Is Traditional Retail Dead in 2021 ?

Is traditional retail dead?

Its a frightening possibility for a lot of small business owners. But the fact of the matter is the traditional shopping arcade and high street shopping model seems to be on the decline not only in Australia but all over the world.

The reason is obvious. The internet.

Ok well here’s the thing. It’s not enough to just have a website and a store. Or even forget the physical store and take that out of the equation for this argument. Let’s say you just have an online business. Are you participating in a structured marketing campaign on a regular basis? No? Why not?

If you have the best website in the world but are not promoting it how do you expect to stand out from the crowd and be seen? You need to be consistent in your marketing and promotion. Here’s a short video that shows how to be consistent with social media marketing. You can believe it works. Because hey you are reading this blog right now and this is part of our weekly marketing strategy.

Here’s a case study.

Let’s say you have a website that sells socks and underwear. You have a particular design of socks and underwear that make your product special and you’re quite proud of your product. You have a great website that has the latest software and e-commerce ability.

That’s a good start.

But have you gone through an SEO checklist? No. It’s a free service offered across many digital agency websites including ours. Optimizing your website once and for all is one of the most important steps to take in the 21st century. It may cost a lot of money as an investment but you need to look at it like just that “An investment”. The work you put into your site initially will pay off in natural organic unpaid growth down the line and for years to come. We experience on average a natural 50% increase in traffic month on month every month because of well-structured SEO.

Take for example this blog post you are reading now. It is designed in such a way to help the SEO of this website and bring people from across the globe to read this article. Then maybe the viewer will decide to purchase something. That’s called adding value.

After the SEO has been done (usually about 6 months worth of work) you can move on to step 2- The Digital Marketing. There’s a number of ways to do this but typically you would utilize a funnel method. The funnel method reaches out to your target audience then draws them to your high-value offer. Then you try to convert this new audience into a final sale.

You can target audiences with things like Facebook Ads, Linked In Ads, Instagram Ads, Pay Per Click Gooogle Ads and alike. You can also use your newly created SEO structure and start writing articles (Like this one) which can bring you organic unpaid FREE leads.

So going back to our little shop with the socks and underwear you could place an Ad that offers a free pair of socks if you buy 1 pair. This is called a tripwire sale. Its only a small investment on the buyer’s behalf but it opens their wallet and then they have started a relationship with your brand. From there you can offer another sale to the customer down the track.

Or another example.

You can target anyone on Facebook who lives within a 10 km radius of your physical store. This targeted Ad can say “Hey South Shire Peeps, Just for locals, we are offering a 2 for 1 sale on our socks in store. Only to the first 100 customers (Law of scarcity),”

So in the example above you have given the customer a reason to travel to your store. You targeted the customer on his/her Facebook feed with a locals-only Ad. This Ad might have only cost you $5 a Day! Yes, you can run Facebook Ads from $1 a day at the time of writing this article.

As long as you 2 for 1 offer is making a profit then it’s worth doing right? Yes!

Now if you want to get more advanced and talk about landing pages, Re-Marketing after the sale with Facebook Pixel, Ongoing reward points to encourage repeat business etc that’s where you would hire an agency like Aus Digital Media to do all the work for you.

But in the meantime. Get on the digital marketing train and start to make some sales !

Let’s create another Scenario where the Traditional Store Front Business could have used the digital space to save their business from closing.

How about the business owner Created a Sales Funnel online. Here’s how we would do it…

Start a Facebook Ad Campaign. The Ad Campaign would target the specific audience that is interested in Socks and Underwear. You can research this within the Facebook Ad console. Then you offer a high-value hook to get the readers attention. This hook might read something like “Get a free pair of Socks and Underwear delivered to your door every month” Now in the copy you would clearly outline that the free of socks and underwear is available if the reader purchases a subscription box deal where they receive a box of socks and underwear each month and there’s a free pair thrown in each month.

So in the example above you have used a hook to not only sell someone a product but sign them up to a repeat order every month.

Now let’s take this a step further. You can now market new boxed packages to this customer each month and even give them the incentive to refer a friend to you. An incentive like a coupon that reads “Here’s a coupon just for you John, If a friend signs up and mentions your name we’ll give you 3 months free socks and underwear”. So now you have an agent out there looking to close a deal for you. As long as you get the numbers right so you’re not making a loss its all worth it right? YES !

Get on the digital marketing train and start to make some sales !

Ok you want another example of how we can make a sale with Digital Marketing. Ok fine 🙂

Let’s say the Socks and Underwear store runs a competition across the nation on Facebook via a targeted Facebook Campaign. you know what, let’s throw our competition on Linked In as well and we will target business owners on Linked In. Business owners are busy and I’m sure they would love a box of socks and underwear delivered via subscription each month.

Yes competitions are allowed on Facebook as long as you obey the rules. And what we would advise is to use competition software like “Gleam“. Gleam already knows the Facebook competition rules and works around them for you.

Consider adding an automated sales funnel on your site that will sell for you when you sleep. Here’s a detailed guide on how to set up your own sales funnel.

You run the competition that offers 1 year worth of socks and underwear.

The prize is a subscription with the first year free and automatic renewal. Why wouldn’t the person keep the subscription going after the first year if you offer a great product and service?

But that’s not really our main goal. Our Main goal is to obtain entrants into the competition. Let’s say you have 1000 entrants. To enter the viewer must give you their email address and name via the Gleam entry form. After the prize is drawn On Facebook Live of course, you now have 1000 people who you can offer a consolation coupon to. The Consolation coupon reads like this “Sorry You didn’t win this month, here’s 50% off on anything in the store” Valid for 1 week.

Now you have obtained a market that you can remarket to over time. All for the cost of a Facebook Ad which can be from $1 a day.

A good digital marketing agency will take time to design a campaign that only is appealing to the target audience but also has been carefully thought about at every step on the campaign. Every step should have an incentive for the customer to engage with the campaign. You can see on the example above with the competition we are offering incentives at every point. Even when the people who entered the competition receive their consolation coupon and buy something on your store you want to thank them for spending their hard earned money with you. Thank the person for the spend by offering something like a loyalty card system. Loyalty cards systems are a great way to encourage loyalty to your brand. Here’s the version that we recommend for our website customers.

You can encourage and incentivize repeat spending with your brand by setting up the loyalty system in such a way that each pair of socks purchased earns 1 point and after 10 points are earned the customer receives 1 free pair of socks OR the customer receives a coupon to give to a friend who receives 1 free pair of socks. Are you getting the idea 🙂

Think carefully about every step of your marketing and put yourself in the shoes of the customer.

Note” Gleam has a number of different competition templates set up for you to use. You can see in the picture above that Gleam offers a Facebook competition template that asked customers to Check in at your Facebook locations. each time the user checks In at your store they receive an entry into the competition. This is such a great way to gain engagement with your brand. Remember that Facebook tells the customers friends that the customer Checked in at your Store. So straight away you have incentivized your customers to advertise your store for you. A good way to give the customer a heads up that you have a competition is to have a small iPad or even a printed sign on the bar or on the tables saying “Check In To Win”. Another option to promote your competition is to use digital signage screens in store.

Get on the digital marketing train and start to make some sales!

If it’s all to confusing and you’d like us to manage everything for you please shout out here.