Marketing guide for small and independent retailers

Small and independent retailers face a huge challenge. How can your store stand out–especially when there are chain and national retailers with deeper pockets—and entire teams devoted to marketing?

The answer is creativity and authenticity. Without corporate guidelines, you’re free to try any and everything. By showcasing what makes you unique, you’ll create memorable marketing that wins new customers and drives business to your store.

If you run a store, salon or beauty business, fitness club or any retail business, this comprehensive small business marketing guide is for you. We developed it to help you plan what you need to do and how you need to do it.

All you need is creativity, a good understanding of who your customers are, and a little bit of effort. In all cases big budgets might be nice–but they aren’t necessary.

What is retail marketing?

Retail marketing is the process of promoting your store and products to build awareness, grow sales, and increase customer loyalty.

Retail marketing isn’t a simple clear cut thing with right and wrong solutions. It’s actually much more complex because what works for one store might not be right for another. The secret to success is to tailor your strategies and tactics to appeal specifically to your ideal customer.

What are your retail marketing goals?

Different marketing goals require different strategies. Save time and energy by understanding exactly what you are trying to accomplish BEFORE you select your tactics.

1) Increase sales and revenue

It’s no secret that the primary goal of pretty much any marketing a store owner or manager implements is to increase sales and grow revenue.

2) Increase profit

It’s possible to sell fewer items and make more money. In addition to increasing your total revenue, you might want to increase your profit or your profit margin by driving customers to your highest margin items or your most expensive items.

3) Attract new customers

This entails extending your reach to include people who aren’t your customers–yet–but fit your ideal customer profile.

4) Increase customer loyalty

It’s to your advantage to develop customer loyalty because over time, one loyal customer can generate more revenue than dozens of one time customers. (That’s “customer lifetime value”.) Plus, it’s much easier to keep the customers who have already bought from you coming back than it is to connect with new people.

5) Reconnect with customers who haven’t been in for a while

It’s much easier to retarget people who have already bought from you, than it is to find totally new customers. Reaching out to these clients can re-activate relationships and entice them to come back in.

6) Build brand awareness

Who are you? What is your store’s personality? What is different about your business? What do you provide that your competitors don’t? Communicating how you are unique can attract new prospective customers and solidify your relationships with existing ones.

7) Increase foot traffic

It’s not uncommon that, when a new restaurant opens, people make their decision on whether to try it or not by looking in the window to see if other people are trying it. The same is true for retail. Sometimes having people in the store who aren’t going to buy from you will attract other customers who might. And just because someone doesn’t buy from you doesn’t mean they won’t recommend you to a friend.

8) Promote new products

What’s new? Your customers want to know and new merchandise and offerings gives them a good reason to come back in.

9) Announce sales and promotions

Almost every customer loves a deal. Need we say more?

Here’s a winter sale poster that you can make your own by editing it for free on PosterMyWall:

Know your target audience

Your marketing will be most effective if you understand the people you are reaching out to.

That means know your audience as if you are the audience.

What are their needs, wants, likes, dislikes, concerns, and questions? You have to be on top of everything. Market research is not a task you can rush, take your time with it and be thorough.

Here are some simple ways to do your research:

Talk to your customers! A conversation reveals a lot.
Surveys (with the right questions, of course)
Look at what competitors are doing
Speak with someone who you wish were your customer–but isn’t

Once you have a proper understanding of just who your audience is, you can move on to the fun and creative part.

Retail marketing strategies to consider:

As we mentioned earlier, there is no absolute right or wrong for retail marketing. Every store needs to make its own decisions based on its target customer base and its own resources.

A good rule of thumb is to interact with your customers the way they want to be interacted with–and where they want to interact.

Also consider your own preferences. You’re going to do a better job of marketing using a channel you’re comfortable with than one you either don’t like or don’t understand.

Options include:

1. Localized marketing

Localized marketing means promoting your products in a way that is relevant to the audience you’re targeting. This might mean integrating local terms into your copy, leveraging local landmarks in your videos, or planning an event based on a local custom or observance. For instance, you might time a sale to coincide with your town’s annual Christmas tree lighting.

2. Visual merchandising

Visual merchandising refers to planning your product displays in ways that make them appealing to buyers. Think about product placement, lighting, and general ambience of the store.

3. In-store experience

This includes product displays and visual merchandising, the colors and textures of your store environment, your choice of background music (if any), the physical layout of your store (Is it easy to find what you’re looking for?) and any other elements that customers see, hear, touch, smell, taste, or feel when they’re in your store.

In-store experience includes customers’ interactions with your staff. A positive interaction with store personnel can overcome bad feelings and a negative interaction can undermine all of your other efforts.

4. Curb appeal

The way your store looks from outside plays a large role in enticing people to enter. There are generally two approaches to this. One is to have amazing window displays. The other is to keep your windows clear so people can see what is going on inside the store.

When you use the clear window approach, it can be helpful to create a focal point inside the store that attracts attention. Often, this is something very bright such as a large and well-lit logo or digital signage.

5. Events

Hosting themed events can drive in a lot more traffic than usual. Host fun interactive events where people will want to bring their friends and family.

Think about workshops, classes, product launches, fundraisers, and everything else that comes in between. Promote these events on your social media channels and encourage sign ups by offering early bird discounts. Look for inspiration in what other retailers are doing, then create your own version. For instance, you could reimagine ‘Sip & Paint’ into another craft activity.

6. Digital signage

Many stores use screens to display products, menus/lists of services, holiday greetings, event announcements, and more. The advantage of digital signage versus print is that it can be updated as often as you like without incurring any cost.

Design and customize your very own retail digital signage display using PosterMyWall.

7. Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the cocktail of online marketing tools you can use to gain organic traction as well as run paid campaigns. This includes:

Websites
Social media
Email marketing and newsletters
SEO
SEM
SMS
Online advertising

We will dive into each of these in more detail in later sections.

The channel or channels you use for digital marketing completely depend on the type of audience you have, which platforms they prefer using, your time, and your budget. You don’t have to do it all.

Our retail social media post templates will come in handy here.

8. Websites

Your website gives you credibility and influences people’s opinion of your store, so it’s important that it looks great and communicates why you’re special.

The advantage of having your own website versus using a Facebook Page is that it gives you more control over content and instantly gives you more credibility. Plus you own it, so you don’t have to worry about anyone changing the rules or algorithm on you.

9. Email marketing and Newsletters

Contrary to what you may have heard, email marketing is still a very viable tactic. Cultivate a good list and you’ll be able to communicate directly with people who want to hear from you.

Use your newsletter to give customers early access to deals and discounts – this will incentivize more people to sign up.

Key newsletter elements:

A catchy subject line – so people will open it
An attractive design to reflect your brand
Information that is valuable to the recipient–so they’ll keep opening your emails
A call to action to drive them to visit or buy

Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter by embedding a sign up form in your website. PosterMyWall lets you set this up in just a few minutes.

You can also add a link to your email sign-up form from your email signature – or link people to your form using scannable QR codes.

If your customers are already hanging out on social media, it’s a great medium to use to your advantage!

The first order of business is to pick and choose which platforms you need to be active on. Ideally you should be everywhere your audience is, but it’s important not to spread yourself too thin. Start with one or two platforms, measure your performance, and then think about going further.

You can use PosterMyWall’s Content Planner to post across different social media applications at once, view everything you’ve scheduled on a single calendar, and also customize sizes and captions for each post. You can also schedule your emails directly from PosterMyWall – why not streamline everything while you’re at it?

Here are the platforms we recommend that you focus on initially:

Instagram: To make a sale you need to give people visual proof and Instagram is the perfect avenue for this. Post pictures or reels to give customers a sneak peek. The higher the quality of your images, the better the results.
Facebook: Connect your Instagram account to a Facebook page and instantly share the same content across the two platforms. It’s twice the reach in half the effort!
Pinterest: This is where all the kids go to create their moodboards and get aesthetic inspiration. Upload nice product pictures and share ideas for how to use them best.

11. Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization refers to how well your business ranks in results when it is searched for on any search engine (Microsoft Bing and Google Etc.)

SEO is an extremely vital ingredient in the retail marketing recipe because the internet is where people look for answers. Keywords are words or phrases that get searched often and are relevant to your business. When you integrate them into your content, you tip the search results in your favor.

How do you select the right keywords? There are tools you can use to measure keyword volume, but the easiest way is to think like a customer looking for an answer – and use those words and phrases as your keywords.

12. SEM

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is the practice of paying for advertisements that appear in search engine result pages.

Advertisers place bids on ‘keywords’ which their audiences are more likely to use in their searches. The result is that their ads pop up next to the search results, which increases the advertiser’s reach.

13. SMS

Sending text messages to customers can be very effective.

Send an SMS when you have an important sale, deal, event, or promotion going on. Be strategic and don’t bombard your customers. If your information is valuable they won’t unsubscribe from receiving your messages.

14. Online ads

Google ads is a very useful resource that places your products near or at the top of people’s Google search results. Keywords are used to rank your products higher for those people who you are most relevant to.

To run ads, you will first have to create a merchant account on Google. (Delve deeper into that topic here.) Once you have created your account, you can start planning who you want to market to and when you want to do it.

It’s also super easy to run ads on Facebook and Instagram because you can start with a very small budget, then invest more if the results look promising. The easiest way to get started is to ‘boost’ your existing posts so they reach wider audiences – and audiences that you get to define!

15. Free listings

Public directories are your best friend! Not everyone who is looking for your products will know where to find them – or where to find you. Directory listings, whether online or in print–will help.

Listings also make it easy for people who want to shop locally to find you. Google has a new small business annotation that can help.

Add your retail store’s details to as many free listing services as possible. This includes: Yelp, Google, LinkedIn, and others.

If you want people to find you it helps to add your business to Google Maps – which really is a directory too. With the option to add your phone number, website link, pinned location, and even reviews – this will direct new customers straight to your doorstep.

Pro tip: Listings with images usually perform best. People prefer learning in a more visual way.

16. Review sites

Before making a purchase, most people look for reviews online to make sure they aren’t wasting their money. (Don’t you do the same?)

Make sure you encourage satisfied customers to leave their reviews and feedback on popular review sites such as:

Google customer reviews
Yelp
Foursquare
Manta
Facebook review groups

17. Partnerships with complementary businesses

A great way to get referrals is by collaborating with other businesses that offer complementary and non-competitive products or services. This way you help each other grow.

For example a gift basket business might want to partner with a cake business so that they can work together to create collaborative products that make special occasions even more special for their customers.

18. Flyers and posters

Before the internet blew up, the go-to way of getting the word out was through physical notice boards, handing out flyers outside the grocery store, and putting up posters all over town.

Now we post flyers both physically and digitally.

When you hand out physical flyers, make sure you do it in strategic locations where lots of people are passing by, and ideally, not too far from the location of your store. It’s even better if you are somewhere frequented by your target audience. For example, a karate studio with kids classes might connect with prospective new students or their parents near a comic book or toy store.

Create attractive promotional content using PosterMyWall’s vast retail template library. It’ll save you a ton of time because you can print out copies to distribute yourself and also share digital copies on your website, through social media, and via email.

19. Local Influencer marketing

Influencers, as the name suggests, are public figures who have an influence on people who follow them on social media. There are influencers for every niche interest you can possibly think of.

When you mention influencers, most people think of the Kardashians and movie stars like Ryan Reynolds. But local influencers can be just as powerful in driving business to small stores and local retailers.

For instance, if your audience is local teens, you might work with a football star who attends the local high school or a local band. If you sell books, you might partner with a local author who hosts a podcast.

You may even be able to work out a trade in exchange for their services.

Influencers let you tap into their audience and fan base by creating original content about your business in their own unique way. This opens up room for much more creativity and innovation than scripted ads.

Influencer collaborations add a human touch and instantly add credibility to your business.

Consider inviting influencers to the launch of your retail store and ask them to cover it on their Instagram stories. Explore the option of sending them free goodies in exchange for an honest review.

If you have a budget, you might invest in paid collaborations with influencers. This usually yields much more quality in terms of the content that is produced.

20. Referral marketing

Whether you want to give a referral code to an influencer you are collaborating with or a loyal customer who can help you get word of mouth rolling, it’s definitely a great marketing tactic to explore.

Create a referral code which will give a discount to the person using it, and a certain percentage profit to the person whose referral code it is. This gives the wonder of the code much more incentive to promote your retail store (who doesn’t like some extra money).

Referral marketing yields wonderful results which are very simple to measure. You can track exactly how many sales a certain person brought in for you and then based on what the numbers say you can choose to extend the referral program or not.

21. Loyalty/VIP Programs

Who doesn’t value loyalty? Retail businesses definitely do!

How do you nurture customer loyalty? Create a system that gives your best customers preferred treatment and special goodies. This will have them coming back much more frequently. ‘Buy 10 Get One Free’ punch cards and free gifts with purchases are two ideas you can start with. The punch card system is extra helpful because people have more incentive to become regulars.

For your best customers, you might consider something even more special–like a small basket of product samples or a private sale.

You can tell everyone how great your store is, but customers are more likely to be impressed – and to believe it – when the praise is coming from another customer. This is called social proof.

Options to include social proof in your marketing include customer testimonials, customers posting photos of themselves in your store or with your products on their social media, people recommending you to their friends, and media coverage.

How do you get these things? It’s simple. Ask for what you want. You might also include a small incentive or gift to encourage participation.

Direct mail

Snail mail isn’t dead yet. Many people still enjoy the surprise of receiving something personal in their mailbox.

Consider sending postcards to your loyal customers, or little thank you cards to acknowledge their support. Just time your mailings strategically. For instance, you might avoid holiday time when mailboxes are flooded with catalogs and other special offers.

24. Webrooming for exclusive products

Making a trip to a physical store doesn’t just require money, but also a lot of time. This is why many people rely on webrooming to make sure you have what they want before they come to you.

Webrooming means checking the details of the products you want to purchase online before you show up to buy in person.This eliminates the disappointment of traveling to the store only to find that what you want is sold out.

The best way to accommodate webroomers is to keep the inventory in your online store up-to-date.

In addition to helping customers select items, webrooming also helps them:

View product reviews
Check product availability
Pick up their gift immediately instead of waiting for delivery
Eliminate delivery costs
Assess the product’s quality

What can I do if I have more than one target audience?

Everyone who might want to buy from your retail store won’t necessarily fit the same profile. Your audience may include people from different backgrounds, age groups, professions, and even economic statuses. Some may be interested in one type of product while other customers may be interested in another.

In these cases, your marketing will be more effective if you create subgroups–or segment your audience.

For instance, in addition to being a workout space, your gym also sells health supplements. Some of your customers are only interested in fitness training, others are only interested in the supplements – and others care about both.

Or a book store that has a good sized general inventory and a very large selection of children’s books. If you cater exclusively to one you risk failing to communicate with the other.

Here’s how to make sure every customer segment receives messaging tailored to their needs:

Step 1: Define your segments

It’s up to you whether you want to group your customers by age, profession, location, product interest, or something else. Just make sure that the trait you’re pointing out is something that relates to their buying behavior. For example, a candy store might want to segment its audience based on age. Gender doesn’t really determine how much candy someone is going to eat so why even consider it?

Step 2: Create variants for your promotional content

Your segmenting is done and your audience has been divided into manageable subgroups. What’s next?

In order to maximize the success of your campaign, it’s good to create variants that speak specifically to each segment. One offer might be appealing to a certain group but less attractive to another.

Going back to the candy shop example, you might entice a young adult audience with a promotional offer like ‘buy 5 chocolate bars and get one free’. For an older adult, you might make the promotion about novelty candy they can use to win favor with their grandkids.

In other cases, the offer can be the same but the language might need to be different. If the candy store chose to offer ‘buy 5 and get one free’ chocolate bars to everyone, it might benefit from two different messages. “Satisfy your sweet tooth” might work for the young adults while “Make your grandkids’ day” targets the older customers.

Step 3: Strategically publish your messages

Publish your messages in locations that are most relevant to your audience. Shooting an arrow in the dark will only end up wasting valuable resources – and you don’t want that.

Strategically pick places to hand out flyers, at locations where most people will fall into your target audience. Even when it comes to picking social media outlets for each piece of content, it helps to analyze which content goes well with which group of people (and which platform those people are active on!).

Option: Divide and conquer with targeted ads

Once you’ve segmented your audience, you might explore targeted ads.

Facebook and Instagram ads allow you to display ads to exactly the audience you select. You can also create multiple ‘audiences’ at the same time and show each subgroup a different ad variant. The bonus is that you can create an ad on Facebook and simply link it to Instagram. This lets you reach both platforms in half the effort!

This part might sound more complicated than it actually is, but that’s completely okay! Facebook has its own explanation you can read here.

If you want a simpler approach, start by experimenting with boosting your posts.

Fine-tune your marketing strategies

Now that you know who your customers are and where you can find them, it’s time to jump into the nitty gritty details of how you can fine-tune your strategies for maximum impact.

1. Experiment, Experiment, Experiment

You’ll never know if something will work for your store until you try it. The most unexpected ideas can turn out to be the most rewarding.

2. Customer centric messaging

In the retail solar system, customers are the sun. Your business revolves around them. It’s important that they feel important. Customer centric messaging makes your customers feel heard and valued.

In addition to your communications and marketing campaigns, this means exceptional customer service, helpfulness, and anything that nurtures positivity. You don’t just want a customer that buys from you, you also want to establish a relationship of trust and reliability. Your top responsibilities are:

Understanding your customers
Anticipating their needs
Providing a great experience

3. Evoke emotion

To create a deeper connection you have to make your customers feel like they have an affinity with you.

Don’t just tell people how it’s logically the better option to purchase from your store, also show them how it’ll make them feel. This is exactly why a boring product photo won’t look as appealing as a happy person using the product. Images and videos tell a story and are an easy way to convey emotion.

Ever notice how many Christmas commercials are about family and friends celebrating together? That’s very intentional (and very smart!).

4. Use free listings to your advantage

Public directories are your best friend! Not everyone who is looking for your products will know where to find them, and that’s why we think free listings are super important.

Add your retail store’s details to any free listings you can find so that when looked up, people have a way to pursue your store as an option. It is also absolutely necessary that your business be added to Google maps, which is sort of like a directory too at this point. With the option to add your phone number, website link, pinned location and even reviews – this will direct a lot of confused customers straight to your doorstep. And it’s absolutely free to set up!

Pro tip: it’s always better if you add pictures to it. People prefer learning in a more visual way.

5. Understand consumer trends to monetize them

Now let’s talk about using your intuition and observational skills. Some things don’t need numbers and graphs to make sense, just a little attention to detail. When do people shop more? What days of the week is your store more busy? All these little things add up.

Once you understand patterns in your customers’ behavior, you can use those patterns to your advantage and to plan in advance. For example, if you notice that more people pass by your store during lunch hours then maybe think of introducing a lunchtime deal to get them to come in.

Similarly, the holiday season means people are more looking to purchase. Since you know this, you can plan your marketing campaigns in advance, think of promotional deals, and generate a few discount codes. By the time Christmas rolls in you’ll be ready to grow your sales like never before.

Analyze your campaigns to keep learning

Think of each marketing campaign as an opportunity to analyze what works–then apply what you’ve learned to your next campaign. LIkewise, remember what didn’t work so you don’t make the same mistake twice. This way, your marketing efforts will improve over time.

Here’s how to measure your results–then apply what you’ve learned:

1. Data Collection

Once your retail marketing campaign is over, it’s time to collect data on how well it performed. Assess:

Click through rates (How many people actually clicked on your posts, emails, or ads?)
Conversion rates (Of all those clicks, how many converted into sales?)
Engagement rates (How many people are engaged with your content?)

Usually social media insights give you these numbers automatically, but if you want to be more thorough, you can use software like Google Analytics. Sounds a little daunting but it’s pretty straightforward.

Assess whether product sales align with your posts and emails–i.e. Did sales of an item increase immediately following a post about the product? Also look at event attendance and total sales numbers from past years and compare them to current progress to see if your marketing is paying off.

2. Optimizing Campaigns

Once you have taken a look at your campaign insights, you need to pinpoint what went well, and what can be done better in the future.

Look into what tactics, channels, and campaigns delivered the best results, then try to duplicate your success. If a particular message worked well, brainstorm on how you might apply it to other channels. It might take a little trial and error but it can pay off in increasingly better results over time.

Conclusion

OK. We’ve shared a lot of information. There are an infinite number of marketing strategies and tactics you can use to grow your independent retail store.

The good news is that you don’t have to try all of it. And you certainly don’t have to implement it all at once. Just select the strategies that make the most sense to you and give them a try. No one knows your business–and customers–better than you do.

Running a retail business is a task in itself, and if you want to handle the marketing aspect yourself too then prepare to have your hands full.

If you’d like to learn more about retail marketing, check out these blog posts:

Anoosha Fatima

Anoosha is a digital marketer and content writer at PosterMyWall. From writing to painting and everything in between, she loves experimenting with creative work. In her free time Anoosha works on her fashion and lifestyle blog!