How To Survive and Thrive In Retail Management

Retail communications include the messaging, marketing, and advertising efforts to inform customers about brand image or the products and services a company offers. According to Levy, retail communications programs have long and short-term implications. An effective communications strategy builds a retail brand’s image over time and helps differentiate the brand from the competition in the long term. The short-term objectives of retail communications include the promotion of products and services through advertising and content marketing to increase sales over a particular period.

In his book Smart Retail: Winning Ideas and Strategies from the Most Successful Retailers in the World, Richard Hammond advocated keeping your retail communications strategy simple (2017, 4th Edition). “Marketing is about understanding who your customers are, where they can be found, what they need, and how much they will pay to satisfy those needs,” Hammond writes. He believes that answering a series of questions improves your decision making concerning promotions and advertising:

1. Who might want to shop at a store like ours?
2. What might they like about us?
3. Which products would excite them?
4. What kind of promotions do they like?
5. Where can I find these people?
6. What should I tell them?

You can’t just answer these questions with social media and digital marketing efforts. Hammond acknowledges that today, digital trends impact a retailer’s communications strategy. He’s optimistic that technology is finding its place and that “real and digital” are working together to “make life easier to enjoy.” Hammond’s theory that technology enhances the experience - but is not the experience itself - is consistent with his view that physical retailing and retailing online are not different.

“They’re the same thing,” writes Hammond. “All retailing is about customers, engaging people, creating experiences that make them want to shop, supporting these experiences after the sale, and putting ourselves into the customer’s consideration.”

Promoting to Endure in Retail

In Coping with Retail Giants, Samli makes the case that, especially for small, independent retailers, the communications process is essential for survival. “Being a well-kept secret in the marketplace is almost deadly for a retailer,” writes Samli. You must promote your retail store’s image, and Samli emphasizes a communications strategy focused on name recognition. The goal of this retail strategy is stimulating a “positive attitude in the marketplace toward the retailer . . .  and as a result, reinforce or improve the attitude of the target market toward, say, [the] store.” Retailers of all sizes use promotions as part of their retail communications mix, but one of Samli’s most important messages is the significance of promotional activity and consistent messaging activity for small retailers competing with retail giants.

Your communications strategy should leverage digital promotions via advertising and social media marketing as well as through live, promotional events, in-store promotions, and physical and emotional promotions of your brand image that utilize environmental strategy (music, scents, merchandise, location, etc.). In the Smart Retail chapter “Promote or Die,” Hammond recommends 30 promotions. Here are three promotions to consider for your retail communications strategy:

1. Pop-Up Shops: Retail pop-up shops and space brokers, such as PopUp Republic, offer an innovative approach to your retail strategy by facilitating the creation of these concepts. Retailers use pop-up shops, restaurants, events, and other forms of physical marketing as a temporary and creative method to market their brand with a physical promotion of their product and service. The advantage — over strictly digital promotions — is a focus on the real customer experience that mimics the physical location and long-term brand image that the retailer is promoting, while providing a vehicle to sell high margin or featured merchandise over a given period. Or, as Constance Gustke put it in her New York Times piece on pop-up stores, “In cyberspace, goods can’t be touched.”
2. Retail Collaboration: “Two brands are better than one,” says Hammond. He uses fashion and homewares as examples for the benefits of different brands (from different retail sectors) collaborating on promotions and messaging. H&M partners with designers and fashion icons to promote collections in their inventory and Target built their homewares reputation in partnership with Martha Stewart. The advantages of this promotional strategy are the essential role that technology plays in the collaboration. You can - and should - design digital advertising campaigns and social media marketing efforts around a shared audience to enhance the physical, in-store collaboration and overall results. If you are a small retail operation without an established audience online, or you are intimidated by social media and fear you don’t have the influence or recognition for active collaboration, consider leveraging a form of cooperation and communication strategy known as influencer marketing. Today, this type of collaboration plays a significant and often highly profitable role for smaller online retailers and distributors.
3. Special In-Store Events: This type of promotion is a combination of Hammond’s suggestions, surveys and special nights. According to a report by Salesforce, 26 percent of survey respondents attended in-store events, and 58 percent reported they were more likely to make a future purchase in that store. Invite select customers (think strategically based on your target customer or the new market you wish to attract) to your location and promote the event with digital media. If appropriate for your market and customer, provide entertainment, food and drink, or a unique theme for the event that supports a charity or cause. Take advantage of the audience and your store environment to survey guests (offer an incentive) asking questions that answer the advice you seek or opinions that drive your future communication strategy. Soliciting customer insight based on the physical environment or your store, specific product merchandise, or customer experience is a promotional strategy that pays dividends on future retail communication activities (for example social media imagery or advertising sales copy).