Digital Marketing Techniques for Brick and Mortar Stores.

In todays era, people look for you online before coming to you. It doesn’t matter whether they saw your offline ads or heard it from someone. People are very skeptical of the business who do not have online presence. Your website or landing page is what they see and judge, to decide whether to come to you or not. While many brick and mortar stores have converted their business in to Ecommerce, others are still resistant about it. Its True that people now prefer to buy things online, but with right marketing, brick and mortar stores can also get customers at their stores. By marketing we do not mean banners, hoardings, billboards or pamphlets, we mean digital marketing. You can advertise your shops online and get customers too. but before we move to the digital marketing techniques, it is important for a retailer to understand the importance of widespread product knowledge, quality customer service and store’s vibe. Once you have taken care of these elements, we can move to the Digital Marketing Techniques for your business, but only digital marketing does not win the battle on your behalf. How to convert online visitors in to customers? Read further to know more.

Make website development a priority-

With heavy use of ecommerce websites, it is hard for brick and mortar store to survive with zero online presence.

Web design may not be the part of digital marketing explicitly, it is important implicitly. If you choose to go for Google ads you will need a landing page which when user clicks get on to. If you don’t have a website, this wont work for you. And as discussed, people look for website before actually coming to the store. Your website is the small reflection of your business, so MAKE IT COUNT. Designing a website does not always mean that you are getting in to Ecommerce, it can be just a small descriptive base website which will let users know about your business, its stores’ address and other important things. Build a website which is user friendly and intuitive. Let the users connect with your products and services. Data show that 57% of users do not consider a business with no website. Now you know how important a website is for your business.

Work on your social media existence and engage potential as well as existing customers-

When we say ‘existence’, we don’t mean just exist on social media. Put in some creativity, efforts, innovative ideas to enable more customer engagement. Do not put dull posts on your social media handles. By engagement we mean ‘targeted-engagement’. Your social media post should not just be for ‘existence’ or for ‘engagement’, each and every post should target potential customers as well as existing customers and get their attention. That’s what we call social media marketing. This can build brand loyalty and increase conversion. You can engage your potential customers with some fun online games, contests, and discounts. Don’t be the store next door, give people something more than what they get online or on other stores. Create positive impact on the potential customers through your social media handles. If you don’t have a relevant social media account for your business already, get one and update it daily with creative and unique content.

Target potential audiences through paid social media ads and PPC campaigns-

We added ‘potential’ audience because if you target random audience who may never use your services or do not need it, it will just be waste of time and money. If you have got two thousand followers but they do not want what you are offering, What’s the point then? That’s why with PPC or paid ads, you can target the audience which will be useful for YOUR business and are within your demographic. There are other factors too which can determine how you choose the audience like age, gender, interests, income and much more. So, you get to choose who sees your ads in which you invest because conversion is important.

Use responsive design-

Usage of mobiles are now more than desktops. Generally, when going to a brick and mortar store, users use their mobiles on the way to check out the details, ratings and location. So, usage of responsive design is very important here. Responsive design is not just for your websites but also your Google Ads. It is important that your ad gets fit in any space the google is offering even in small screen mobile phones.

Send out business emails-

You can use emails in two ways-

Business emails–

Send mails to your existing customers and potential customers about anything new that is happening in your store like sale, discounts, event or anything. You can send greetings on festivals also. This builds trust and connectivity between customers and your brand.

Email newsletters–

with a simple email newsletter signup, you can provide email newsletters to the people who are interested in your brand and services. You need to follow the best current practices and create interesting yet informative content to your core audience.

In-store coupons–

every Ecommerce today is offering discounts to their customers to increase the volume of sales and fight competition. Your competition is very tight here and coupons sure grab significant attention. You can share some in-store coupons to your customers through emails and get them in your store.

Invest in SEO optimized content-

Investing in SEO optimized content can be very helpful for you brick and mortar store. People usually look up for stores online. Many websites like that which helps users find stores near them and with keywords you can also use the SERP to get people to your store. SEO generates organic traffic to your website, and it is the most natural way to get potential customers.

Invest in local SEO –

A lot of websites are specifically optimized for local search. It simply means that your website or landing page or even google business page can rank higher locally. Not only its makes your effort niche based and location specific, it also positively impacts customers sentiment, if your name pops up continuously whenever a user punches in the keywords near me. For this mostly, you need to build up NAP syndication and local citations. These two techniques will help you rank in local search results. Here is an interesting read about how to optimize your website for local search.