Is Your Retail Strategy IRRELEVANT?

I’m a Baby Boomer and I’m irrelevant when it comes to shopping for home furnishings. Sure, I may buy a mattress and maybe even a power recliner, but that’s about it. My Home is fully furnished!I’m NOT your customer, Generation “X” & “Y” are your customer- all 126,000,000 million of them. They are all “wired” for the internet and they love being social on-line. They consume information when they want to and they do it in a variety of ways. Today’s consumer not only connects with your brand, “They Use It”.The internet changed everything for retail and social media is changing the internet. Again, it’s about “relevant content” being found by the consumer where and when they want to find it and consume it. You may think that your marketing to these generations, but I can comfortably say that you are not! 

Here’s why:

You have an average or mediocre website at best that probably isn’t even found in the 3 categories of search.

General search
Category Search
Branded Search      

Your content is lacking, outdated or irrelevant and you can’t, won’t or don’t keep up with it.

Today you MUST Embrace and Enact a social platform to connect with your audience, everywhere they are…and they are on the internet all the timeThere are the 10 platforms you must consider to be connected and integrate into your message. Failure to do this is no different than placing all your marketing dollars in print or TV…you’ll miss your audience that is not tuned into those platforms. I can’t outline everything in this article, so we’ve focused on a few that would immediately impact your local business. You can research all 10 that we’ve outlined @ www.social4retail.com 

Facebook

• 1,000,000,000 active members, 152,000,00 active users – 55% women
  

Be careful here, this is not a place to publish information that is not relevant to your audience. When I say not relevant, an example would be a post that says: “Did you know your sofa is a great place to take a nap”?  This type of nonsense will quickly get you “hidden” from posting on someone’s Facebook page because it’s not relevant or useful information.Facebook is a platform for discovery, relevance and events. It’s an extension of your internet and brand strategy, not a repetition of what’s going on everyday in your store or a selling platform. Ask JC Penny, Nordstrom, GameStop and other companies that opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. It needs to be fun, engaging with videos, contests, inspirational and more so people really do like you and ultimately will connect with you to transact when they are ready.

Pinterest

• 10,000,000+ active users and its estimated 97% are women. This is the hottest new social platform out there. You must have a strategy for this and HOME is the #1 Pinned element!
  

Google Places and Google+

• It’s Google and you need to embrace it because 78% of search is done on Google. Be there and be relevant to Google everywhere.
• Google+ 90,000,000 users

Twitter

1. 250,000,000 tweets per day – 55% women sharing what their thoughts, likes and experiences are with their followers

Foursquare

• Over 15,000,000 users and growing rapidly. 40% women. This is an easy to use platform and it’s an awesome platform driving traffic/in-store promotions and rewarding customers when they come to your store and “check in”.
  

StumbleUpon

• 18,000,000+ members

StumbleUpon helps you easily discover new and interesting stuff on the Web. Tell them what you like, and they’ll introduce you to amazing web pages, videos, photos and more that you wouldn't have found on your own. They’ll show you web pages based on that feedback as well as what similar Stumblers and the people you follow have Liked or Disliked. Yep, it's a web aggregation and this is perfect for home furnishing retailers.

Yelp

Yelp is an online city guide that helps people find cool places based on the informed opinions of a vibrant  and active community of locals in the know. As of June 2011, more than 53 million people visited Yelp in the past 30 days…that’s potentially 636,000,000/year. Yelpers have written over 20 million local reviews, 83% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher.

Tumblr & Blogs

• Tumblr has 9,000,000+ members
• Over 500,000,000 people worldwide read/subscribe to blogs
• Blogging is the new “news you can use” platform. People subscribe to them because they want to aggregate information “they want, when they want it”.·         
  
• Statistics state that 57% of retail business has acquired a customer through blogs. (Hubspot)·         Companies that embrace blogs get 88% more leads than those that don’t. (Hubspot)·        
  
•  Blogging improves your rank on Google and other search engines.·         
  
• Blogging helps establish your authority and reputation in your niche.·         
  
• Blogging gets tons of new traffic which you can target for your products or divert to your website.·         
  
• Blogging helps establish a targeted loyal customer-base which you can tap into in more than one way.·         
  
• Blogging helps build your email list as readers often subscribe to your feed or newsletter.·         
  
• Blogging helps spread the word about your business or its products.

Groupon/Living Social

• Groupon – 83,000,000 subscribers – 16,000,000 users
  
• Living Social – 26,000,000+ subscribers
  

With the cost to get someone into your store hovering around $130.00, this is a great way “event” promotion for new customer acquisition and more This can used much like grocery stores use “end isle” promotions and specials. Drive people to the store with a ridiculous “priced promotion”- say a sofa(s) “at cost”. You won’t lose any money, but you will get people to visit the store and potentially fill out their room with tables, chairs, rugs and more that may carry higher margins.

YouTube

• 1,800,000,000 (Trillion) video views/playbacks in 2011 – 158,000,000/month

Have you seen The Red House’s Quirky YouTube Video? It’s garnered close to 2,000,000 views and they are selling a ton of furniture, T-shirts and more. Research shows that women gravitate towards humor, animals and babies with video and those videos on YouTube that have these elements garner the highest views. Use this platform to be “real” and fun, delivering relevant content in a way that differentiates your store from the typical “Price Off” format. Create a brand that people will share and like.On YouTube you have the ability to share your brands story/history, product videos, commercials, fun events, your staff, before and after design elements and more. Don’t be boring, be relevant.I realize this is a lot of new information, but if you don’t integrate your retail or manufacturer brand with these platforms you will become irrelevant…very quickly. Think Blockbuster, Montgomery Ward, Borders and many more that did not adapt and did not change with the consumer.

Want more? Go to http://www.social4retail.com where we have hundreds of articles, info-graphics and more to help you create guide and deploy successful marketing solutions integrating the web with social media. 

About Bill Napier: www.social4retail.com - About Bill Napier: Bill is a specialist in creating, guiding and deploying successful marketing B2B & B2C solutions integrating traditional marketing strategies with the web and social media. He has worked in the home furnishings industry for over 12 years, as the chief marketing officer for some of the industry's largest manufacturers and creating some of the largest promotions ever launched within the industry.