The past two years have pushed retailers to their limits, with many unfortunately not surviving. This has also created a push towards switching to online shopping in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Reading and adapting to quick market conditions have often been the key to retailers surviving the crunch.
There’s a myriad of other elements impacting retails, such as the following:
Staffing issues due to COVID-19: With new variants emerging and rules constantly changing, it’s difficult for businesses to stay ahead of the curve. As infection rates continue to fluctuate, staff often need to be furloughed, creating problems for rostering and shift scheduling.
Expensive deep cleaning: The cost of cleaning is likely to have increased for most retailers, and they fight to keep their stores safe and hygienic to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect both staff and customers.
Less foot traffic: Due to lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and general caution, people are choosing to spend less time in crowded retail locations like shopping malls or busy high streets. Instead, they’re opening for shopping online or limiting shopping to their necessities.
eCommerce: The pandemic and various lockdowns have pushed many businesses to migrate online to survive, creating an environment of intense competition as companies fight for their share of voice. This has also driven up the cost of marketing and ads in a crowded digital marketplace.
Marketing on a budget: Marketing has become a more significant challenge for retailers because of increased online competition and tighter budgets due to lower revenues. Many retailers rely on foot traffic, but there are fewer entry barriers when that’s removed. It puts everyone from independent retailers to major chains and franchises on an even keel.
Privacy changes: Facebook, Apple, and Google are making widespread changes to privacy policies that give consumers greater control over what information is shared with advertisers. This, of course, is a good thing for consumers but makes digital marketing more challenging and less accurate. This leads to increased ad spending with lower revenues.
Supply chain issues: Keeping an accurate gauge on sales and demand is crucial for planning stock orders and maintaining stock levels. This balancing act can be challenging because retailers have enough stock and don’t miss significant trends without over-purchasing too much inventory. Additionally, the timing of orders is essential as delivery times are constantly changing due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With so many new and emerging challenges being faced by retailers going into 2022, it’s hard to see an end in sight. However, business owners should focus on customer loyalty, providing a delightful customer experience, and get creative with ways to connect with their audience.
It’s predicted that the next big thing in marketing for 2022 will be a focus on social selling, which is a great place for retailers to start targeting.
Social selling has many benefits for brick and mortar businesses, including helping you reach new audiences, boost your search rankings and online traffic, and help establish your business in your local community.
To support your local marketing efforts, Mobeo drives online traffic in-store with our suite of solutions, which can be customized to fit your individual business needs.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
The art of increasing the number of people who visit your store, whether physically or online, into paying customers is called “conversion rate optimization.”
Your conversion rate is calculated as the percentage of purchases compared to the total number of people who came into your store on a specific day.
There’s a few different tips and tricks for how to improve the conversion rate for your store:
Upselling and add-ons: Selling products in a package or complete solution rather than a single SKU. The profit margin generally comes from the second product sold because marketing expenses and fixed costs eat away the margin from the first product. Also, at the point of checkout, either the counter or at the website checkout, provide a range of commonly purchased items as impulse purchases. Another principle of retail merchandising is to place one main product with two companion products next to it, making it easier to upsell.
Staff Scheduling: The best way to schedule staff shifts is around the peaks in shopping behavior throughout the day. This helps ensure that customers receive the proper attention during these busier periods. Additionally, staff deployment to serve customers instead of tending to routines like stocking shelves or pricing is equally important. Finally, staff must be available to shoppers to encourage sales and improve conversion rates.
Staff Development & Training: Helpful sales associates who listen to customers and make recommendations can significantly boost conversions. Effectively training employees to help a shopper explore product options, ask about concerns and make helpful recommendations pays dividends. It’s always a great idea to create a collaborative environment by holding regular staff meetings to get everyone involved and on the same page. Incorporating weekly or monthly sales targets with incentives is a great way to boost morale and get staff excited. Employees are the most effective at upselling because they are on the ground, talking to customers, building trust, and making recommendations to the customer based on their needs.
Keep it moving: Reducing lengthy queues is vital because sometimes customers will avoid stores with long lines because they perceive the wait time will be too long. Unfortunately, long wait times often harm the customer experience. You can overcome this hurdle by placing registers at the back of the store or having multiple checkout counters so that there are numerous shorter lines instead of one long line. An alternative to this is ditching POS all together by going mobile.
Plan the layout: There’s proven consumer psychology at play when a customer steps into a store. These insights can be bolstered by clever retail merchandising to improve conversion rates. For example, your store’s first 5-15 feet is the “decompression zone,” whereby the customer soaks in the store environment and decides whether to continue their journey. Additionally, studies have shown that people tend to turn to whichever side they tend to drive on when they walk into a store. For example, people in the US, you’re more than 90% likely to turn right when you enter a store, whereas people in Australia, the UK, or New Zealand turn left. This means the direction that customers turn towards is your “power wall,” where you should display high-margin goods and ensure it’s well-stocked, clean, comprehensive, and easily navigated. You should also aim to remove excess merchandise from the store by having just one size of each product on the floor to keep it from looking cluttered.
As a note, if you’re starting conversion rate is truly abysmal (think 15% or lower), you should check your marketing. You may be mis-marketing your store, bringing in shoppers expecting something completely different than what you offer.
With these tips and tricks in mind, you should rethink your marketing and communications if your starting conversion rate is 15% or lower.
Mobeo provides a powerful way to utilize hyper-local ads to drive traffic in-store and pick your products off the shelves; talk to us today.
Local marketing involves businesses with a physical storefront or those who sell their products via retail stores using digital marketing strategies to target new and existing customers in the vicinity to drive traffic in-store. It’s also commonly referred to as “neighborhood marketing.”
Having the ability to target locally can be potent if executed well. This article will highlight some of the most prominent benefits of including local marketing in your strategy for 2022.
1. Cost-effective
Paid hyperlocal ad campaigns are a fantastic way to target your local audience. However, there’s also a lot of other creative and cost-effective ways to generate visibility in a local area. For example, local directories, community pages, message boards, local newspapers, or events are great ways to get your business name out there.
2. Highly targeted
Given that most customers choose to shop within 10 miles of their home, the geographic area that businesses need to focus on can be limited to that radius. This helps keep budgets down and allows retailers to focus on very clearly defined personas.
3. Attract more customers
With leaps forward in geo-targeted and hyperlocal advertising, it’s easier than ever to attract a crowd and add ‘buzz’ to your business by combining buyer intent and the customer’s location. This is one of the best ways to convert online and foot traffic into new customers because once a customer is physically close to your business, there’s a much higher chance of coaxing them into making a purchase, especially if you have introductory promotions available.
4. Smooth-out lulls
Many businesses experience peaks and troughs throughout the day. For example, a cafe might experience lunchtime rush hour but could be much quieter in the afternoon. In addition, scheduling location-based marketing campaigns helps to smooth out the flow of customers throughout the day. For example, it’s common to see restaurants or bars offer “happy hour,” which usually runs during the quieter afternoon hours from 3 pm – 5 pm.
5. Improved brand affinity
Having your local community as your audience means you will have a clearer understanding of their needs, wants, interests, and trends. This increased understanding will enable you to create marketing messages and promotions that will appeal to your community more meaningfully.
6. SEO implications
Search engine optimization and your organic search ranking are affected by many factors, but one of the most important is the number of backlinks your site has. Backlinks are external websites that link to your website. If you list your business on local directories and social media platforms, this will contribute to the number of backlinks to your site. For example, you are listing your business on Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, and other directories.
Conclusion
Local marketing has many benefits for bricks and mortar businesses, including helping you reach new audiences, boost your search rankings and online traffic, and help establish your business in your local community.
To support your local marketing efforts, Mobeo drives online traffic in-store with our suite of solutions, which can be customized to fit your individual business needs.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
Local retail marketing involves utilizing the “4Ps” (product, price, place, and promotion) to attract customers in-store and drive sales.
Local marketing is vital because it’s likely that the vast majority of retail customers live within 10 miles of where they shop, so getting brand exposure to these people is crucial.
Here are a few tips and ideas to help boost your brand awareness in your local area:
1. Understand Your Community
To connect with your community, you need to understand their needs and wants. Focus on understanding things such as:
What activities are popular in the local area?
How do people here like to spend their free time?
What is the demographic and psychographic makeup of the community?
The answers to these questions will help you create the right messaging and marketing activities.
2. Invest in Local Search Ads
As Adweek points out, 45% of all searches on Google now include local intent (i.e., finding nearby businesses), and 84% of those local searches result in a purchase.
For more information on local search, read our blog about “Hyperlocal Marketing.”
3. Talk to local journalists
Media coverage is a great way to build credibility, trust, and brand recognition. It gains a lot of visibility quickly and has the added benefit of helping build your website backlinks and improve your SEO. Thankfully, this process is pretty straightforward (albeit a bit time-consuming).
4. Consider exploring the wild side with Guerilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing is a strategy whereby a company uses surprise or unconventional interactions to promote a product or service. It’s a type of offline marketing that uses public places to get the word out about your business. If executed correctly, it can be a great way to boost your store’s visibility in a fun and creative manner. A bonus is that guerilla marketing is usually pretty cost-effective.
5. Participate in or sponsor local events
Local events are a great way to connect potential customers, the press and gain backlinks to your website. So, if something is happening in your neighborhood that you think might be relevant to your business, find ways to get involved.
6. Your team can be your greatest asset
A happy workforce is better for business. That’s why companies should strive to keep their employees engaged and motivated. The key is to hire the right people and provide ample training and competitive compensation. This leads to happier employees who feel connected to the business and will perform at higher levels, which means better retail experiences for consumers and increased sales.
7. Leverage social media
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for gaining visibility amongst your ideal audience while engaging existing customers. Have strong engagement on social media; you need to do the following:
Post content regularly, which creates value for the reader
Consider running paid ads
Use social media to help communicate your brand essence
Include hashtags to make your content more searchable
4. Leverage video
When used correctly, video provides an excellent way to showcase your brand and products. Video content should be:
Relatable: Feature people who look like your target customers and make them as relevant to the audience as possible.
Have a clear call-to-action: Mention the CTA in your video, add a link in the description or embed the link directly into the content.
Please choose the proper format and platforms: Decide which platforms to publish your videos where your target audience is most likely to see them (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Youtube…etc.). Ensure the video length and file format suit the channels you’re publishing to.
5. Focus on email marketing
Email marketing can be a highly effective marketing activity if appropriately executed. To set yourself up for success, make sure you segment your audience customers from non-customers so you can send “first-time offers” or “win-back” campaigns.
6. Run a referral campaign
Referral campaigns are a great way to stimulate word-of-mouth marketing. Again, you can determine what structure works best for your business, but essentially, the idea should be to provide an incentive for your happy customers to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family.
7. Loyalty program
Slightly different from referral campaigns, loyalty programs reward existing customers for their continued patronage—for example, discounts on subsequent visits, free products, birthday discounts…etc. Up to 77% of shoppers participate in loyalty programs and help consumers choose where to spend their money, so having a program set up will keep your business competitive.
Conclusion
Without focusing on local marketing efforts and strategies, your business can miss out on customer growth and loyalty. Local marketing is ideal for any business because it focuses on targeted marketing campaigns in a specific area. These tactics can help create customer engagement and loyalty.
As consumer experts, Mobeo understands how important local retail business is for a community. Customers want to support their local stores. We help connect the two through digital ad localization, which results in increased traffic and sales.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
As the name implies, hyperlocal marketing is a strategy focused on reaching customers in your local area who are already motivated to buy your products. This “local area” is usually a few blocks or streets around your business.
The primary purpose of hyper-local marketing is to increase face-to-face traffic to physical stores by targeting users searching “near” on their mobile devices. It also helps to promote your brand in specific locations. This is achieved by strategically placing the suitable ads in front of the right people at the right time.
When prospective customer types “coffee shops near me,” it’s most likely that they are ready to make a purchase. Reports also show that 78% of hyperlocal mobile searches result in an offline purchase.
According to Google, mobile queries for “near me” and “where to buy” grew by 200% between 2016 and 2019 alone. It shows that the majority of searchers expect Google to consider their location when serving search results.
Why use Hyperlocal Marketing?
Businesses are fast adopting hyperlocal marketing because of its powerful results, particularly those without massive marketing budgets.
Here are some of the benefits:
It makes it easy to convert local customers into paying clients.
Highly targeted audience targeting so less wasted ad spend. For example, ads will only be shown to people in your area who are interested or looking for your products.
Customers who perform hyperlocal searches have a high purchase intent.
It’s easy to set up, run and measure performance.
Great for building relationships with customers because it helps people in your area know that they can depend on you when they need a product or service you offer, which will lead to more repeat customers.
Hyperlocal ads work in real-time, which increases conversion rates because you can provide promotional offers to people nearby who are actively looking for your services.
How does Hyperlocal Marketing work?
Before you start, it’s essential to think about your objectives. For example, are you trying to get more foot traffic to your store? Build brand recognition? Acquire more customers?
Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can choose why platform to run your ads on:
Local Search Marketing (Google Ads and Google My Business)
Nextdoor Local Deals: Nextdoor enables businesses to connect with verified residents based on their neighborhood, whether a few blocks or multiple neighborhoods from the business location.
Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…etc).
SEO and localized content (SEO-optimized blogs or content mentioning the hyperlocal area, so your business ranks highest in Google search results)
In-app notifications: if you have your own mobile app, there may be an option to push notifications to users nearby or who have registered their address.
Steps To Launch:
Here are the steps to follow to launch your ads hyperlocal ads:
Identify your audience: Choose your geographic location and radius. You can then use tools like Google Analytics to get to know your audience better, such as their age range, gender, and more.
Choose your social media channels: You can choose where you want your customers to see your ads. For example, Google, Facebook, Instagram, or display advertising on other sites.
Draft the messaging and ad images: You’ll need to make it enticing for users to want to visit your store. You can do this by using an eye-catching image, having a high number of positive Google/Facebook reviews, or including a promotional offer.
Keep in mind a few triggers the ad platforms use to identify people to expose your ads to. The three triggers include:
User search queries where they mention keywords related to your products or brand
Their search history (which shows purchase intent)
Behavioral activity (places your prospects have recently visited)
Campaign Pre-launch Checklist:
Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’re ready for launch!
However, before you send your ads to live, it’s crucial to get the foundations set up first to make sure your ads perform optimally:
Make sure you’re using the right keywords in your campaigns
Target nearby events
Conclusion
Hyperlocal marketing is a great way to drive traffic in-store or to a selected store location. As we’ve seen, this form of marketing can reduce your cost-per-lead (CPL) and increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Mobeo helps increase ROI in-store and online, with our ads receiving up to 300% higher engagement statistics versus typical digital campaigns, with a lot less effort and budget. So no matter if you’re attracting new customers or working on keeping the ones you have, Mobeo has a complete solution that can be customized to fit your needs and measurable along the way.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
New technologies and the development of new communication channels have changed local marketing.
Today, instead of relying on inserts, small print ads, and banners to gain attention, we can use hyperlocal marketing techniques that target specific regions with pinpoint precision.
This type of marketing targets customers within a geographically limited area, usually a few blocks or streets, often targeting people who conduct ‘near me’ searches on their smartphones.
What are the Advantages of Hyperlocal Marketing
Reach the right audience
Advertisers who use hyperlocal advertising target consumers on mobile phones looking for products and services.
Typically, ads with strong calls-to-action (CTA) display the consumer’s phone number and current location. When the consumer clicks on the ad, the ad network receives their location details and sells the advertisement space to similar channels. This way, advertisers can reach more relevant audiences with more compelling campaigns.
Each advertiser can choose the channel mix that best fits their budget. The media mix may include conventional and local channels, small print ads, television, radio, newspapers, and pamphlets.
Connect with a larger audience
Hyperlocal ads can help small businesses reach as many people as possible within and around their business locations. Aside from reaching a large audience, hyperlocal marketing can also offer a tremendous return on investment.
Brands can sponsor local events or use local influencers to increase their exposure to people who can shop at their business on the same day. Hyperlocal digital marketing can also generate online reviews for the brand, boosting its local rankings.
Another great feature of this kind of marketing is that it drives word of mouth, which leads to increased brand recognition in the local area.
The Key to Hyperlocal Advertising is Search
Local businesses can easily target local consumers through Google, local directories, social media, and mobile marketing. As a result, consumers can engage with local brands in ways never before possible.
In the past, people looked up a business in the White Pages when they couldn’t find its phone number, or they would search through the Yellow Pages to locate a specific type of business.
Since search advertising has taken over, things have become very different in today’s digital world.
Search engines are crucial for local businesses that target a local audience but don’t have massive name recognition. With the help of search engines such as Bing Places and Google My Business, it’s easier than ever to find local businesses.
Google My Business allows local businesses to appear in two places on the first page of a Google search: Google Maps and organic Google search results.
Top Tips for a Successful Hyperlocal Marketing Campaign
To get the most out of your hyperlocal digital advertising, follow these best practices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Targeting relevant keywords is a good way for businesses to build their local SEO. You can also list your brand on multiple directories, such as Tripadvisor and Bing Places.
According to Google, people search for most information within 1km of their location. Google’s answer to this is their Neighbourly app, which organizes data the way people search for it.
Create Localized Content
Localized content can give businesses an edge and entice new customers. By making the content relevant to the customer base, it feels more personal and is more likely to attract customers.
A way to create more personalized marketing campaigns is to use local stereotypes.
As an example, summers can be stressful due to the excessive heat. Brands can make the most of the summer heat by creating and launching a campaign that promotes healthy chilled foods.
Retargeting
Businesses can use SMS, paid ads, and email campaigns containing compelling promotional offers to remarket to customers who show interest in their products.
You can also define retargeting by demographics and psychographics, such as gender, age, interests, and hobbies.
Geo-fencing
Businesses can target their ads in real-time to only people in a particular area with this technology. You can target a region as narrow as 1,500 feet, and as long as you like.
Social Media Business Tools
Both Facebook and Twitter have created small business divisions. While their approaches to reaching a business’ target audience are different, both show how brands can use their platforms to create content strategies, build a community, engage users and drive sales.
Putting it all together
Once implemented, these local strategies can help local businesses reach more customers, resulting in substantially increased profits. As a result, many brands are looking to hyperlocal marketing as the future of their promotional activity.
Those who recognize the potential of hyperlocal marketing and become early adopters will be more likely to achieve and retain success.
New technologies and the development of new communication channels have changed local marketing.