Imagine the road that people walk through to reach your retail store. What comes to mind? A concrete road strong enough to hold the weight of your potential customers. Flyers listing your business lying idly on the floor and a few posters stuck to the lamb post. And wait, is that a billboard running your ad? What a good retail advertising strategy to pull in people.
But if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar store, we have another road for you. This one is not physically present but rather an online one. It begins when a person becomes aware of your online store and paves itself when they’re hit with promotional material, leading to your store.
You must have already guessed, but the road we’re talking about here is none other than retail advertising. Let’s cover it in detail with this blog.
Retail Advertising: The Road to Sell
Retail advertising is the process through which advertisers promote retail services and products with the aim of driving traffic to their stores. It doesn’t matter if you have a brick-and-mortar store or an online e-commerce store. If you have a product or service waiting to reach its customers, retail advertising could be for you.
Effective retail ads often highlight new product arrivals, collections, upcoming sales, special offers, and discounts to attract more and more customers.
The goal here could be –
- building awareness by showcasing your products,
- increasing sales by highlighting a sense of urgency, or
- simply positioning yourself as a reliable business.
Let’s think of a few different scenarios. First is where you just launched a new e-commerce store. At this stage, your priority is most likely to build brand awareness. In the second scenario, Christmas is just around the corner, and you’re running the biggest sale of the season. What you need this time isn’t awareness; it’s sales. The way you present your ads and the customers you’re going to target will be different in both cases. You’ll find a lot of retail advertising examples that work the same way.
In the long run, retail advertising can really help your business stand out and ramp up your profits.
Is Retail Advertising Worth It?
Asking just the right questions. Why invest your efforts in trying to work out different strategies and tactics if the result isn’t something you desire? Let’s walk you through the benefits of retail advertising so you can decide this for yourself.
Display your products and services
Getting the word out about what you have to offer is the first and constant step for every business. As a retailer, you get to showcase your products and highlight the best features and benefits. Brand awareness works wonders in the long run. The better your product looks and the more someone sees it, the likelihood to buy it increases.
Create an identity for your brand
Through advertising, you can create a distinctive identity for your brand. What colors do your brand associate with? What kind of personality does it have? What tone of voice does it use? This is where you have to set yourself apart from competitors and offer an exclusive experience to your customers.
Meet customers where they are
We’re not talking about meeting your customers in person (although that could be an option, albeit a creepy one). What we’re actually talking about here is meeting your audience at every step they take toward your business. These stages can classify your audience based on awareness, interest, intent, consideration, and decision. Every ad you publish for a stage will differ from the previous one.
Tickle customer interest and curiosity
Customer interest and curiosity go hand in hand. If you target your ad to someone based on interest, curiosity about your product is sure to follow. But even if someone’s not interested, you can use a variety of tactics to pique their interest. Having a good hook, compelling narratives, and crispy visuals in your ads can effectively tickle your audience’s interest and curiosity.
Make conversions and sales
Isn’t this what we’re really here for? Making conversions and sales is something every retail business hopes to achieve. Retail advertising allows you to target audiences at various stages and personalize ads for each. Using the best set of strategies can highlight all the special discounts and offers to multiply the number of conversions and sales you get.
Safeguard customer loyalty
The last thing you want to do after a successful conversion is to let your customer go. To keep them coming back for more, you need to maintain a consistent presence throughout. What you can do here is cross-sell and upsell. Offer other products that you think they might like, or try to sell them a premium version . You can also use personalized offers, loyalty, and cashback programs to lure them back in.
Types of Retail Advertising: Which One to Pick?
No two types of advertising are the same. They require different channels, different promo materials, and different strategies. But which suits your business the best? The perfect key to unlock the door of success? Let’s discuss the two major ones in detail.
Traditional Advertising
Not all is lost when it comes to traditional advertising. It still does an amazing job in many aspects. If you have a physical store, you can connect with and drive local audiences there. You can also reach consumers who aren’t very active on the internet. Moreover, traditional retail media advertising helps you create interactive campaigns. Engaging with your potential customers on a face-to-face basis does wonders for understanding them better.
Here’s what it covers:
- Billboard Ads
- Print Ads (newspapers, magazines, direct mail, posters)
- Flyers and Circulars
- In-Store and Window Displays
- TV and Radio Ads
- Physical Catalogues
- Telecalling
You need to decide if these ads are actually worth your budget. They’re viewed by all, regardless of whether they have the intent to purchase. Most are very generic and hard to personalize for different audiences. Solely relying on them won’t be cost-effective in the long run.
Digital Advertising
Digital advertising is the thing of the present. Everybody’s doing it, and for good reasons, too. It allows you to reach the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Whether your store is online or physical, you need online ads that lead people to it.
Here’s how it works:
- First, you research the market and audience.
- Next, you determine your long—and short-term goals.
- This is followed by deciding your advertising channels and creation strategies.
- Once done, you’re all set to create your ads. This is where you need to include compelling words and visuals, and personalize them for your audience.
- When all your creatives are done and approved, it’s time to launch them. If there is a targeting criteria, set them in a way that aligns with your audience.
- Let it live for a few days and track your results. Keep optimizing areas that need improvement.
Retail Advertising Strategies to Look Out For
This is where it gets interesting. There are a bunch of strategies available for retail businesses to promote their products. Both online and offline work, but there’s an important factor that you need to decide. Which ones are the most suitable for your business, and how can you combine them with other strategies to make a perfect set?
Let’s first examine all the strategies that are cult favorites among retail businesses these days.
Tune into PPC Advertising
Who doesn’t want quick and targeted reach for their business? Retail being a crowded sector with several stores competing for attention from the same people makes this extremely tough. But imagine being able to reach your target audience and analyze how they perceive your business without much hassle. That’s the dream most businesses achieve with PPC.
PPC or pay-per-click advertising is a strategy where businesses pay to have their ads appear on search results or on web pages where relevant people can see them. Advertisers bid on keywords that audiences are most likely to search for, and the one that wins the bid gets to display their ad.
Here’s how it can benefit your business:
- Target ideal customers based on demographics, location, and online behavior
- Advertise locally
- Get better-qualified traffic and leads
- Engage in relevant users
- Analyze campaign performances and optimize in real-time
Many advertisers have now started to collaborate with ad networks that make retail advertising ten times easier.
Socialize with your audience
Retail stores are winning on social media. From fun reels to informational posts, they know enough tactics to impress and entertain their audience there. So to stay in the race, you need to do the same.
Social media promotions can help you:
- create a fan following for yourself
- find direct contact with your target audience
- have some influence over them
You can promote on social media platforms in two ways: by building your presence and engaging with customers or by running ads. When you build your social media presence, you need to put your retail business at the forefront. How does it serve people? Interact with them? The personality of your brand should be reflected in what you post on social media.
Another thing to try out is running ads. It works similarly to PPC by offering a variety of targeting options. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr- where can’t you advertise?
Stay in touch with Emails
As a retail business, you definitely want your customers to keep coming back for more. Emails allow you to form a sort of direct contact with your customers and send out promotional messages to keep them hooked. And if they aren’t hooked yet, you can do that too!
Try out:
- Newsletters: to keep customers informed about news and updates
- Lead nurturing emails: to turn leads into customers
- Engagement emails: to keep customers engaged through valuable content such as blogs and videos
- Cross-selling emails: to attract back customers with new catalogs
- Reminder emails: to inform about abandoned carts and limited-time offers
When it comes to emails, three things matter the most: the subject line, value of the content, and frequency capping. Your subject line should be catchy enough for users to open your email. Content should provide value to the customers and deliver what the subject line promised. Frequency capping should be moderate to avoid possible spam.
Remember that the best emails are always the personalized ones. Make sure to address your audience well!
Partner up with Influencers
You’ll be surprised to find that there’s more to influencer advertising than just the follower count.
Suppose you’re a boutique selling leather shoes. Now if you wish to partner up with influencers, who would you go to? Most likely a fashion or shoe-obsessed influencer, right? The reason behind this is because that’s where the audience you want to target is. You will become more trustworthy and sell more if such an influencer vouches for you.
But the real issue is.. who is the right influencer?
Consider factors like:
- Their niche, reach, and authenticity
- Style of content creation (and whether it aligns with your values)
- Who the followers are
- Number of active followers and type of engagement they get
- Their charges (are they reasonable?)
Once you find the right influencer, make the best ad creative and roll it out to their followers.
Turn to Offline Promotions
If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, building an offline presence is definitely a type of retail advertising you need.
Print out your promotions
While online ads are the real deal right now, print ads can still be a great addition to your strategy. Advertising via billboards, magazine ads, newspaper ads, and catalogs works well in attracting the attention of locals and less-offline customers.
In-store displays
In-store displays are less about promoting your business and more about creating a cozy environment for your customers. Pop-ups and shelf talkers displaying the services you offer, business hours, upcoming and current sales, and price discounts are meant to catch shoppers’ attention and encourage them to buy.
Billboards, TV, and Radios
If you want to go all, billboards, TV, and Radios are your best bet. You can utilize local TV channels, OTT streaming platforms, radio shows, and location-relevant billboards to promote your retail store.
Conclusion
And that’s a wrap! .. Or is it really? For you, this blog about retail advertising is just the start. There’s still a road to be built- starting with deciding if it’s even worth it. And if it is, what strategies are going to work the best for you?
To be fair, there’s no answer to this when you’re just starting out. The whole process will involve a lot of trials, errors, and optimizations. So keep on going until you find your retail store on the receiving end of better results.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is retail advertising?
Ans. Retail advertising is a strategy that promotes businesses that directly sell to customers. You create strategies to advertise products and services, and deliver them to the right people through multiple advertising channels.
How can I benefit from retail advertising?
Ans. Retail advertising can help you showcase your products, create an identity for yourself, and sell by highlighting the USP and differentiating yourself from your competitors.
Who is the target audience for retail businesses?
Ans. The audience depends on the people who are more likely to buy from the business. This can be further categorized based on other characteristics like age, occupation, location, etc.
Which is the best retail advertising strategy to adopt?
Ans. PPC is one of the most popular strategies among marketers because of the numerous features it offers.
What common issues can I face with retail advertising?
Ans. High competition is one of the most common issues faced by most retail businesses. Additionally, it can also become hard to identify a target audience as there might be a number of demographics and audience types out there.
