Retailers and shoppers alike are looking for ways to beat the pressure that inflation is putting on stressed budgets, but retailers have a secret weapon in overcoming shopper hesitation: experiential marketing. Experiential marketing can be a potent part of your retail marketing strategy since it serves two important purposes.
First, experiential marketing proves to customers that products live up to their hype. More importantly, though, experiential marketing gives shoppers a reason to visit your store. When all retailers are lowering prices, the thing that sets your store apart and makes it the choice for shoppers when deciding where to spend money comes down to the customer experience your store provides.
Easy, Fun Examples You Can Use
H&M, Showfield’s, and Costco use experiential marketing to sell the shopping experience at their locations. While it would be nice to have the time and budget to create all-encompassing store demo and store sampling experiences, you may not have the resources to do this. Nevertheless, you can still leverage the power of experiential marketing to promote a customer experience that can generate word of mouthing marketing triggers.
Below are three easy ways to take advantage of experiential marketing you can use in your store to make it a destination despite rising inflation:
Make a Game Out of Shopping
When customers are looking for low-cost alternatives, create a game out of finding them. For example, pick out private-label brands and list them on a scavenger hunt sheet. Then, send customers on a quest to find these brands and encourage them to take pictures. You can award small discounts on the items they find, but the best part is that the images they take will likely stay on their phones. This provides a future reminder about the event, your store, the products it carries, and the customer experience your store provides.
Encourage Group Shopping
Group shopping can be another retail marketing solution that takes advantage of experiential marketing. Promote a day that rewards shoppers for bringing friends and family. This could be marketed as a community day or something similar. Encourage shoppers to take pictures and share the event with others on social media. The idea is to position your store as the destination for customer experiences, not just low prices and a great selection.
Turn to Your Vendors
CPG brands can be important assets when looking for experiential marketing ideas. Vendors often have access to assets that make it easier to put together events, and solutions like Demo Wizard can also help manage experiential marketing events efficiently.
Store Choice is the Most Crucial Step
Where customers choose to shop is the most crucial decision in the customer journey. You can keep shoppers in your store longer using all kinds of retail marketing techniques, but attracting them to your store is the first and most vital part of the journey. The use of experiential marketing helps make this choice easy for consumers burdened by inflation, and it can cement in their minds that your store is the place to go for more than just a simple shopping trip.
