Retail Marketing: What Is It and Why Is It Important?
What is Retail Marketing?
Retail marketing traditionally refers to how retailers promote their physical stores’ products and services. Historically, retailers have been responsible for marketing and selling the goods they have purchased (wholesale) from designers.
Therefore, as a retailer, your entire focus is on motivating customers to come to your store and purchase in order to drive sales for yourself and also remain in favor of the designers you work with.
Why is Retail Marketing Important?
Marketing is even more important in retail given how competitive some product categories are. Without a solid marketing strategy, you’re leaving it up to your customer to remember you on their own once they become interested in a product you sell.
Retail marketing is unique because retail products are often repeat purchases, so unlike with subscriptions or one-time purchases, retailers have to depend on efforts in order to win back customers after each sale. With retail more than any industry,digital marketing plays a critical role in growing a customer’s lifetime value (LTV).
How is retail marketing different from marketing?
On top of these responsibilities, the digital marketing manager engages in retail-specific activities. These activities include in-store displays and promotions, in-store circulars, point-of-sale materials and window banners. In addition, the retail marketing manager might purchase advertisements in coupon circulars, magazines and local newspapers. Some marketing managers run commercials on terrestrial radio and on local television stations.
Hiring managers prefer retail marketing managers with direct experience in online and offline marketing. In addition, previous retail experience is preferred, since candidates will be familiar with store operations and retail customer behavior and preferences.
Retail Marketing Mix: The Four Ps of Retail Marketing
Retailers use various advertising and communication tools to grow awareness and considerations with future customers. Finding the right marketing mix can lead to a profitable growth and a higher return on investment. By considering the right advertising strategy retailers can persuade consumers to choose to do business with their retail brand. The fundamental approach used my modern retailers in marketing their products is the Four Ps of Marketing.
Product: There are two primary types of merchandise. Hard or durable goods like appliances, electronics, and sporting equipment. And soft goods like clothing, household items, cosmetics, and paper products. Some retailers carry a range of hard and soft items like a supermarket or a major retail chain while many smaller retailers only carry one category of goods, like a boutique clothing store.
Price: Pricing is a key element to any retail strategy. The retail price needs to cover the cost of goods as well as additional overhead costs.
Place: The place is where the retailer conducts business with its customers. The place can be a physical retail location or a non-physical space like a catalog company or an e-store. While most retailers are small, independently owned operations (over 90%), over 50% of retail sales are generated by major retailers often called “big box retailers” (see the list of the top 20 big box retailers below).
Promotion: Promotion is the final marketing mix elements. Promotions include personal selling, advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, and publicity. A promotional mix specifies how much attention to pay to each tactic, and how much money to budget for each. A promotion can have a wide range of objectives, including increasing sales, new product acceptance, creation of brand equity, positioning, competitive retaliations, or the creation of a corporate image.