Retail Marketing Strategies for Driving Your Social Media Audience In-Store

This blog was originally published by Statusphere.

No matter your brand, having an established and consistent social media presence is essential. In retail marketing, it’s especially important to have an active social media strategy in place to engage with customers and share your brand, products and special offers. However, engagement only means so much if you aren’t driving your audience in-store.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can use social media as a tool to do exactly that! We compiled some of the best retail marketing strategies that your brand can use to drive your social media audience in-store:

Offer Platform-Exclusive Discounts

Your followers are already interested in your content and may just be waiting for a reason to drop by your store — so give them one! You can accomplish this in a variety of ways, all of which are simple and effective. For example, ask them to like a photo and show the cashier for a 10 percent discount. You can also take this strategy to Instagram or Facebook Stories and make it more interactive. Create a fun template and ask your followers to fill it out and share it on their stories with your account tagged. Then, send discount codes or special offers to the followers who tagged you!

Host Unique Social Experiences

Incorporating interactive social experiences to your stores is a great retail marketing strategy to entice your social media audience to drop in. For example, you could install an aesthetically-appealing selfie backdrop with a custom hashtag and offer a coupon to shoppers who post a photo with it. When their followers see it, they’ll want to come to your store and take their own photo! Plus, you can repost the photos on your brand’s feeds and encourage your audience to stop by.

Need some inspiration? Aerie has taken a unique approach to this strategy by encouraging in-store customers to write compliments on Post-it Notes, stick them on dressing room mirrors, and post a photo with the hashtag #AerieReal on Instagram.

Run a Giveaway

It’s a fact of life: everyone loves free stuff. As a brand, you can leverage that fact and host a giveaway to lure your ideal shoppers in! Once you’ve decided on the prize, announce your giveaway on social media and encourage all of your followers to come into your store and make a purchase to enter. Or if you’re feeling extra creative, you could combine this strategy with the previous one and have your followers enter by posting a photo with an in-store backdrop and hashtag. When you select the winner, be sure to also announce it on social media to generate more excitement and drive contest entries.

For some killer examples of Instagram giveaways that actually worked, check out this blog.

Bring In Local Influencers

You can take the concept of an in-store experience to the next level with this strategy. Consider hosting an in-store event at some of your major brick and mortar locations with the help of local influencers. This strategy is a great option because it works in two ways: the influencers can use their platform to encourage people to attend and they can create organic content at your store during the event. You’ll end up with plenty of user-generated content to share on your own social feeds and foot traffic with the potential for conversion into returning customers — a win-win!

Some creative event ideas that any influencer would love include:

• Meet and greets

• Panel discussions

• Pop-up shops or tours

• Group classes (makeup tutorials, yoga, etc)

Yet again, Aerie can provide a great example of a brand that excels at hosting events geared at influencers. When Olympic champion and #AerieReal Role Model Ally Raisman launched her collection for the brand, she also hosted an in-store yoga class that perfectly tied in with the collection’s inspiration of “strength, wellness and mindful living.” For influencers with a focus on health and wellness, what event could be more on-brand than that?

Of course, an in-store event is just one of many retail marketing campaign ideas you could choose from. At Statusphere, we can make the process simple by matching your brand with the right influencers to promote and attend your in-store event. Click here to chat with one of our influencer marketing specialists and start planning your campaign today!