Ten Marketing Tips for Retailers

Here are 10 marketing ideas for Retailers during LockUp. Tag your friends and family who could use this advice. This will help them get through the next month and come out of this Covid-19 Quarantine with a stronger social media presence and get customers back in your inbox sooner.  

1. Offer free shipping or a discount on all online orders Now more than ever, people are online shopping. The CDC even suggest you order as much stuff as you can for deliver instead of going out in public. Give your brand a leg up and offer free shipping or a discount when your customers order online.

2. Create a Mystery box of your back stock products to raise funds Can you picture all the stock you just ordered and is sitting in your stock room? Make up some mystery boxes and sell them below retail. Your customers will love the surprise and you can move some of that dead stock and be in a healthy place to order new stock when the Lock In is lifted.

3. Email your customers to let them know the ways you're still operating  Maybe all of your customers don't know you offer online shopping options or shipping options. Utilize your email list and start sending out weekly updates about sales, news, and other info to help your customers find your online store and spend some money with you.

4. Provide Subscriptions to Audible or Skillshare for your staff Your staff is going to be watching and listening to more content than ever right now. Why not provide them with some tools they can learn from and come back to work with a new skill or a new understanding about an aspect of their job. Paying to train your staff is never a bad idea. If you want to try two months of Skillshare for free, CLICK HERE.

5. Plan our your social media post for the next 6-12 months You have the time to create a digital strategy for your brand. Plan out what sales you want to have, what products you want to launch, and what days you want to make announcements. After you get your list around, you can have your designer make any content or assets you need and have everything ready so you can focus on more complicated content (like #6) for the rest of the year.

6. Create some of the longer content you have been wanting to make, like videos or podcast You have more time than ever right now and people are consuming video and audio content more than ever. Now is the time to make some videos highlighting your product or service. Take a class on Skillshare and learn how to do some basic video editing. You can do it!

7. Create a VIP group your customers can join now for perks later Now is a great time to create some incentives for your customers. Creating a VIP group will give you a good idea about your customers who are willing to support you during this tough time over the customers who may only like a facebook post. You can start coming up with some ideas to monetize these super fans like the Mystery Box I brought up in #2.

8. Look at your bookkeeping and find out how to streamline your processes If have ever thought, "I bet we can do this better", now is the time to find out. Look at how you pay your vendors, order your product, and do payroll and find out if there is anything you can do to save money or streamline your processes. Can you combine some processes into one program? You have time to figure it out.

9. Post pics of your products demonstrating social distancing This is just a fun idea to generate fresh content about your products. If you sell beauty products, take a picture of two bottles of lotion sitting 6 feet apart and come up with a fun caption. Put masks on the mannequins wearing your tees or show off your jewelry wearing some gloves.

10. Send your customers check in emails letting them know we are all in this together You don't always have to sell with every email. Some of the emails that really resonated with me over this last month had the title, "I'm not selling anything, just checking in on you". Personal emails stick with people and as soon as we can venture out again, they will think of your brand.

I hope this helps some of you. Please share this article with your friends and family if you think it can help them.

As always, I am here if any of you have any questions. Just email me at nate@natemadeit.com and I will see what I can do.

Stay Safe, We are all in this together!