Mobile Marketing Strategy for Retailor: 10 Tips & Tools

We live in an era where almost every person has s smartphone. Every customer that walks through your door has a mobile device with them. Almost 90 percent of shoppers are searching online. Most of these searches take place on mobile devices. This allows shoppers to order stuff conveniently and compare prices online to get the best deal possible.

Almost all retail stores – starting from Spencer’s to Shopper’s Stop have apps. Using these, customers almost get most things delivered to their doorstep without moving out.

How can retailers optimize and build a mobile shopping environment?

We will talk about more than just making a mobile-responsive website. We are also talking about getting your customer into your retail store and spending more money.

Stay tuned till the end of the article to know more!

Contents

Mobile Marketing Strategies for a Retail Store:

Step 1: Set Targets and Define A Goal

When talking about communicating with your audience, i.e., your customers, blasting out your customers’ message section is not a good idea. It’s general and boring, and most people will ignore the messages.

To convince customers to buy something, you must develop relevant messages and communication pieces that cater to their needs. This is why you need to define your communication goals first.

Broadly, there are three main benefits of having a lucid customer-communication goal:

You are able to define the types of messages you will send
You will be able to switch customers from the awareness and research stages to the purchase/sell stage.
This is also going to allow you to create relationships and inculcate a sense of belonging with your customers.

In order to create a rock-solid and robust communication goal, you will need a way to design and measure it for whatever communication goals you have – lead generation, maximize sales, increase and create customer awareness. You need “SMART” goals. These goals are as follows:

Specific: Your goals need to be to the point, i.e., precise and specific based on customer needs or an opportunity that you have identified.

Measurable: Make sure that each goal has a benchmark against which you can measure the results and your success in the future.

Achievable: Be realistic while developing goals because they need to be attainable. If not practical from a real-life scenario, your goals will be a campaign of failure.

Relevant: The goals also need to be relevant to your objectives and help you stay on track to go and achieve the numbers you desire.

Time-Bound: You also need to give yourself deadlines and set up targets so that there is constant pressure to achieve the best results. Have a timeline for when your goals need to be met.

Examples of SMART goals:

Specific: Lead generation/Increase In Sales.

Measurable: In order to measure your success, analyze metrics like average transaction value, conversion/churning, and month-over-month (MoM) growth.

Achievable: Increasing sales over time is achievable with a robust marketing strategy.

Relevant: You are in a business to grow, increase, and diversify your operations. So, your goal of boosting your sales is relevant to your overall goal of diversification/profitability/growth.

Time-Bound: If you are running ongoing campaigns already, set monthly or quarterly goals to engage more activity.

Step 2: Allow For Flexibility and Personalization

According to certain reports, almost 70 percent of customers only engage with personalized messages that cater to their specific needs.

You will have higher chances of distinguishing yourself or your brand from your competitors by cutting through the noise of impersonal, general, boring bulk messages while sending messages.

In addition to including your customer names, your messages have to relate to their preferences and buying patterns/trends.

If you have many customers, sending each of them a custom personalized message will prove to be a daunting and cumbersome task.

One way to approach message personalization is customer segmentation. This is the categorization of your customer database based on shared characteristics, ensuring that your marketing efforts are targeted and relevant.

Types of market segmentation:

Demographic Segmentation: Customers need to be first segmented on the basis of age, income, education, gender, and occupation.

Geographical Segmentation: Trends and buying patterns keep changing based on their physical location.

Psychographic Segmentation: The segmentation of customers is based on their personality traits, lifestyles, attitude, and interests.

Behavioral Segmentation: Segment customers based on their purchase patterns, brand, and the benefits they seek.

Once you successfully segregate and segment your customers, use SMS and Rich Media Messaging (RMM) drip campaigns – a series of messages sent over a predetermined period to target each one.

For example, to target your behavioral segment, try and send a series of messages based on the actions your customers take:

Send a confirmation message right after each customer completes a purchase. Follow this up with a message asking your customers to engage and share a review or complete a survey to get insightful data from the horses’ mouths.

When customers add products to their cart and do not check out, they send abandoned cart messages reminding them and indirectly pushing them to complete the purchase.

Send promotional offers when customers add products to their eCommerce wish lists. This will allow them to mutually benefit by having a good deal. This will allow and help to build loyalty.

Send a re-engagement message so that your customers have not made a purchase in the past 30 days. This permits customers to remember the brand.

Most of these messages will require that you send them immediately after a customer completes a particular action.

For the messages that need not be sent right away, wait for a few days and send messages in the second half of the day, as most adults check their phones every 10 to 12 minutes so that they are likely to see your message and open it within seconds of receiving it. For a drip campaign, send your messages over the course of a few days.

The result of proper customer segmentation and drip campaigns is improved customer experience. Customers are more engaged and responsive because they observe that the more that they share about their preferences, the more relevant and personalized messages they receive.

Step 3: Determine Your Tool Kit/Media For Mobile Marketing

The next step in developing a mobile marketing strategy is determining which tools you need to use When it comes to mobile messaging, there are a lot of options that are available for you.

You need a tool that gives you ample flexibility to send more than just SMS messages. In case your eCommerce store has an app, you can send in-app notifications. With software like VoiceSage, you have in hand the option to send RMM and interactive voice messages (IVM).

With RMM, customers will have an interactive experience that allows them to buy without leaving their text messaging app.

All they have to do is click/tap on the message to visit your store and browse your catalog of products. With IVM, you can also send custom voice messages that will help you invite customers to participate in upcoming sales promotions, deals, offers, etc.

What tools and features you use firmly depends on the type of messages you want to send and the objectives you wish to achieve. Below are some examples of when to use which mobile message type:

IVM Campaigns – IVMs are mostly used by customer support and customer billing departments, but there is an opportunity to boost sales. You need to send IVMs to your loyal, priority customers to introduce new products and offers based on their buying patterns, i.e., their past purchases and preferences. Also, you can follow this message up with a short SMS text that links to your website or, if possible, to the customer’s personal dashboards on your eCommerce websites.

SMS Campaigns – SMSs are the perfect option when sending short, time-sensitive offers as they are text-based. Also, don’t forget to mention the discount amount, the purchase deadline, and a link that redirects to the product page so that customers can start shopping with a click and almost instantly kickstart the process.

RMM Campaigns – RMMs have more to offer as they are more flexible. This is because they contain rich media. Attach an image of a coupon and link customers to your product page when they tap on the image. You could also include a barcode that customers can scan in-store to receive and avail of a discount.

Most customers ranging between 18 to 44 use their phones in stores, and this option thus will prove extremely beneficial.

Analyze each message type thoroughly for open and click-through rats to observe whether they help you achieve your goals. Based on your observations, you can adjust your toolkit and align processes to mint out the maximum results from your mobile marketing strategy.

Step 4: Integrate Proximity Marketing To Target Customers

The last and final step in creating a solid mobile marketing strategy is to figure out how to use mobile messages to get footfall into your physical stores. Surveys suggest that 80 to 85 percent of respondents still prefer to shop offline in physical stores.

In spite of the growth of eCommerce platforms, customers still like to shop in stores because they receive items instantly, and it also gives them the option to have a look at the products in hand physically.

To cater to the needs of your audience, your marketing campaigns need to include some combination of in-store promotions, Google ads, email marketing, social media marketing, influencer marketing, affiliate marketing, promotions sent via mobile messaging, and display ads targeting netizens, i.e., the people surfing the web.

These are all proven and effective ways to capture the customers’ interest and attention and also encourage them to visit your brick-and-cement stores.

However, another method is a cross between display ads and physical in-store marketing. If combined and optimized, these two tactics help generate and churn attention from people who are not physically in one of your stores – but are in close proximity. This is called Proximity Marketing.

This marketing method uses beacons to target customers in the general area and vicinity of one of your stores. When potential customers are in close proximity, they automatically receive an invitation in the form of a message which attracts them to go and buy something.

Additional Benefits and perks:

Attract New Customers – For customers who may or may not be familiar with your brand and your range of products, a message inviting them to take advantage of a special offer is enough to convert them from casual passersby to potential customers and hence expand your customer base.

Encourage Impulsive Buying – With the right offers and promotional schemes, you can entice people to make an unplanned purchase, also known as impulsive buying. Here, you create a situation such that it creates an impulse in the minds of the customer toward the product, which makes them instantly buy your product. For instance, if it’s a sunny day and a person walking by your store receives a proximity message with an attractive discount offer, he/she will be encouraged to walk into your store and make a purchase.

Promote Customer Loyalty – For retained priority and loyal customers, give out special offers and memberships to avail and bag good discounts. For example, offer a free product, catering to their preferences, when they make a purchase over a certain value.

To maximize and boost the impact of your messages and generate good in-store traffic, send proximity messages during sales periods, such as festivals and important holidays. These will help increase brand and product awareness, getting people in shopping mode to hop into your store.

Verdict

With a robust and well-framed mobile marketing process framework, you can convert a multitude of customers and develop a good online and offline customer base! Over time, experience with the given road map will allow you to understand patterns better and tweak your processes and toolkit to bring maximum results.

Your goals can change, and new segments can be identified once your business expands and diversifies. Keep track of the performance of your roadmap and how effective it proves periodically!