It has been difficult for small businesses to bring in foot traffic lately. But brick-and-mortar stores who strategize their stores’ promotions and manage their activities are successful in bringing in more customers. Taking into consideration the success of online businesses, promoting physical stores might seem like a hard nut to crack but with the proper promotional ideas, brick-and-mortar merchants can be as successful as their online counterparts.
There are several ways to attract customers to your store, but instead of going old-school, let’s try something out-of-the-box. Below is a list of unique ideas to boost foot-fall into your brick-and-mortar stores.
USB Chargers
The fact that every other person holds a smartphone these days makes USB chargers extremely useful. If you have noticed, crowds of people gather around charging stations at airports and such. Why not give potential customers a chance to enter your store?
Free Wi-Fi
One of the most viable ways to engage customers with your brand is to offer free Wi-Fi. Consumers are a bit annoyed by the limited data offered by the cell phone providers, you can take advantage of the pain-point and offer free Wi-Fi in your store. Along with the foot-traffic, this can also lead to more sales.
If you are already offering free Wi-Fi, you can go beyond this by offering devices to customers at your store. Placing IPads throughout the store is a good option. This can be a way for customers to learn more about your products, engage with your app, take and post photos with your product, test out your product and more.
Give your customers a Break
Shopping can be exhausting and uncomfortable at times. You can give customers a break and relaxation while encouraging them to keep on shopping by providing a lounge-like area. This area may include entertainment, refreshments as well as other comforts.
Television can be a great way to relax and make customers feel at home. You can research your customer base and think of what they watch or you can simply cast channels according to your product assortment. For example, if you sell sporting goods, cast ESPN, Ten sports and the like.
Use Of Mobile Applications
This is simple and won’t require space as well. Many small and large-scale retailers are now using easy mobile applications to make their routines simpler and better. Technology is a headache until you start using it. For example: when the time Whatsapp was launched, people thought the app to be strenuous and left it for entertainment purposes only. However, the hype was created by the time and people soon started to realize that this app could be a game changer.
What we got to do is to change the current mind-set and at least try to make things easier for ourselves. People who are using these apps are not from a different world and certainly not aliens. These apps are developed to be simpler and what us retailers can handle. Like, one such app is Oscar Udhaar app.
Oscar Udhaar app is a free business tool for personal and commercial use. The purpose of this app is to get rid of paper registers and record your daily khata on your cell-phone. Just after you enter the transaction, a free SMS is sent to the customer notifying their purchase and credit amount. This way, the retailers do not have to remind them on every visit to pay their debts, since the Udhaar app takes all the responsibility.
Winding Up
When searching for innovative ways to attract customers to visit your brick-and-mortar location, get creative. As long as you are organized and mentally prepared, you can understand your customer base and find unique opportunities to encourage them to visit your shop.
