When you look at the big retailers out there; Myer, David Jones, Woolworths, Coles, Bunnings etc., they are all using multiple channels to advertise and to keep their brand at the forefront of its customers’ mind. They’re using everything from magazine advertising, TV commercials, billboards, radio advertising and more. This is an expensive game to be in and not all retailers can compete on such levels. It’s simply too expensive for, say, a local clothing brand to get their name out there and keep it at the forefront of their customers’ minds.So what is one to do? Thankfully, we are in a time where there are more channels to exploit; some of these are free and some require a little bit of monetary investment.
Social Media
First up is the use of social media. If you’re selling an interesting, photographable product, or a lifestyle product/service then Instagram in particular has been giving retailers a great platform to grow their brand and following. Facebook and twitter are also great for getting your brand out there and also great for interacting with your customers. The only issue with social media is that it’s hard, if not impossible, to get in front of your entire audience at a given time. Research has shown that only 12% of Facebook posts and 29% of tweets are even seen. However, it’s great to keep yourself in the customer’s mind, even if only a few, and it can be completely free after all, minus your hard work of course.There are options to advertise on these networks too, and that can be a great way to grow your brand’s impression at first. With a bit of time and effort, you can build a big following and start posting out to your fans. Many of whom might see some of your posts, and if they’re interesting, you might get some indirect sales from it. It’s definitely worth putting a bit of work into, and much of this can be scheduled so that some cool photos and posts can be sent out during the day/week. Grow it from there.
Email is great tool, that is relatively inexpensive, for communicating with your customer base. Platforms like Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor and many others make it a simple enough task to design a standard email and build and maintain a database of email addresses. If you have a lot to say and you can design a decent email, you might get a few people open it and action it, i.e. buy from you. Although, likewise with social media, you’re not going to reach your entire customer base. In fact, only 22% of emails are opened at all, and many would be deleted before even properly read or actioned. That being said, if you keep an eye on your open rates and click-throughs with the aim to improve these through either editing the subject line or email design, you can determine if the email channel is successful for you.
SMS
SMS—of course I was going to mention SMS—is the best tool in terms of reaching who you want to reach, when you want to reach them. Research has shown that 98% of people will open and read your SMS, most of whom do so within 3 minutes. This way you can make sure you’re in the front of their mind when you need to be, a Saturday morning, or a Thursday night late shopping reminder for example. And with all the different Christmas shopping hours – do your customers realise when you are open? With SMS, you don’t have to rely on guesswork and the laws of averages— 98% of the people that receive your message will read it practically at the moment you send it. You also don’t have to rely on building a following and keeping them engaged. You just need to collect phone numbers and contact them. You’re in complete control over who receives which message, so with good segmentation, good frequency of messaging and timing your messages well, you can really push the boundaries of what you thought a good ROI was!There are many marketing tools at your disposal if you can’t afford TV, print and those other advertising channels previously mentioned. And even if you can, to reach a large group of customers, omnichannel is the way to go. Get ahead of the game and take advantage of SMS.We can help you out with your SMS needs, so get in touch for more information by calling 1300 764 946 or emailing [email protected]
