As a retail business owner, do you truly believe that new customer acquisition is more important than existing customer retention? While it’s true that a majority of retailers are more successful targeting their existing customers and selling to them again, many of these organizations continue to prioritize new customer acquisition. In terms of statistical significance, research indicates a 60% to 70% chance of reselling to existing customers compared to a 5% to 20% chance of making a first-time sale to a new customer. With such an immense difference between these likelihoods, you’d think that retailers would reconsider their marketing efforts as they’re primarily driven to attracting new customers.
For organizations that are interested in ways to produce more consistent dynamic revenue growth, the infographic featured alongside this post is the best place to start. The most sound way to do this is by tightly connecting the online and in-store techniques used by your organization to garner business. In doing so, you’re giving customers the most enhanced shopping experience while they’re in your retail locations and maintaining their interest even when they leave the store through personalized offers online. These techniques are typically referred to as cross-selling and up-selling.
One thing the infographic emphasizes is how important omnichannel marketing is to achieving both this strategy and finding any success in the retail industry today. A well-established digital presence can be the deciding factor between bringing new customers into physical retail locations that would otherwise never had interacted with a business.
For example, let’s take an average visit from a customer in a brick-and-mortar retail location. Most customers spend about 15 minutes to an hour in store while searching for their products and then purchasing their products. However, with an established digital marketing presence, your brand is able to be continuously interacted with even outside of any retail location. Social media pages, text alerts, e-mail offers, etc., are all ways in which customers can digitally interact with your business. A unique enough offer is the perfect catalyst for bringing customers into the store.
An omnichannel strategy’s strength is predicated on how long customers spend in retail locations. On average, most customers spend about 15 minutes to an hour in physical retail locations. More often than naught, they enter a store knowing exactly what they’re looking for and as once they purchase it they leave. A strong enough social media presence means that the customer never stops interacting with this business despite leaving their physical location. Text message offerings and different coupon codes sent via e-mail are the perfect ways to drag these customers back into the store.
Finally, the most integrated way in which these strategies can make a difference comes in the form of digital marketing in retail locations. Let’s take a typical appliance store as an example. If your customers are visiting your store in search of a washer and dryer combo, they’d welcome a way to compare all of your store’s offerings similarly to the way they could online. Providing a means to do this, perhaps through a touchscreen monitor or tablet, gives customers the ability to select the perfect set for them, all while being able to discuss their concerns and ask questions with a specialist in store.
While it’s easy to say prioritizing customer retention is the most successful way for retail organizations to operate, in practice retaining these customers has proven to be rather difficult. Any organization struggling to retain their existing customers should look to the infographic featured alongside this post for more information on how these techniques can be properly integrated. Infographic courtesy of IDL Displays.