Retail Marketing Solutions

Retail Marketing Series - Low Footfalls and Solution.

India is the 2nd biggest retail market in the world, and retail marketing professionals are always in demand and will always be. The market became very dynamic these days and evolving with each passing day.

There are many problems and issues in Retail marketing. Still, there is enormous potential if we play our cards smartly. We will talk about these issues one by one in this series. Today's topic is Low footfalls and its solutions.

We love to buy after touch and feel the product or services; therefore, most of the companies are adopting experiential marketing, especially for premium products. There is a paradigm change in a product life journey to the customer experience journey.

Low footfall is the primary concern these days for all companies. Due to the slow growth rate and policies, people are more inclined to saving instead of investing in consumer goods.

For example - if a customer already experienced a 32' LCD television, then a 43' Ultra HD television is waiting for him from the product ecosystem. Entire marketing exercise will put on - how to find such users, what to communicate, how to invite for a product demo, how to engage them, and drive them to share this story with his friends and family network. 

I am putting my thoughts from a decade long experience in retail marketing into this series; we will analyze all issues about the current retail market and its possible solutions. I welcome all of you to give your suggestions and correct them anywhere if I am wrong.

 Customers are two types - 1st, Who predetermined to visit some particular brand shop and buy and in 2nd category those who come to market with an open mind and select the shop by visibility elements - Signage, POSM materials. 

We Can't do much in 1st case, but we can do a lot in 2nd case. Below are some necessary factors to drive a good footfall.

At Shop:- 

 Hygiene Factor - In the Retail industry, shop hygiene matters a lot. Below elements are essential to keep the store hygiene at each parameter.

1.  Promoter hygiene - he should be presentable, shaved, and in uniform with complete product knowledge. These days when premiumization is the driving force behind the profitability, just having the product knowledge is not so important. Only product features can not sell the product, but how these features improve the user experience that's the USP, and product trainers must make this understand to promoters, retailers, and sales force. A part of the marketing budget should spend on regular training and behavioural training. I will describe this in a separate article.
2.  Product display, and cleanliness
3.  Catalogue and product broachers
4. Promotable and canopy for shop front activities
5. The guest book should be ready.
6.  Internet, USB connectors and wi-fi availability if its an electronic shop
7.  Signage of a particular brand should be placed at facia, if its multi-Brand outlets, then at least get eye-level visibility. - If Brand X is promoting its product in this shop in the case of multi-brand outlets, then signage visibility matters in India. It always depends on industry type and product value. In the handsets industry, if your handsets are glitzy and powerful, then signage should also have the same shine, such as ACP boards. However, it is not entirely followed in other industries.
8. Greetings by promoters - It should be natural and have a local flavour. 
9. Need analysis- Premiumization and Upselling. Dealer and salesperson must focus on selling the premium products and never judging any walk-in customer by his visual outlook, dress, and shoes. Respect them and sell premium.
10. Closing with some gifts:- Always give some freebies for customer delights. These Freebies will provide an opportunity to get into the drying room or kitchen and keep on reminding the users about your brand. A simple Coffe Mug is screaming your brand name whenever he or his guests take a sip of coffee. So I always recommend freebies after closing the deal. While invoicing and handover the gift, a smart promoter of a strong consumer brand can fetch the necessary information. For example, if its Air conditioner sale, he can ask - how old the washing machine in-home, Automatic or semi-automatic, Water purifier status, Refrigerator, wheater TV is LCD or old colour television and like that. The customer's mental state is vulnerable at that time, and he will share all his information about his home and contacts - email id, phone number, and most importantly, WhatsApp numbers.
11. Customer Relationship by Shop Promoter- Home demo and home visit -This is the final stage of the deal. As I described this in the previous point that a smart promoter fetches the durability status of other consumer products of the customer home. After making the payment, a customer considers the salesperson to his best friend and seek his opinion to upgrade his home.
12. I am sure many of you would not agree with this, but visit any shop and silently observe the behavioural change in customers from entering into a shop till making the payment. After that, when he shakes the hand with a dealer or salesman, that is the best time to milk him, and a smart and well-trained shop sales executive takes the best from it. Please understand, this may not be the best time to offer other products, but winning the trust of this customer should be a priority.
13. Post-sales - The promoter can make a call to the customer after 15 days to ask whether his Air conditioner is working well or have any issue. Wheater he knows the function of remote or should I come to explain to you, or I have a great deal of water purifier, so I want to go and give you a demo because your existing Water purifier is four years old and maybe its time to upgrade. There are many other things to win the trust and upgrade him.

Customer Relationship Management -

Referral and repeat - now it's fascinating. Customer relationship management is not new then why I am mentioning here, because we take this very casually. Indian trade considers that smiling and how are you are CRM, and there is nothing beyond that. It is not in Korean companies, which I found when I was working with LG. They treat this very seriously and execute CRM in an organized way, like a time-bound campaign. Some of the part of this CRM project is mentioned below, which is equally relevant to any industry. The objective is to drive customers to visit increase footfalls. 

1.       Fix the date - the start of the activity and end of the event, the entire time scheduled should be fixed in advance. 
2.       Fix the shops - Identify the most potential shop in a particular market
3.      Shop branding - Vinyle sticker or banner on shop glass/fa?ade - celebration starts date
4.       SMS - 3 times SMS to old customer database - 5 days before the activity, three days before the event and one day before the last year of activity
5.      Tele calling - shop promoter or ISDs will call all those customers in the previous 30 or 60 days who have visited the shop but did not buy anything. His sales speech will not have any product or offer description but to invite them to shop to get the benefits of the celebration offer. He will say that there will be a grand celebration offer is going to start from this date, so I remember the name that you have visited our shop at that time but did not buy anything. Please do visit and you will be amazed to see this offer. Words can be anything to ignite curiosity.
6.      Shop decoration - balloons are a very cost-effective tool for shop decoration and a sign of celebration. It starts from Rs. 600 to 2500 to decorate a shop with balloons. Decoration should begin from the start date of the activity.
7.      Freebies - In LG, we used to give free shopping bags with a logo and a nicely wrapped gift. Shopping bags works in three ways - 1) Customer hesitates to visit in competition shop nearby with this bag 2) This bag promotes the celebration going on and advertise the activity in that shop while this customer roams in the market. 3) This bag increases the curiosity of family and friends, and this motivates them to revisit the shop.
8.      Offer stickers - There may be many product stickers, such as the end of the life product offer, today's special offer, these stickers communicate to the customer, and fuel his buying decision.

 This entire activity can be modified as per the product category and market specification, but the objective must remain the same, to drive customer footfalls.

Experiential Marketing-

When the footfall is low, we have to arrange more experiential and engagement activities. This type of demonstration could be anywhere - either at the customer's home, shopping malls, or his society. As per the product category, we can plan it out. Provide live product experience would be real marketing without advertising.

Experiential marketing is a fantastic concept in which a company incorporates a similar ecosystem to allow the customer to experience the features and perceived the value for his lifestyle. This entire holistic set of the condition influence customer thinking and motivates him to buy the product and remain loyal to the brand. This could be a real-life event or experience where the customer participates, and a step ahead, he shares his expertise on his timeline that the main objective to engage the customer and drive him to narrate his story to his network. 

There are two types of Experiential marketing, in terms of nature and expectations

1) For Brand Building - Where brand awareness is the main objective, followed by brand loyalty by customer engagement.

2) For Activation - When the company uses all 4Ps to drive brand awareness into a sale. Unfortunately, in most of the experiential marketing in India are sales-centric, and companies want number instantly. Marketing becomes sales driven and works as a support to the sales force to get the target numbers. I will describe this in my next article.

Engagement Activity:-

Activities for awareness, education, and promotion and to increase the footfall. There may be many BTL market activities that can attract customers and drive them to visit nearby shops and buy the product. Roadshow with product demo can be one such example. In my last assignment at MTS - Shamiyana Activity was the most successful customer acquisition activity in MTS. Umbrella and canopy event in Haat, trade fair, and another gathering could be the other options too.

 Influencing Marketing:-

There are two types of influencers - online and offline. 

Online - With big celebrities with millions of followers or in 2nd type with having small numbers of followers. Gone are those days when big celeb was a guarantee of success and only considered to promote a brand now it has been observing that minor celebrities are better than that big film stars. Customer engagement, which is the main objective, would better with a short time celeb. They can be anyone, even our neighbour whos having 3k followers in our locality is a better choice to drive the offer and engage people. Their followers belong to that particular locality only not from across the world; therefore, this is more logical to promote an offer that is meant to this market. Here the context is the Emperor.

Offline influencers - A social worker, artist, Architects, Author, Sarpanch, even an electrician, and teacher could be a part of influencer marketing. It depends on the marketing team, their thought process, and market working. Detail market research and working are essential to use these influencers. In tiles and building making material industry - Architects and interior designers are considered influencers, and their involvement in the product will bring more awareness in the market, followed by business. I have done such meets in my tenure with Nitco tiles, and 15% growth from this category just happened after the event. These meet helped us to create a pool of advocates from influencers for the Nitco brand of tiles.

I Will write my experience and importance of planning on this topic in my next article because this is one of the most discussed marketing concepts, and there are many misconceptions about it in the world of marketing. 

Retail Visibility:- 

Visibility is an integral and essential part of retail marketing. Visuals are outstanding in brand building. It does not directly bring you the customer but enabling the sales by awareness and capturing the customer's mind share. In a Sales funnel, visibility elements and activities are on the top, and in the absence of these activities, a brand cant is evolved and prosper. 

I have been using many such elements and activities in local marketing campaigns; here, I am just mentioning a few of them; a detailed description will be shared in my next blog. 

1) Signage and POSM

2) Trade Meet

3) Retail Branding

4) Sponsorships

5) Trade Fair and Exhibitions

6) Acquisition activities - Shamiyana or canopy activity, fusion marketing (To know about fusion marketing, please click on the below link.

7) Co-Branding at customer touchpoints

8) Innovations in Retail POSM, Acquisition activity, branding or OOH.

9) Influencers meet - Example - Architect Meet.

10) Trade engagements and education 

11) Event - local festivals and product-specific events - Dishathon- hackathon, LG - Maklka-e-kitchen.

I thank all of you for giving your valuable time to read my article. I request you to please share your opinion in the comment box so that others could get benefited from your thoughts.

Your feedbacks are essential to me, and this will also motivate me to write on different topics of marketing, which matters in Indian retail marketing.

This article is also published on my blog site.