We love helping you come up with marketing ideas that will boost your brand! And you know what? Few aspects of marketing are as overlooked—and as powerful—as brick-and-mortar marketing.
If you really want to get more foot traffic into your store, brick-and-mortar marketing is one of the best ways to do it. Let’s dive in to discover the advantages, plus a few strategies you can use to bring new customers into your physical locations.
The benefits of brick-and-mortar marketing
These days, the tendency is to get caught up in digital marketing—which makes sense because you want potential customers to find you online and visit your physical storefront instead of your competitors.
But what happens once customers arrive at your retail locations? Brick-and-mortar marketing can work wonders to enhance the customer experience and increase your sales.
Tangible customer experience
One of the reasons why brick-and-mortar marketing is so effective is because it creates a full, tangible experience. Of course, when customers walk into your store, they’ll see your products on display. But if you’re also supplementing those displays with things like attractive signage, digital displays, and even audio, it creates an attention-grabbing, satisfying experience.
Immediate gratification
Brick-and-mortar advertising has an amazing element of instant gratification. Picture this: You’re browsing a store when a digital display catches your eye. It’s showcasing a must-have product that happens to be on sale currently.
Since you’re not shopping online, you can take advantage of the deal right now without waiting for shipping. All you need to do is find it in-store, get the deal, and get that satisfying sense of having just gotten a great deal.
Trust and credibility
Retail business-to-consumer ecommerce had an 18% market share in total global retail sales, and is forecasted to have a 1% growth rate each year. It’s no secret that ecommerce is here to stay—and that it’s a booming business. But what many marketers may not realize is that ecommerce will never beat the trust and credibility that comes with brick-and-mortar shopping.
Brick-and-mortar shopping (and, by extension, brick-and-mortar marketing) offers trust and credibility that online businesses can’t. You can walk into physical stores, pick up the products you want, and verify that they’re what you want to purchase in terms of features and quality.
Keep in mind, too, that brick-and-mortar marketing goes beyond in-store ads for products on the shelves. You can advertise your stores on billboards, at other businesses, and in other areas of your community. Building that kind of physical presence helps establish local businesses and business owners as part of the community—which works wonders to help you build trust and credibility for individual products and your business as a whole.
Local targeting and community engagement
By default, brick-and-mortar marketing is all about local targeting and community engagement. This is because most people who will see your ads will be the people in the local community. For many businesses, that means you can do some serious targeting to address specific local concerns. For example, people in Montana may not have much use for hurricane insurance. However, wildfire insurance is something that may pique their interest.
Look for opportunities to leverage specific local concerns to capture the interest of the community in which each store is located.
Wherever possible, look for ways to engage the community, too. Charity drives, community events, and sponsoring local concerts or attractions are all ways you can subtly market your brick-and-mortar business while building trust and loyalty around your brand.
Multi-channel synergy
You have opportunities to synergize when you’re building out any type of marketing campaign, whether digital or in-person. At the basic level, that means using uniform branding and messaging across local advertisements, your online presence, your social media postings, and your website.
True multi-channel marketing goes well beyond simply maintaining uniform messaging across all of your marketing materials, however. When you do it right, you can create multi-channel synergies that work very well to build engagement.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you have in-store advertisements or advertisements posted elsewhere in your community. You can create a synergy between physical advertising and mobile advertising by using your physical ad space to promote digital offerings.
In this example, let’s say that you use QR Codes on your physical ads that people can scan with their phones. The QR Code’s link takes them to a page where they can sign up for your email list. In exchange, they receive an exclusive coupon for an in-store or online discount.
That’s one way to create a multi-channel synergy, but there are many more. In fact, this type of marketing is only really limited by your imagination. Try combining physical marketing with social media, or radio ads with your online content marketing efforts, or any other combination of channels that you can leverage to reach more of your target audience.
7 effective brick-and-mortar strategies that drive revenue
The advantages of brick-and-mortar marketing efforts are clear. To get started, you’ll need marketing tools to help you out—and you’ll need some ideas for brick-and-mortar marketing strategies that can help you bring in new sales. Read below for ideas that will work with any type of business.
1. Create a positive shopping experience
According to a recent report from Salesforce, 89% of customers say that a positive shopping experience motivates them to return to the same store for another purchase. That’s what makes a positive shopping experience so important.
So, how do you do it with brick-and-mortar marketing? It’s all about paying attention to the details. Make sure signage is eye-catching and reflects your brand while conveying something enticing—like how to use a product, the advantages of a product, or another element.
You can also use exclusive in-store offers to get people to visit your retail locations. Once people experience your store (and the amazing customer service you have to offer), they’ll be more inclined to return.
2. Leverage social media to increase brand awareness
Social media marketing dovetails nicely with brick-and-mortar marketing because it’s a great avenue to help manage customer relationships. You’ll find that people often turn to social channels to post about their experiences in your stores, both positive and negative.
Use these as opportunities to learn what you’re doing well—and what isn’t going so well—and when people reach out like this, reach back. Interacting with customers on social media helps you build transparency while demonstrating that you manage customer relationships effectively.
Focus on just two or three social media channels, and use them wisely. You can increase foot traffic and word of mouth through giveaways and sweepstakes that promote your brand and offerings.
Social channels are also a great place to share links to products and offers—but don’t share any old links! Instead, create custom-branded links, which most consumers find more credible and attractive.
Learn more about creating branded links that get more clicks with Bitly.
3. Focus on retargeting campaigns
Retargeting campaigns are about reminding your existing customers of your brand and offerings. Once you’ve built awareness, they help you maintain that awareness. Digital retargeting campaigns often focus on placing ads in front of customers who have already visited your website.
In the brick-and-mortar world, retargeting works a little bit differently. You can use geotagging and location-based data to place localized ads in front of consumers in your area, or you can collect email addresses from in-store customers. Then, later on, you can send offers and reminders to help keep your brand at the front of their minds.
4. Include multiple checkout points for easier transactions
How do multiple checkout points help your marketing? Well, for one thing, they’re always a good place to put signage and place all those little impulse-buy items that people pick up at the last minute.
More importantly, however, is that multiple checkouts improve the customer experience. The simple truth is that no one likes to spend ages waiting in line. Open multiple checkout points and make the checkout process as easy as possible to provide a great customer experience that leaves consumers more inclined to return.
5. Create a customer loyalty or rewards program
It’s all in the name: Customer loyalty programs are about building loyalty and keeping people coming back. You can structure them in a variety of different ways, too. For example, a coffee shop might use a punch card system where customers buy 10 coffees to get the 11th for free. Retail stores can use points systems that allow customers to rack up points for certain dollar amounts, then exchange those points for discounts.
Customer loyalty programs work extremely well—not only because they offer a discount or perk that people want to leverage, but also because they offer something to work toward. Some people delight in racking up points or getting another punch on their card, which helps you create engagement.
6. Optimize your website for your digital footprint
Your digital footprint comprises everything your business does online: ad campaigns, social media marketing, local search marketing, etc. Think of your website as the hub at the center of it all.
When people click ads, they’ll go back to your website, and when they want directions to your store, they’ll search for you on Google—then click through to your website. Each part of your digital footprint leads back to your website, so you need to optimize your website with your digital footprint in mind.
In practice, this means unifying your branding across channels. It also means ensuring that your social channels are easily accessible from your website—and vice versa. Make sure, too, that your website has information about rewards programs and promotions, plus easy-to-access location data so that customers can easily find your retail stores.
7. Host in-store events
In-store events are the perfect way to get people to your brick-and-mortar store locations. To do it right, create a theme, like an ice cream social Sunday or a holiday-themed event.
Come up with something enticing; not just a meet-and-greet, but something tangible, like free food, a product launch where people can get promotional items, a workshop where people can learn something valuable, or discounts on items. Next, promote your event across channels, including your website, social media, through in-store marketing, and anywhere else your store has an online or offline presence.
If you spread the word effectively among your customer base (and make the event enticing enough), it can be a huge opportunity to generate sales and build familiarity and loyalty to your brand.
Getting customers into your stores the first time is the hard part. Once they’ve had an amazing experience at your store’s event, they’ll be more likely to come back for more.
Maximize success through brick-and-mortar marketing with Bitly
Looking for more ways to boost the success of your brick-and-mortar marketing plan? Bitly has so much to offer. Use it to create QR Codes that people can scan in-store, create easy-to-remember custom branded links, and more. Find the Bitly solution that works for your business to discover the possibilities.