• It's important to explore the "what to"s and "how to"s to know how to win new customers. ​
• In addition to knowing how to create a successful campaign, how do you measure the performance of your campaigns?
• Keep reading to learn how to advertise your retail store and attract new customers.

Every business shares a common goal: Gaining new customers

When trying to win a new customer, you are likely going up against multiple competitors and that means you need to be using the right advertising methods and the right platforms to be sure that you even have a chance.

However, far too many businesses get carried away with their advertising campaigns and they end up overspending. While others still fail to set goals for themselves and they can never quite say whether a campaign is successful or not.

In this article, we’ll cover all of these topics and more to help your business grow and generate new customers.

What is the Best Way to Advertise a Retail Store?

There are both online and offline advertising methods that you can employ to help you advertise your retail store. Here’s a breakdown of advice from some key players in the retail industry.

Best-selling author and IdealSpot founder Bryan Eisenberg suggests using limited items that are either “only available online” or “only available in store” to help entice new customers to find their way to your store. You can also get exclusive products that cannot be found anywhere else to help gain an edge over your competition.

However, some experts such as Doug Stephens, Founder of Retail Prophet and Author of The Retail Revival, suggests the importance of focusing on customer experience should be the highest priority Doug explains that it is not very hard to sell a product that can’t be bought elsewhere, but just because two stores stock the same product doesn’t mean the experience will be the same.

A customer is going to remember a stellar buying experience, but they’re definitely going to remember an unenjoyable one. Do everything you can to make sure your customers have a wonderful and memorable experience when shopping at your store.

Denise Lee Yohn, Brand-Building Expert, Speaker, and Author of What Great Brands Do goes deeper into this concept. Denise suggests “sweating the small stuff” and really focusing on the details of your customer experience. We have a recent example of the Iconic offering 1 hour delivery in Sydney to all attendees at the consumer-focused Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weekend Edition from May 14-19.

Nicole Leinbach Reyhle, Founder of Retail Minded, talks about the importance of research. Nicole puts a huge emphasis on researching every aspect of your business so that you can learn everything there is to know about your product, your market, your competitors, and most importantly: your customers.

“Never stop researching. Research your inventory sell-through and vendor sell-through. Research your competition and research their customers. Research your customers and the customers you want to gain. Research your employees before hiring, and research selling techniques and customer service care to help them succeed.”

Melissa Gonzalez (founder of The Lion'esque Group and author of The Pop-Up Paradigm) talks about motivating customers to take action by using time limits and scarcity to promote a feeling or urgency.

This is a well-known marketing tactic used successfully by hundreds of thousands of businesses. It takes out the long “Let me mull this over” period in which your competitors could fly in and swoop them up and instead makes them think, “Oooh, I have to get this now!”\

Your Relevance to the Market

When advertising your store, you should also consider things like being relevant to your market. Embracing “shoppertainment” in which you entertain your customers through events (online or offline), and connecting with your customers in as many ways as possible.

Which platforms should I advertise my small business on?

There is no shortage of social media platforms out there that you could advertise your small business on. Many businesses fall into either one of two categories:

● They know social media takes so much time to perfect that they don’t do anything with it,

● They spend far too much time trying to work with social media but they’re spreading themselves too thin across multiple platforms.

In reality, if you want to get results through social media without spending every second of every day working with it, you need to choose just two to three networks to work with and no more. But, how do you choose?

In order to pick the right platforms for your business, you have to know who your ideal customer is.

That’s the only way to target your advertising to the right person. It’s not that hard, just ask yourself:

1. Where is your audience located?
2. What is the average age and gender of your buyers?
3. What’s their average income?
4. Are they homeowners?
5. What are their hobbies?
6. What industry do they work in?
7. Do they have kids?
8. What challenges do they face, and what problems do they have that need to be solved?
9. How/where do they get their information?
10. Which of all of the above are your top-paying and most loyal customers?

Facebook is typically going to be on the focus list for just about every business. Due to the sheer size of Facebook’s audience, you are bound to find your ideal customer there.

The other four platforms you need to consider are Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Once you have answered the above questions, you can make your decision using the below info to guide you:

• Facebook: Built for business-to-consumer users with targets being anywhere from 25 – 55+, both men and women. Top interests include: Fashion, Auto, E-commerce, Retail, Entertainment, Real Estate, Marketing, Sports, Health and Wellness, News and Information.
• Twitter: Another prime option for business 2 Consumer users, Twitter is primarily aged 18 – 29, both men and women. Top industries include: News and Information, Retail, E-commerce, Health and Wellness, Travel and Hospitality, Telecom, Finance, Fashion, Retail, Sports.
• nstagram: Currently 18 – 35 and mostly women, but these demographics are shifting as Instagram grows in popularity. Top industries include: Travel and Hospitality, Fashion, Health and Wellness, Arts and Crafts, Food and Beverage, E-commerce, Beauty, Photography, Auto, Event Planning.
• Pinterest: Audience is primarily 18 to 45, mostly women with the top industries being: Retail, Health and Wellness, Travel and Hospitality, Fashion, E-commerce, Arts and Crafts, Food and Beverage, Beauty, Home and Garden, Event Planning.
• LinkedIn: Built to help businesses connect with one another. LinkedIn is ideal for B2B customers or a business trying to build partnerships and a professional network. If you are recruiting or trying to build your presence in the business marketplace, LinkedIn may be worth looking into.

The chances are, you still have some questions. Let's take a look.

How Much Should I Spend?

Setting a budget is definitely an important part of launching your advertising campaign. Facebook and other platforms will allow you to get started with just a few dollars a day, but before you spend a penny, make sure that you have your “profit plan” written out.

In other words, how do you expect to make money from each dollar you spend on your campaign? Did you launch a Facebook campaign that’s going to lead people to like your page or did you launch a Facebook campaign that’s designed to funnel each person to the checkout page?

After you have designed your campaign and you know your profit potential for each lead it generates, that’s when you can budget. Adjust it as you go along and as you gain experience and
results from previous campaigns.

How Do I Build a Successful Ad Campaign?

A successful ad campaign is all about targeting. If you are targeting the right person who will actually be interested in your product, you are going to get exponentially better results than if you are trying to target everyone under the sun.

Think about it: Would you rather try to sell a bikini to a single college female or to a middle-aged mother of three? Who’s more likely to wear one? You have to know your customer and target them accordingly. Any business who tries to be too general or take a “one size fits all” approach is only going to end up wasting money showing ads to people who don’t care to see them.

How Do I Measure Success?

When it comes down to it, measuring success is crucial to your advertising. So how are you going to do it? With online advertising, your job is made very simple. Dashboards, reports, and tracking pixels will allow you to see exactly how many impressions, clicks, leads, and sales resulted from any given campaign.

Your first few campaigns are going to be largely trial and error, but once the results are in, you can begin studying those results and split-testing so that, with future campaigns, you can set goals and measure your results against them.

At the end of the day, your business is about driving sales, so that’s the figure you should consider when determining whether or not a campaign was successful.

References

1. Tips for Marketing and Growing Your Retail Store 
2. How to Measure Facebook Advertising Success