The advertising landscape has been constantly changing. With new generations and new technologies, advertising techniques and rules are constantly being rewritten. What's more, new businesses are spoilt with many advertisement choices, each with different attached costs and effectiveness. Techniques that work for a competitor from the same industry, may not even work for another, as every business is unique. Hence, experimentation is vital to locate your advertising sweet spot that would yield optimised and sustainable return of investment (ROI).
Offline advertising
Some business simply cannot generate most of their revenue from online sales. Think salon, beauty and health, pets, consulting and services, retail malls etc. And many consumers still very much enjoy experience of shopping physically. For such retail businesses requires more meaningful interactions compared to anonymous online sales, there are several offline channels to promote your business.
The easy choice would be media advertising through TV, billboards, printed media or even radio. These channels are the most costly as it reaches huge audience in the shortest time, and requires significant investment to craft an effective advertising message. Done right, these advertisements creates a sense of luxury and exclusivity and builds a strong brand image over time. However, they may come short of targetting the right demographic most relevant to your business, and it is not easy to measure the ROI of your advertising cost, due to their isolated nature.
Online advertising
You may not be collecting payments online, but having an online presence opens up lots of opportunity to promote your brand and business. Your sales might be face-to-face, but your advertisement can be multichannel.
One of the first things retails can have is a website, which serves as a catch-all funnel for all their online advertising channels. Having relevent and up-to-date contents would also allow new customers to find you via web search engines, without paying for much advertising cost. This is the holy grail of organic growth, but it takes effort and time, which is a scarce resource for most business owners. There is also Google or Bing paid ads, which may work for online businesses that could attract ready buyers, but it can be a trial and error exercise to find out if the cost outweighs the return for your business.
The next option would be social media like twitter, instagram, facebook etc. With continuous posts and updates, they are one of the most effective way to gradually build an audience. These platforms also offer paid advertiments, which can be customized to target your customer segment. The result is somewhat measurable, for eg: number of likes garnered over time in your facebook page, or retweet counts. Although such numbers do not necessary convert to sales, it gives an idea of how far your message has managed to reach. This is the preferred channel to start with, due to its lower cost and barrier to get started.
For some retailers, using email and mobile marketing, including whatsapp, sms etc could prove effective. These channels are the most targeted, because it requires permission of your customers, or you risk being labeled as spammer. Customers who choose to allow your promotional material in their inbox or messaging app must have had a good experience with your business before, and have high chance to return again. Thus it is important to nurture and provide them with endless benefits so that they keep coming back as long as you are in business. What's more, retailers that enjoy such brand loyalty can leverage their customers to reach even wider and targeted audience, by integrating word of mouth referrals into their marketing funnel.
Creative advertising
Creative retail businesses can also tap into partnerships and cross promotional events to grow each others customer base. For eg, a pet shop might partner with product suppliers to organize yearly dog competition for their customers, or might introduce customers to a particular veterinary, and vice versa. Done right, it would be a win win and cost effective long term advertising medium. Such is also an example of referral marketing.
Closing thoughts
Advertising is a huge subject by itself, but is simple to choose once we know which platforms are available, and their pros and cons. Ironically, more targeted advertising may not be more expensive. Although the result might come slower, the effect may be longer lasting. Different retail business may need trial and errors to finds its promotional sweet spot, and it is the ROI that matters at the end of the day.