No matter what retailers are doing these days, the future of the retail industry depends on customer engagement strategies.
According to the insights, the customer engagement market was valued in 2020 at USD 15.5 billion, and it is expected to reach USD 30.92 billion by 2026.
The profit and loss depend on the customer’s involvement in your store. As per data, before COVID-19, people used to go to the physical stores to buy their essentials. And because of various online frauds, most the customers are unable to shop online.
During COVID-19 times, we have seen many physical stores that have suffered a lot of loss because of a lack of customer engagement. Now as everything is going back to normal, we have seen an increase in customers towards the retails stores. This is definitely a good sign and opportunity for all retail owners to increase their sales by engaging more and more customers.
How To Boost Customer Engagement
Different strategies can be used to engage customers in your retail store. Along with these tips, you should always be analyzing the growth of your retail store by each tactic, as more than 85 percent of the marketing executive makes their decisions based on location analytics (Gartner).
Here are a few effective ideas to boost customer engagement. These will be surely beneficial for the successful growth of your business.
1. Boost Social Media
Social media is not only for promoting your brand, but it is also very effective for building your customers and engaging them with your retail store via digital marketing.
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You can share your recent and new arrivals with them, share reviews of your previous buyers and build trust by communicating with them about their good or bad experience.
2. Run Referral Campaigns
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Sending your regular customers some gift hampers or coupon codes on their good shopping will make them get attached to your brand. Let them visit your branch and use codes for discounts on any fixed amount of shopping. Your campaign should also work for reviews or share user-generated content to build loyal customers.
3. Share Stories
On the social media platform, you can share stories of your customers and their engagement with your brand. It will be really helpful for you to run your business effectively.
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You can run an interview week in your retail store, where you can conduct interviews and collect reviews of your customers regarding various operations in your retail store. You can then share these reviews as stories on your social media channels.
4. Build A Community
Sara Chris – Customer Service Manager at Dissertation Assistance UK, stated in her report about customer engagement that,
“Customers will be more loyal and engaged with your brand if you build a community for them where they can share their views and have ideas from similar ones.”
Trusting a single person who is running a firm is quite difficult, but if there is a community that welcomes the brand’s goodwill, then it is something beneficial.
This will increase the awareness of your brand which is the first step for customer journey funnel.
5. Boost In-Store Customer Service
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The best way to deal with customer queries is to introduce in-store customer service. This is a great way to find out what your customer is looking for and whether you have their demand in your store at times or not. Through this, you can immediately respond to them and stay away from many challenges.
6. In-Store Rewards
Customers always become happy if a brand offers some rewards for their shopping. They always get excited when it comes to the sales of their favorite brand. Try to give them a buy one get one free offer, and it will work great as a marketing strategy, send gift hampers with their shopping bags, and many more.
7. The Four I’s
You need to focus on the four I’s, which are Interaction, Involvement, Influence, and Intimacy, to increase customer engagement. If you are in the field of marketing and aware of these four I’s, then you can run a long-term business with effective skills.
As per the recent studies by Assignment Assistance UK, you have to focus on the interaction with your customer to see if they are willing to purchase from your brand or not and involve them in your reviews and social media page. After that, influence them to buy from your platform, which will develop a great intimacy for your brand and boost customer loyalty.
8. Promote A Good Cause
Many customers like doing charity work or helping needy people. What you can do is mention in your price tag that a fixed percentage of the sale will be given to needy people. Being a retailer, you can engage your customers by promoting the good cause in both online and physical stores.
9. Motivate Customers To Answer In-Store Survey
Whether you are running a clothing brand or restaurant, if you want the honest review of your customer, then the best time is when your customers check out.
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You can take immediate review from them by asking them to fill up the store survey. This will be a great practice to see where your brand is and how effectively it is working.
10. Add Technology
Everyone likes the innovation of technology in all types of brands. It is the perfect way to attract your customer. If the ambiance of your brand is attractive, then you can get your customer with relatively lesser effort. You can offer guest wifi to your customers so that they can enjoy it. Furthermore, using artificial intelligence for different operations can be a great option which can help you handle big data.
Conclusion
Customer engagement is all about understanding their behavior and fulfilling the expectations. The tips mentioned above will help you engage your customers in the retail store, and you will be able to lift your sales high.
Author Bio
Claudia Jeffrey is currently working as an Editor at Crowd Writer, where she helps students who come up with their requests to write my essay for me UK. Claudia is a hard-working single mom and has worked as a Customer Support Manager with the same organization.
