This article highlights marketing strategies for departmental stores, to attract customers to a departmental store and increase sales. It also mentions additional facilities offered to customers in departmental stores. Every retailer will want to see an escalation in the sales figures. A deflation in the sales of a departmental store can be extremely frustrating for the retailers, for all they need is profit for their business. Today, a lot of departmental stores are budding, giving rise to cut-throat competition in the market. Therefore, it is extremely important to have an edge over other competitors.
Watch the video or continue reading. Also mentioned below are 14 additional facilities offered to customers in a departmental store.
If you are looking for the best marketing and promotional strategies for your departmental store, then you have landed at the right place. You as a departmental or retail store owner, might be having questions in your mind. But worry not. In this blog, we would provide you with innovative marketing strategies for your departmental store, to make it reach new heights. Read through the end of this blog to reap out the maximum advantage for your departmental store. We have also highlighted some of the best additional facilities offered to customers in departmental store. You can pick them up right away and deploy them in your business.
As a retailer, it is frustrating to see the sales plummet. In such pressing situations, the retailer would want any advice that can pull him out of this position. All needed, is a strategy that can increase the sales of the departmental store. Are you struggling with the same issue? We have come up with 8 best marketing strategies for departmental stores, which should be undertaken to attract the customers.
1. Offer additional facilities to customers in a departmental store
Generally, every store offers more or less, the same list of products. But to attract the customers to a departmental store, the retailer has to perform better than his competitors. He has to provide a different experience and or a strong reason to visit his store again. This is often done by offering additional facilities to customers in departmental stores.
Keep reading to find a list of additional facilities offered to customers in departmental stores. Many stores have now come up with the idea of making their goods available online and also getting a mobile app made to engage with customers. We have talked more about online promotions in the coming points. Through this method, they can enhance their service by providing a delivery system, easy returns, online payments, discount and coupon facility etc. Being abreast with technology is very important to attract a wide range of customers to a departmental store.
Here is a list of distinctive additional facilities offered to customers in a departmental store, which you can provide to increase sales:
- Offering free discount coupons, sourced from different brands
- Providing free carry bags and goodies for kids
- Free or chargeable porter to carry the shopping carts for elderly people, pregnant women and people with kids
- Giving away customer loyalty discount coupons for their next purchase (This really helps in bringing back the customers)
- A waiting lounge for members accompanying the shoppers
- Opening up a kids play area
- Maintaining neat and clean surroundings
- Keeping sufficient staff to attend to the customers needs
- Showcasing a welcome message as soon as the customers enter the departmental stores
- Providing some kind of entertainment, while customers are standing in the billing queue
- Having proper parking facility with assistance
- Developing a speedy payment process
- Offering greetings on entry and exit, by the guard standing on the door
- Deploying a personal shopping manager/ guide for the customers during the off-peak hours (Such guides can help the customers with their shopping needs. the customers will feel more satisfied and the guard could even help bring in more sales)
Apart from these additional facilities offered to customers in departmental stores, you should also consider the 10 SUCCESSFUL MARKETING TACTICS THAT WORK FOR EVERY INDUSTRY.
These are some of the additional facilities offered to customers in departmental stores. You should definitely incorporate them all in your strategy, if you haven’t already. These basic facilities have shown promising results and lead to a sustainable growth of a departmental store. Polishing these services helps to increase the sales of a departmental store.
Now that you know about some of the additional facilities offered to customers in departmental store, don’t go away and keep reading. This blog will provide you with many more effective ways to increase the footfall in your store and in turn increase your profit margins.
2. Special sales promotion tactics like coupons and discounts
Customers want the best services, at a reasonable price. Why not give them some special sales promotion offers to increase the sales of the departmental store? Experts suggest that providing incentives, attracts a lot of crowd. The biggest challenge here is marketing! A good marketing and advertising policy, coupled with some attractive offers will give a boost to the sales. Good advertising agencies like ours are apt at creating cost effective campaigns to derive the desired ROI.
Some basic offers to attract customers to a departmental store are listed below:
- Buy one get one free offer
- Free gift hampers on purchase above a certain amount
- Extra reward points on purchase
- Stock clearance sales
- Discount on next purchase
- Offering a free product
There will be an increase in the sales of departmental stores, if customers are lured by attractive offers. Irresistible customer incentives always work and will certainly result in a surge in the sales figures.
3. Target the online customers
Everybody talks about digital marketing these days. So whats new and different in this strategy? You might be wondering why we have listed this point here for innovative departmental store marketing. The answer lies in how we use the online marketing method. To discuss this in detail, let’s have a look at some statistics first.
Talking of modern times, 9 out of 10 people use Facebook. Around, 80% of these users visit departmental stores on a regular basis. These statistics give enough reason to tap the social media. Using multiple channels to attract customer to a departmental store, is an old trick. Now that the reach of social media has expanded, exploiting its services is the best way to retain customers and one of the best marketing strategies for departmental stores.
The trick here, lies in ensuring the following points:
- Combining online marketing efforts with the other traditional marketing means that your departmental store might be using.
- Involving the customers in the digital marketing of your store. You can ask customers to leave a review on your social channels, or simply tag your departmental store page on their profiles, along with a photo of a product purchased from your store.
- Targeting a specific audience, who live within the vicinity of your departmental store. This is probably one of the most important uses of digital marketing. We have talked about this in detail in the coming points.
- Using re-marketing. Many times, the customers visit a store (or its website), but return without purchasing any items. Here comes the role of effective re-marketing. Giving advertisements in the customer’s social media pages about the store, would induce him to return to the store to make an purchase.
By making use of the internet, the retailer can target his customers more effectively, which will result in the increase in the sales of the departmental store. Making a strategy that uses the combination local SEO, search engine marketing and social media can be very effective for your departmental store. Using bulk SMS and bulk e-mail strategy can also come in handy, if your departmental store maintains a list of its old customers. We have list below the links of some important resources, using which you can execute a strong online marketing strategy for your departmental store:
- LEARN SEO: A BEGINNER’S MANUAL
- A GUIDE TO SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING
- HOW TO COMPETE WITH BIG BRANDS IN SEM
- ADVERTISING ON GOOGLE ADS: BENEFITS AND WORKING
- A DETAILED GUIDE TO LEARN BASIC FACEBOOK MARKETING
- 7 TESTED METHODS TO INCREASE ORGANIC REACH ON FACEBOOK
- BULK SMS AND EMAIL MARKETING: A COST EFFECTIVE STRATEGY
- HOW TO BUILD AUTHORITY FROM BLOGGING
Are you getting confused by looking at so many links above? Don’t worry. You can go through our blog on THE MOST IMPORTANT DIGITAL MARKETING TACTICS TO DRIVE SALES to help you decide upon the best digital marketing strategy for your departmental store. And if you think that you are tight on budget and want to see results without investing a huge cost, the we would suggest that you get local SEO done for your departmental store. Getting local keywords (based on the area where your departmental store is located) ranking in the search engines is by far one of the most important online marketing strategy for a departmental store. Read HOW TO BOOST LOCAL SEO: A FEW SIMPLE STEPS to know more on this topic.
4. Engage with the customers of your departmental store
Today’s market is customer oriented. Customers prefer those sellers who can connect with them and make them feel valued. There are a plenty of businesses running with the same motive and target. To have a big share of the market, it is important to make the customers feel privileged after visiting the departmental store.
Here are some ways to engage with the customers and make them feel special apart from offering additional facilities offered to customers in a departmental store:
- Build an emotional connection
- Treat the customer as a part of the team
- Host events and contests
- Raise personalized communications to the customers
These strategies will encourage people to visit a particular store. This will attract customers to the departmental store, because at the end of the day all they want is to be treated with respect.
5. Make the facilities provided to the customers smoother
Handling a departmental store is not an easy task. It requires manpower to set a perfect store for the customers. But it is human nature to make mistakes. But in departmental store marketing, it is a tough task to correct those mistakes. So to overcome these errors, why not take the help of technology.
Here are two important software, required to develop departmental marketing system:
- Receipt printer: Say bye-bye to paper receipts and adopt the new technology of computerized receipt printers. Using computerized system will reduce the chances of errors and will also complete the work faster.
- Digital inventory tracker: Handling a departmental store means shouldering a lot of responsibilities. In this cumbersome process, the person in charge might forget to check the inventory of the store. So to keep a regular record about the inventory, departmental stores should invest in the technology of digital inventory tracker. This tracker will give updates about the stock on a daily basis.
6. Location-based advertisement
In departmental stores, there exists a lot of competition. Sales and advertising go hand in hand, the person in business must take the advertisement factor very seriously for a sustainable growth of the departmental store. Strong advertising capability is required to trap the customers. The best medium for advertising is the local/ regional newspapers. Hoardings and banners also invite the attention of the people. It is one of the best marketing strategies for departmental stores. Know more about sales strategies by reading our blog: ‘Best types of sales strategies used today’.
7. Guerrilla Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing is one of the most cost effective and impactful marketing strategies for departmental stores. It involves the use of promotional activities, through unorthodox strategies and platforms to create good branding for your store. There are many times in which you have to do cost cutting and cannot spend aggressively on conventional advertising. At such times, Guerrilla Marketing strategies come in handy. Guerrilla Marketing is a result-producing marketing strategy, that is sure-shot to attract customers, if executed in the right manner.
Guerrilla Marketing strategy has been used right since the ancient times and is often very successful in brand wars. To use this for promoting your departmental store, make a list of all the hot spots in the area near by your departmental store. Then, focus on conducting activities in these areas, which generate indirect attention for your departmental store. Creating a sense of curiosity in the minds of the customer regarding a new attraction available in your departmental store, can be a good idea.
8. Getting local PR done for promoting the departmental store
Public Relation strategies often come in handy to promote departmental stores. There are many departmental stores in the world, which rely on effective PR activities to keep their store running and grow further. The PR activities for a departmental store should be based on actual data. The departmental store should come up with new attractions to lure the customers and create a buzz. Such attraction, when promoted in the right way using PR tactics, can increase the footfall instantly for your departmental store. Examples of such attractions would include creating a baby zone for toddlers and their mothers, where they could get free playful sessions; creating a fun zone for kids, where they could win prizes by winning competitive games, etc.
These days PR can be done both online and also by using the traditional means. An ideal PR strategy for a departmental store should combine both. Read our blog on ONLINE PR TECHNIQUES VS TRADITIONAL PR METHODS to know more about both the methods in detail.
You can consult an expert marketing agency like Uni Square Concepts, if you want to reduce your hassles and avail the services of professionals for increasing footfall to your departmental store.
These were some marketing strategies for departmental stores. If you want to know more about the art of attracting customers, read our blog: ‘A beginner’s guide on how to attract new customers to business’. If you have any other suggestions and opinions that you think increase the sales of departmental stores, feel free to share your marketing strategies for departmental stores with us in the comments section below.
