Marketing your retail store:

for holiday season and beyond

As we approach the prime holiday sales season, many customers are evaluating their discretionary spending and as retailers, you may be wondering if you ordered too much or too little product for your stores. It’s not too late to review your marketing plan to make sure your approach is pragmatic enough to achieve your goals. This newsletter post serves as a guide and includes additional resources.

Define clear goals

Identify specific, measurable goals when planning your marketing efforts. For example: your goals may range from something as specific as growing sales by 10% during evening hours or a broader objective like increasing overall foot traffic by 20%. Other ideas for goals may be to get current customers in more frequently or to acquire new customers, or drive online sales — or all three!

You may need to prioritize which goals will have the largest impact on your business and which approaches have the likelihood of more ROI (return on investment). It’s not always easy —or accurate— to track the results of your marketing efforts, particularly if you handle the marketing on your own, but try to keep track when possible. (More on measurability later in this post.)

Food for thought: Should you consider hiring someone to help with your marketing and social media?

TIP: Coupons, gift certificates and promo codes are effective ways to keep track of marketing efforts, but don’t discount the benefits of a loyalty program in tracking sales numbers and promotions, too.

Pro tip: Make your goals attainable. Retail growth of about 2% is the status quo right now. If you show gains of 5% in Q4 year over year, that would be remarkable for most independent retailers. Be optimistic, but realistic.

Deciding who to target

Utilize any information you have collected about your current customer demographics to guide you in your holiday marketing. Have you conducted any online or in-store surveys? Have you analyzed social media interactions to see what engages customers? Can you look to prior years or seasons for trends or patterns that help you identify your ideal customer?

Food for thought: Are there ways to get your best customers to refer new ones?

TIP: Plan most of your marketing with your ideal customer in mind.

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Continue reading for goal measurement & marketing strategies…