying cycle. The awareness, education and decision stages can all be directly influenced by campaigns at different touchpoints.

2. It helps categorise products for the consumer

Marketing, like Point of Sale and digital signage, help purchasers find and buy what they need. A customer may not even know what comprises the entire range of products and accessories relating to their needs. Often they’re looking for a solution, sometimes, to see if one exists at all. Categorising products helps satisfy the problem-solution issue, and delivers the options of the right product in an easy way for consumers.

3. Provides a service to the customer

As mentioned earlier, people today can choose from a variety of places to find the goods they’re looking for. Part of what makes retail marketing important is how it presents convenient information and incentives to consumers as to why they should choose you and your products.

4. It improves the standard of living

By making a variety of goods and service available to the people at a reasonable price it improves the standard of living.

Beyond the important part retail marketing plays for individual retailers, it also plays a valuable socio-economic role. From the employment opportunities available to retail marketing managers and similar positions, to the impact the retail industry as a whole has on a country’s GDP, retail and therefore retail marketing is a powerful force in today’s world. That’s why there are university degrees in retail marketing.

Retail marketing creates a constant flow of information between the market, consumers and manufacturers. Each helps encourage the other to produce higher quality and better fitting products and services.

What is a retail marketing strategy?

Traditionally, the core of a retail marketing strategy started with the four Ps. These aspects created the foundation for your future retail marketing efforts and put a heavy focus on your products and your organisation as a whole.

The four Ps

Product:

What is the product you want to sell? The two main types are soft goods (fashion, paper products, etc.) and hard goods (household items, tools, electronics, etc.)

Price:

Pricing is key to any retail strategy. You need to cover the cost of the goods, and weigh these against your potential overheads, such as staff and shop rental. Developing a pricing strategy for your products price will typically involve discount offers and competitor analysis.

Place:

Where will you sell the product? You could operate through a distributor, online or in a catalogue. When deciding this, first understand where your customers will feel most comfortable purchasing from.

Promotion:

This is where you define how you will market your product. Technology has opened up countless new opportunities to promote a product, so it’s essential to understand your objectives and choose the right mix of channels.

That was the traditional approach. However, as time has passed, retail strategy has evolved beyond the four Ps into the four Cs. Where the Four Ps centred around the product and how to get it to market, the four Cs approach instead concentrates on the consumer.

The four Cs

Consumer (Product):

Whereas once the focus was on the product, the focus changed to the needs of consumers. Manufacturers would ask what products do people need? They built products around consumer needs.

Cost (Price):

The basics of cost are the same as in the Four Ps in that you need to cover the costs involved in bringing your product to market. But now you need to consider the customer’s perceived value of what they’re buying matches their expectations. Cost also considers how much it will cost them to switch to a competitor.

Convenience (Place):

The internet has changed what convenience means forever. You can buy online and have something delivered the same day or pick it up from a nearby store at a time that works for you. But you need to be offering your customers options that suit them.

Communication (Promotion):

Instead of one-way advertising – ‘here’s our product. Buy it because it’s great…’ – promotion becomes about having conversations with your customers and building loyalty to your brand. Customer conversations can inform brand and product development and are crucial for a long-term retail marketing strategy.

Overall, developing a well-orchestrated retail marketing plan helps provide a greater return on investment, while attracting more potential customers.

But once you have this strategy, it is vital that it evolves over time in response to the economy, new products and innovations, consumer trends and more. Many of the most enduring and celebrated global brands survived by adapting their strategies and branding over time, be it a change of slogan or logo on their various offerings to customers.

Next-day delivery becomes same-day delivery. Partnerships are created to expand existing sales channels. Your retail marketing strategy must be malleable and capable of adjusting to new behaviours, patterns and developments in order to achieve long-term success.

What are the types of retail marketing?

An extensive range of marketing channels for retailers is available to be utilised, each presenting different advantages in line with your goals. Each should be considered in relation to your means and your overarching retail marketing strategy, particularly when it comes to where your target markets are most likely to see and engage with it.

Here are some of the most common types of retail marketing:

Online and digital marketing

The mix of online marketing tactics includes everything from optimising your site for search engines (SEO), automated abandoned basket emails and utilising social media with organic posts and paid adverts to pay-per-click adverts, affiliates and content marketing.

Direct marketing

Any marketing that is designed to elicit a direct response. This is usually a sale but could be a showroom visit or a request for more information. Direct Marketing includes letters through the post, flyers and email newsletters too. Television ‘infomercials’ are even considered a form of direct response marketing.

Point of sale

In-store promotions such as posters, shelf talkers or samples are known as point of sale. You are grabbing the consumer’s interest at the point of sale.

Public relations

PR relates to managing the perception of your brand, and making positive associations and stories to your company. Digital and traditional PR work to ‘spin’ stories that put your brand in a position of authority, maintain relationships with small and large media outlets and provide expert comment on your industry.

Experiential marketing

If you want to promote your product or brand give consumers a taste of what it’s like in the real world. Samples and test drives are a good example of this, but some marketers have gone to incredible lengths to promote a product. Remember Red Bull’s record-breaking skydive from the edge of space?

Limited-time discounts

Discounts are a common tactic to get shoppers to buy. They’re also a good way to clear stock. Add a time limit to increase the sense of urgency and the fear of missing out.

Catalogues

A catalogue is great for allowing people to browse in their own time. Not only can you present products in an idyllic real-life situation, if they leave your store without buying, just hand them a catalogue on the way out. It maintains that connection, for when they are ready to buy and showcases your entire range.

Word of mouth

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools. A good recommendation often leads to a sale, or at the very least a highly qualified lead. As well as great products, deliver great customer service and a strong brand. It will help people spread the word.

Some companies formalise the word of mouth strategy with a referral scheme known as refer-a-friend. These deliver rewards for both referrer and referee.

TV and radio advertising

The more traditional channels of television and radio advertising are still useful in an overall marketing mix. Television adverts are often mirrored online through sites such as YouTube, while some companies choose to create ‘television’ adverts purely for YouTube alone.

Television sponsorships are frequently used too.

Partnerships

These are a good way of reaching another potential audience and might take the form of a promotional flyer that another company inserts into its current orders when they are sent out. Or a fast-food chain might partner with a cab company to provide a door-to-door delivery service.

We’ve looked at some tactics and below are the most common outlets for your retail marketing strategy:

Department stores – these offer high levels of customer service alongside a wide range of products and possibly a shop-in-shop model, where other brands sit within the same area of the department store.

Prices typically vary over time, and discount sales are common. In these environments, a customer has the convenience of many products in one place.

Supermarkets – once the main outlet for food, drink and groceries, the supermarket has diversified into banking, insurance and homewares.

In a competitive industry, supermarkets have huge buying power and will sell at low prices, in exchange for volume.

Warehouse retailers – usually in a no-frills environment, warehouse retailers keep overheads down and can sell a wide range of goods at competitive prices.

Speciality retailers – here expert knowledge is backed up with premium prices. Speciality products are added as part of an added value experience.

Ecommerce retailers – also known as etailers. Products are sold online via a website. These are highly convenient and can pass overhead savings, for example not having a brick-and-mortar store, onto customers. Most can ship products anywhere in the world.

Convenience retailers – smaller localised stores, often found in residential areas. These offer a smaller range of products, but at higher prices due to the nature of convenience.

Discount retailers – a variety of discounted products with low prices. Discounter retailers buy less fashionable and overstocked branded products from a range of suppliers and resell at discounted prices.

All or just some will fit your strategy, depending on where your customer is.

How to develop your retail marketing plan

Now we’ve established the basics and importance of retail marketing. To get your brand, products and services out there, it is important to consider the steps to develop an effective, feasible and unique strategy to achieve this.

Below we’ve incorporated some aspects of retail marketing best practice to consider when constructing your plan.

Develop your brand

Create your brand story and qualities
Align this with your business objectives
Develop the assets needed to communicate your brand

Define your position

Examine what your competitors are doing
Assess your place in the market – where do your products fit in the landscape?
Use customer surveys for feedback

Identify your target market

What are the demographics of your customers?
Where and how do they prefer to shop?
What needs and wants do they have that you can resolve?

The benefits of your product

Determine the USPs of your product against the needs of your customers
Develop your messaging around these key advantages your products offer

Detail your tactics

How will you promote your product?
Which retail marketing channels will you use?
Will you use advertising?

Build a schedule

Create a budget for your retail marketing campaigns
Plan out when the various aspects of your campaign will be delivered, and through which channels

Alongside these best practices, you might also want to consider these other features of effective retail marketing strategies:

Begin with a story

Every great marketing campaign begins and ends with a story.

It’s a hook designed to grab the audience and pull them in and ideally connect with a very personal emotion. When building your story focus on an individual who looks and fits into the organisation’s key demographic.

Highlight the problem, and show how your product can fix it. The stories do not need to be complex, but are there to showcase the unique advantages of your products and your brand’s distinct personality.

Understand the marketing channels available to you

There are dozens of marketing channels, ranging from social media and internet paid advertising to blogging, TV spots, internet video and word of mouth. You shouldn’t be hasty in determining which one is best suited for your ambitions.

You need to understand the particular channel before using it. The better you understand a marketing method, the stronger you become in this particular ecosystem as you learn how to best utilise the benefits offered by the marketing method.

most popular marketing channels used by businesses

You may decide to go with a specialist advertising firm to assist with this, or you may bring in a professional who knows the ins and outs. Either way, you need to understand the channels you’ll be working with ahead of time.

Unite your messaging

When you advertise across multiple marketing channels and in numerous locations, it’s crucial to have a strong unifying message. Your messaging needs to be consistent down to the individual product level.

How you position your products across all your marketing channels needs to be consistent with regards to pricing, brand logos, technical specifications, as well as additional text and images.

In this connected world, customers will find you out fast if you can’t keep consistent.

Let branding do the selling too

It’s best to focus on branding, and connecting customers with the brand, as well as selling the product. By telling a good brand story too, you’ll be in a stronger position and you’ll get more engaged and loyal customers in the long term.

How to build a retail brand

Brand value increases exposure and goodwill toward your company. As your brand value grows, your business becomes a more valuable commodity, as more people recognise who your company is and what you stand for.

The value of your brand, also referred to in some cases as brand equity, is generally identified as the amount of money the business makes when compared to a similar product with a generic brand. In other words, how much more (or less) money does your company make due to its branding.

What is retail brand activation?

Brand activation is the process of making a brand a popular, trusted household name. It’s crucial in developing a positive connection between your brand and your audiences. First impressions count.

You may find product samples in stores, pop-up shops in high streets or more complex experiential events. It’s as much about an emotional engagement with consumers as it is putting a new product or brand in the hands of potential buyers.

Here you’ll showcase the core features that make you stand out from the competitors. You’re creating your brand positioning. Doing this effectively and consistently results in greater customer loyalty, as long as their values match your own.

Also consider:

Marketing and creative that engages with an audience on an emotional level. Get them to believe in your brand.
Timing – engage your customers at a time that’s right time for them.

Achieving brand consistency

In everything you do, your brand identity should remain consistent throughout the entire company. However, building brand consistency can prove difficult, especially for new companies searching for an audience. Here are several ways brand consistency can be realised as part of your retail strategy.

Create a brand guide

Every brand needs to have a clear voice and identity. It’s what the company stands for and what gives it personality. However, unless you have this clearly defined and established, your company will lack brand consistency. This is why creating a brand guide is necessary.

The brand guide should outline what personality the brand has, the brand’s identity and what sort of character your brand has. All of these traits should receive a clear identification as soon as possible. This way, you can determine your brand’s voice, which will guide a lot of your retail marketing efforts. Generally, your brand guide will fall in line with your key demographic, yet customised for your unique values and objectives.

Once you have created a brand guide, use it for every bit of marketing material, social media post and in-store display. Ask yourself if it fits into the brand guide. If it does, good. This helps build brand consistency. If it doesn’t, adapt the material until it does.

Evolve with the times

It might sound counterintuitive, but your brand needs to evolve. This doesn’t mean dropping all your products and completely changing the services you offer. Instead, evolving your brand identity simply means keeping your company vibrant and current.

Companies evolve their brand identity all the time.

If you look at the history of the Lego logo as one example you’ll find 13 versions since the company began in 1932.

And Lego is certainly not the only brand to reinvent itself – Apple, Burberry and Stella Artois among others have all reinvented their brand. There are many examples and the reasons behind it vary from facing bankruptcy to wanting to appeal to a new generation of consumers.

By constantly revisiting the brand guide and refreshing it when necessary, it is possible to not only stay current, but it allows your business to continue to stand out in your industry. Just make sure everything you produce and all marketing material is consistent with your brand identity.

When you establish a clear brand identity, it allows you to build brand consistency and use this to inform any retail marketing campaign.

Use social media to build a retail brand

Social media has become a powerful way of communicating all elements of a brand to today’s consumers:

2019 worldwide social network sites ranked by active users

The best retail marketing ideas should incorporate a mix of social media techniques:

Don’t stick to a single channel

Customers use more than one channel. You should too.

Use social to support existing campaigns

As well as the obvious advantages of reaching out to new audiences, using social to support existing campaigns will help create a seamless brand experience for your customers.

Use social media for feedback

Social media channels offer great opportunities for gathering feedback about products and testing new ideas.

It’s a great customer service tool

Some customers will only use social media to contact your business. Develop the customer service side of it, to ensure their experience is as good through social as it would be if they phoned.

Get customers to share

A huge advantage of social is the ease with which customers can share their positive experiences. A photo for example, of them happily using a new product. Use them as your advocates.

Listen for trends

Social media channels are where people chat. Look for trends in your market, or about the products you are selling. It’s also a great opportunity to hear what customers are saying about your business.

Use social shopping

People can now buy directly through social media. Make sure you’re on board with this to maximise your business’s sales potential.

Retargeting

If someone comes into your shop or visits your site but doesn’t purchase, it’s possible to retarget them through their social media pages. Like social shopping, it’s all part of the marketing mix.

What does brand equity mean in retail?

The principle here is that well-established brands, those with a good reputation, are more successful.

Brand equity is important. It affects both the user experience and your potential customers’ confidence over making a purchase from your company.

Retail brand value

Brand value allows a business to charge more for the brand name, and it generates more interest as consumers want to be part of your brand. As your own customer brand equity grows, so too does your ability to increase profits over the competition.

However, as a company, you must first identify and agree upon a way to define your own brand value, in addition to how to measure growth.

Define your brand values

Do not confuse brand value with brand values. The values of your brand are what your company stands for.

It is important to have clear brand values established ahead of time. This way, you can define your retail brand’s value while maintaining core values. Core values are often a prime motivation for customers to engage with your organisation. They like that you provided quality products at affordable prices, or that you donate a portion of proceeds to a local charity, or that everything is made with locally sourced materials.

As brand value grows, and you shift your core values, it will affect brand equity. Increasing the prices of your products, as an example, may negatively impact the way customers saw you as an affordable option.

Brand valuation methods

Your business needs to determine not only how to define brand value for the company itself, but also how to measure it.

The income approach brand valuation, also known as in-use approach brand valuation, looks at predicted future net earnings and connects it to the brand in order to establish a retail brand value.

In other words, it forecasts future sales. You’ll also have your forecast to use as a measuring tool.

Market-based brand valuation occurs when you compare your brand against others on the marketplace. You would be looking at, for example, transactions, prices for similar products and client growth.

You then measure brand value in comparison to the competition.

Cost-based brand valuation looks at the costs your business has accumulated since it started. It looks at how much it would cost to replace the brand.

You’d be aiming to have revenue greater than the cost of creating the brand.

More retail marketing tips

Have a local appeal – customers want to feel special, and that their unique needs and pain points are being met by your brand and its products. Even if you don’t have a physical store location, you should still be making efforts to localise your marketing to connect on a deeper level with consumers. Employ location-based marketing techniques, such as targeted adverts and discount codes for users in select areas, to drive traffic directly in your local markets.
Create a unique in-store experience – more and more people shop online for its convenience, but nothing beats a friendly face when they come into your store. Get inventive with your retail marketing efforts here, as customers are only a few steps away from a sale. Experiential marketing can be particularly effective, whether it’s sampling sessions or free trials of products, it can greatly enhance their experience and how they view your brand.
Retarget online customers – customers who don’t purchase can be retargeted through advertising and social media
Use online data for agile retail marketing – When your customers shop with you, you build up a profile of information, such as their personal details, buying habits and browsing history. As you amass more insight, your digital marketing and website messaging can be tailored to create a more personalised experience for individual consumers.

How to do retail marketing well – your template

Effective retail marketing requires a good amount of initial research. That would include data that helps you understand the market for your product, including a SWOT analysis, a competitor analysis, understanding the demographics of your audience and where they are buying. Are there any trends? Are there areas where other companies have been successful or failed? The more you have at this stage, the more you have to work with.

Based on the data you’ve acquired, you should have a good idea as to what sort of product or service to highlight in your upcoming marketing campaign. You’ll also uncover other attributes including key demographics and what marketing channels generate the highest return among these audiences.

With a wealth of information provided off the back of your analytical data, you have a strong foundation to produce a functional, successful retail marketing plan.

You just need to generate a template for documenting what works, what doesn’t and how you can evolve the plan over time. Here are a few suggestions on creating that marketing plan template:

Target customers – consumer profiling

There’s a good chance your company has a few different key demographic consumers. Or, you may be interested in attracting a new demographic to the company.

Identify the target customers. Create a customer profile, regarding their age, income level, gender, character traits, interests and everything else you might need to put a real face behind the target customer profile. This step should be an essential part of each of your marketing plans, always placing the consumer, their characteristics and their needs at the heart of everything moving forward.

USP

Your unique selling proposition helps separate your business from the competition. Basically, it’s what special feature your brand delivers that nobody else does. Are you the fastest? Are you first? Whatever it is, say it loud and say it often.

Many companies fall short here, placing their focus on generic benefits over something that genuinely makes their business unique.

Expenses and projections

Where possible make projections for expenses and don’t lose sight of costs. Your budget may be the most crucial part of any retail marketing plan. It will inform where and how you advertise.

Measure success

An often overlooked part of any retail marketing plan is taking time to reflect on the areas that did work, and what fell short of expectations. Testing and refining are crucial in finding the successful formula, so ensure during and after each campaign, you devote time to analysing where improvements can be made.

In addition, define what success means for your company at the start of the process and build milestones throughout to keep you on track. This presents a benchmark for your marketing efforts, so you’re aware if changes are required to achieve the goals you have set out to accomplish.

Great retail marketing ideas for retail stores

In-store events, such as book signings or book clubs, can be promoted through social media and email.
Leveraging employees to share information about the store through their own social media channels.
Taking advantage of channels like Instagram Stories, which allow you to show off certain aspects of your store in an informal manner.
Price discounts are a fast way to increase sales and get people through the door. Most customers these days expect some kind of sale.
Get their attention by creating a brilliant window display. Use it to promote your sale.
Many high-street stores promote loyalty programs. It creates returning customers, but in some cases retailers can even maintain a higher price on their products as customers return to spend their loyalty points.
Stock products made locally. It’s a great selling point and you can align your brand behind supporting your local community.

PIM – Product information management

You’ve developed the brand, created the strategy but your business will still need to implement and managing processes at each stage of your customer’s journey, including the eventual purchase.

Bigger opportunities mean more challenges, especially when it comes to product-related content. The strategic opportunities of new lines may not include the practical reality of getting those products online, into shops or within catalogues.

Who’s making sure that the descriptions are accurate from a technical (and legal) point of view? Perhaps most importantly from a marketing perspective, with so many products to list and lots of people involved in content creation, is your central brand message in danger of becoming muddled or diluted? And how do you make sure your marketing is using the correct pricing?

This is where your product information management (PIM) strategy comes in.

At heart, it describes a set of processes and tools to help you stay in full control of the information linked to your product lines. Getting it right enables you to make your whole content creation process much more efficient, and promotes a stronger, more accurate and more compelling marketing message.

Why do I need PIM?

From your buying or product development department, via marketing and customer queries, and right through to order dispatch, your products are essentially on a ‘journey’ as they pass through your organisation.

Unless the right information about these products is presented to the right people at the right time, that journey can become needlessly protracted. Here’s how:

Governance

Multi-channel marketing and sales are now part of the marketing mix. Tone and content may alter to meet the needs of different channels, but with multiple sales platforms to manage, there’s a risk of straying from important product information. So it’s useful to have a central hub for core information about the product for your people to draw on – along with channel-specific guidelines.

Flow of information through the company

Where information is fed into a single source, you don’t have marketing teams sitting on their hands waiting for technical information from the product development department. They can access these details immediately and independently to greatly reduce turnaround times for marketing to reach consumers. Plus, it offers a valuable platform for collaborative working with employees who may be based remotely.

Flow of information to the customer

Having access to managed product information makes it easier for your marketers to tailor advertising and marketing materials to your various audiences. This allows you to showcase particular features or particular product variants to groups based on how receptive they will be to these aspects, supporting your personalised marketing efforts.

Retail marketing trends

When you’re creating your marketing plan think about these trends in retail marketing.

Only 5% of retailers focus on Gen Z. However 60% still target millennials.
Be vocal about social issues. Most retailers think it’s a risk worth taking and that there are inherent risks with sitting on the fence.
Be varied with your use of discounts. People seek deals, especially those shopping on mobile. Retailers will offer exclusive discounts to mobile users.
Invest in voice search. Many retailers believe it’s the way of the future.
Retailers will use more exclusive products and offers to compete in the digital space.

You may also want to improve on the basics

Ensure you comply with GDPR and the EU ePrivacy Directive
Differentiate your brand
Improve the shopping experience

Whether it’s retail digital marketing or in-store marketing, paying attention to these trends while shaping your strategy will make it more likely you see rewards for your retail marketing efforts.

Retail marketing during COVID-19

In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, few sectors have felt both extremes brought on by this crisis like the retail industry. From the immense pressure placed onto supermarkets and other essential organisations, to the reduced traffic experienced by high street shops and fashion lines, 2020 has brought unprecedented challenges to this sector.

When discussing the retailers’ response to COVID-19, there’s a greater emphasis than ever on keeping engaged with customers at this time of confusion and misinformation, investing in digital channels and producing content that resonates with audience’s pain points and changing behaviours in these unique circumstances.

While there is the temptation for those with reduced activity to take their foot off the gas, we firmly believe now is the time to focus on innovation and adaptation. By taking these strides, retailers will be in a stronger position to maintain customer loyalty in this difficult period and perhaps form connections with new audiences both now and beyond this crisis.

So, why retail marketing?

In its simplest form retail marketing is the process of getting your product or service in front of the audience. The immediate benefits are more sales, which are crucial for the survival of a business.

Retail is experiencing a transformation too. People want the experiences to be more personal. Providing brilliant customer service distinguishes you. Great branding inspires confidence and it all has the power to result in repeat custom.

Some of the strategies and techniques available to the retailer are listed here, but when it comes down to it, the sky (and budget) is the limit with developing ideas that get your brand to the top in this noisy world.

A well-defined marketing mix, delivering the right message at the right time, to the right people is a recipe for success.

Table of contents:

What are the key differences between small and large retailers?

Leadership

Structure

Siloing

Brand perception

6 things large retail brands can learn from small businesses

#1 The personal touch

#2 Don’t let going viral compromise on quality

#3 Embracing micro-influencers

#4 Being part of a local community

64% of people in the UK want to support local businesses and buy local products

#5 Sustainability and product transparency42% of U.S. and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their day-to-day purchasing

#6 Find the freedom to take risks

How global retail brands can gain the agility of small businesses

How has the pandemic shaped retail?

Will things ever go back to normal?

Why agile retail marketing is needed

The consumer mindset shift

How retailers can respond to changing demands

Agile retail marketing: frequently asked questions

How has the pandemic shaped retail?

Will things ever go back to normal?

Why agile retail marketing is needed

The consumer mindset shift

How retailers can respond to changing demands

Agile retail marketing: frequently asked questions

How to overcome 5 key retail challenges

#1 Executing cross-platform promotion

#2 Time-to-market

#3 Pricing errors and PR nightmares

#4 React to trends, competition and season promotions

#5 Brand consistency

Creating a custom retail experience…online

Personal greetings

Retargeting ads

Adding value through email

Use localisation

Pick up where they left off

Hyper-personalisation in retail

Creating a custom retail experience…in–store

Stores aren’t one–size–fits–all

Regularly review display effectiveness

Entice customers with mobile offers

Connect offline activity to online

Bring online in-store

Importance of personalisation in retail marketing

What is customer brand equity?

Brand equity vs customer equity

The Keller Brand Equity Model

Measuring, managing and perfecting customer brand equity

The varying steps of a full marketing campaign

How in-store marketing is used

Testing marketing posters

The difference between consumer and shopper

Remember analytics

What is retail marketing?

Why retail marketing is important

1. It helps you connect with consumers and close the sale

2. It helps categorise products for the consumer

3. Provides a service to the customer

4. It improves the standard of living

What is a retail marketing strategy?

The four Ps

The four Cs

What are the types of retail marketing?

Here are some of the most common types of retail marketing:

Online and digital marketing

Direct marketing

Point of sale

Public relations

Experiential marketing

Limited-time discounts

Catalogues

Word of mouth

TV and radio advertising

Partnerships

How to develop your retail marketing plan

Develop your brand

Define your position

Identify your target market

#5 Sustainability and product transparency

42% of U.S. and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their day-to-day purchasing