BUSINESS EXPERIENCES
Brick & Mortar
Marketing
If you want your local business to enjoy the wild success that comes from online and hybrid interactions, it’s time for Brick and Mortar Marketing.
Overview
What is Brick and Mortar Marketing?
Brick-and-mortar marketing describes marketing strategies used by businesses that operate from a store or retail premises to increase foot traffic. These strategies can include digital marketing, offline, and out-of-home promotions. Read on to learn how to drive traffic to your store with these strategies.
The reason you’ve not heard about brick-and-mortar advertising is because strategists have been hyper-focused on internet marketing, and have, to varying degrees, ignored the evolution and challenges faced by today’s brick-and-mortars.
BigDreams started to see these challenges even before the pandemic and began to engineer a model specifically designed to help local businesses grow, called Up Foot Traffic™. Learn more about it here.
Successful brick-and-mortar marketing focuses on building awareness, guiding your customer through the buyer’s journey, leveraging local marketing strategies, and aligning online and offline marketing opportunities.
Our Brick & Mortar
Marketing Solutions
Proximity targeting
Proximity targeting lets us define an area around particular retail locations through geo-fencing. Once that’s done, we can market people online within that area to influence shopping behavior.
Loyalty Campaigns
Loyalty campaigns target regular shoppers by offering them incentives and encouraging them to continue shopping with you.
Relationship Marketing
We have a tested prescription for building trust and relationships with your customers through content and engagement.
Social Media Marketing
Promotions that are served on social media with a specific location are more focused and successful.
In-Store Event Promotion
Hosting in-store events related to your products and services is a fun way to get people excited to visit your store. The key is to cross-promote these events across online and offline channels.
Weather Marketing
Weather targeting lets you use weather and location data to show relevant ads to your target customers in real-time, and encourage them to shop in-store.
In-store Environment
The drive to create a specialised in-store environment is leading brands to think outside the typical exchange of money for goods and guiding them to act with experience in mind.
Geo-conquesting
We use local data to serve your customers’ offers and incentives at the precise moment they are in your competitor’s proximity.
Click & Collect
Click and Collect campaigns offer customers the ability to order online and pick up in person.
Ready to Unlock the Power of Local Marketing?
Key Value Of Brick & Mortar Marketing
The Value of Brick & Mortar Marketing
Grow Brand Awareness
Brick-and-mortar brand awareness by maximises and meshes online and offline channels.
Enhance the Shopping Experience
Improve brick-and-mortar brand awareness by maximising and meshing online and offline channels.
Increase Foot Traffic
Geo-fencing enables us to target would-be store visitors when they are close to your brick-and-mortar with promotions and specials.
Engagement
Localising your marketing appeals to and grows social media engagement.
Omni-Channel Experience
Our local marketing model is data-driven, meaning we track, analyse, and adjust campaigns while measuring ROI.
Increased Sales
More customers equal more sales. Your brick-and-mortar does not have to become a lonely relic. It can absolutely thrive through a mutually beneficial relationship – you are providing your customers with memorable and enjoyable experiences, and your business is reaping the benefits through increased sales.
What’s Next for
Brick and Mortar Retailers?
Obviously, online shopping isn’t going away, but retailers can make both online and brick-and-mortar stores provide customers with what they need. Brick-and-mortar needs to move from a simple goods exchange to the next level by enhancing stores with either new or complimentary products and services (as DSW is testing), or with other experiential changes.
It makes sense, especially for large retailers, to take some of the store footprint and remove the product displays and add a space for consumers to test and interact with the products. Adidas has added turf fields inside some stores, and Nike offers tracks and basketball courts, allowing shoppers to get up close and personal with the products, create a connection, and experience the benefits of the shoes before purchase. Retailers need to provide this type of innovation to help customers see the value of in-store shopping and their products.
“Enhance the online experience with in-store pickup”
It’s also important to consider how brick-and-mortar stores can support online shoppers. Think about the needs of someone shopping online and address those needs in the physical store. Speed and ease of experience should be top of mind. Enhance the online experience with in-store pickup and cashier-less checkout.
This allows online shoppers to get the instant gratification of an in-store purchase without having to navigate the store itself. Leverage augmented reality technology and allow adults to “try on” clothing without setting foot in a fitting room. Harness virtual reality technology to allow customers to “test” products such as sporting goods equipment or other products that may typically take up valuable real estate. Even auto retailers could benefit from these experiential technologies, allowing shoppers to do most of the road test and research from the comfort of their home or on-site lounge.
Retailers must find inventive ways to use their retail space to create that unique experience inside the store itself. These added values will draw in more customers, help retain current customers, attract online shoppers, and create innovation — pushing the brand forward in the eyes of the customer.
Adapting to Hybrid Shopping Behaviour
Customers now “hybrid shop,” meaning they buy across multiple channels to ensure they can find the products they want. Customers have a lot of tools at their disposal, including the ability to shop on mobile and via social media and to preview items in nearby stores while browsing online, or vice-versa. Shopping journeys now involve an average of nine different touchpoints.
Omni-Channel Experiences
Customers do not distinguish between digital and physical - why should you? An omni-channel experience melds the online and physical universes in favour of customer convenience.
Smart Shopping
Return on time is the new currency in retail. Optimising store layouts, convenient delivery options, subscription plans, fast check-out, easy store navigation, and fast takeaway products are just a few examples of how retailers and brands can make shopping more straightforward for customers.
Engagement
Engagement is driven by staff and their expertise. With the drive towards E-commerce, staff must occupy a new role and offer what machines can’t provide -- quality human engagement. This includes accurately identifying customer needs, building relationships and loyalty, and personalising the shopping experience.
Activism
Conscious consumers used to be small, elite groups, but they are now mainstream. As a result, brands and retailers must adapt and incorporate social responsibility and sustainability into their brand’s identity. Consumers want to feel they are part of something greater than buying a brand, meaning the brands must evoke the sense of supporting a cause.
FAQ
Questions & Answers
With the advent of internet shopping, brick-and-mortar establishments have faced a steady decline. Most people prefer to shop from the comfort of their homes rather than facing the hustle and bustle of visiting a real-world store.
Each business has different needs, and having a wide choice of options for attracting new clientele is preferable. However, there are a few techniques that brick-and-mortar establishments can leverage to make them more attractive to today’s shoppers. Using a combination of new technology alongside trusted, real-world marketing techniques offers the best success.
1. Create a delightful customer experience
2. Be true to your purpose
3. Target local customers on Facebook and Instagram with coupons to measure returns
4. Let Google promote your business
5. Run events at uour location
6. Create experiential spaces
7. Enable social media location tagging
8. Support the community
9. Create local awareness
10. Give people a reason to visit
11. Send direct mail with coupons.
12. Offer valuable content
This depends on the location of your store requirements. Organic and Local SEO are critical channels for low-cost foot traffic conversions. But successful marketing will include social, paid, and search campaigns. Send us a brief, and we will provide a clear plan of action with all costs and a target forecast. You can visit our pricing page for more information on our payment methodology.
Measuring marketing ROI is essential for a brick-and-mortar brand, but it’s often more difficult than for an online business. Effective measurement of your marketing ROI will tell you how well your latest marketing campaigns are performing, if you need to make any improvements, and where to best allocate your marketing spend.
And while measuring marketing ROI for an offline location is more complex than for an online business, it’s not impossible. Although you won’t be able to credit every real-life visitor or transaction to a specific marketing campaign, you can use a combination of reliable business key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics.
- Measuring ROI through footfall tracking
- Use business metrics to generate accurate marketing ROI
- Social media check-ins can measure ROI
- Wi-Fi and location data can reliably assess marketing ROI
- Use a combination of the right metrics to deliver a compelling ROI measurement
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