The face of retail has completely changed over the past few years, but these changes can actually enhance rather than replace the traditional shopping experience. Technology should be viewed as an opportunity to reach customers in new ways and give them more information than ever about how wonderful your products are.
To make sure you are working with, not against, the flow of progress, consider adopting some of the more approachable technologies within your retail model. You just may be surprised at how easy and effective these methods can be. Here are some ideas on how technology can drive foot traffic into your store:
Make Great Use of Social Media to Build Your Brand and Generate Leads
Lots of brands go through the effort of setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but do not really know what to do with them. Often, these accounts will go months without any activity. An abandoned account can sometimes even be a detriment to tech savvy-customers, who may feel as if your brand has suddenly fallen off the face of the earth.
Make a point to use these tools at least weekly in order to engage with your customer base. Writing simple updates can give people who have followed you or liked your page a reason to keep paying attention.
Even better, keep them visiting your page as a resource. Providing excellent content helps you pull in new customers and have existing ones share your social media activity with others, exposing your brand to more people.
Believe it or not, showing up on someone’s social media and making them excited to see your content can be an effective means of generating foot traffic. Statistics show that customers are 71 percent more likely to buy from brands they follow on social media.
There are tools that can help you send messaging and visual content that is consistent with your overall campaigns— the social media module within Social Retail’s Digital Convergence Platform is a great one, especially when combined with their comprehensive digital media management programs.
How Social Media Can Translate to Big Revenue
You can also use social media to directly pull in foot traffic. Announce limited time sales that only apply if they mention the social media post, or offer discounts in exchange for engagement, such as asking a trivia question and awarding the first correct answer with a coupon via direct message. Methods like these keep people paying attention to your social media posts and gives them a desire to rush to your store.
To coordinate all of your accounts, implement a social media dashboard that manages all of your profiles. This tool can help you keep track of what messages went where and also how people responded to them. Powerful analytics will be able to tell you which kind of posts and promotions get the best response from certain demographics.
Use Beacons and Similar Technology to Enhance the In-Store Experience
Technology does not have to mean several miles are between you and a potential customer. New advancements from companies like Apple will push notifications to customers based on their proximity to your store in general or certain areas within your store.
And for operators of chain stores, a product like Social Retail’s Digital Convergence Platform make managing all those beacons much easier (including the ability to send appealing multi-media messaging: video, text, audio etc), with cool scheduling and flexible store grouping options- all run from a single dashboard.
For instance, a group of sports fans attending a game might walk by your apparel store. With beacons, you can ping them with a special, limited-time promotion to drive their interest. You can also advertise a regular offer that will be hard to resist, like your cheap water bottle prices.
Beacons can also be used within certain areas of your store. If you have a rack of hats, for example, you can see how many people approach the rack while browsing, thanks to beacon’s analytics. Their interest in that area can help you know to stock more hats or to change the display of your store to be similar to the hat area. If they are looking but not buying, you can use beacons to ping them with a special offer and hope to drive impulse buys.
Retailers who use beacons can create a comprehensive shopping experience that is unique to every customer. Combined with visual or audio cues from in-store displays, you can use a customer’s geo data to create targeted offers or information that helps drive their urge to purchase. Custom messaging also allows you to speak directly to specific clients without telling them something they are not interested in.
Features like beacons offer rich data and fast results. Similarly, participating on social media gives you the chance to know your client base better as well as what they will respond to. Advantages like these make technology work for your brand in more ways than one.
To learn more about fantastic ways that online, mobile or digital technologies can beef up your bottom line, just visit Social Retail’s product information page.
