Driving Customer Footfall.

Whether a venue, online site or store, the process to drive customer footfall or online traffic is the same.  The ability to target customers and prospects at the right time with the right offering is key. Please read the below pointers which will provide a solid foundation for any marketing strategy. If your business isn’t driven by necessity or pure convenience then you need to be driving interest and sales…. here’s how.

1. Communicate with customers

Customers are your best prospects, cost 10 times less to acquire and are already familiar with your business and trust you. You have the added advantage of knowing what they purchased,  the value and date. You can then target them with communications about other services or products that you feel would be relevant to them.

2. Identify the profile of people that would be interested in your product, venue or service.

If you have information about your current customers, you can build a profile of your best prospects. Profiling looks at socio demographic information such as age, lifestage, income, and interests . The more you know about your customers and prospects, the more effective you can be in communicating with them.  If you understand how far current customers have travelled you can also determine the catchment area to target new prospects.

3. Marketing activity around key seasons, launches, product launches, new offerings

Engage with your audience around important events or launches that will appeal to them. If you are a garden centre, planting for spring is important, sport fans on the other hand will be interested in purchasing tickets or renewing season tickets at the start of the season.  Customers and prospects with families will be interested in days out during school holidays.  Leisure and Spa prospects will be interested in celebrations around anniversaries, bank holidays and summer holidays.

4. Interaction Pipeline – Attract, Engage Nurture, Sell

Your communication strategy is important as this will drive interested prospects into engaged leads and then customers if implemented correctly. Marketing communications should create awareness to attract interested prospects and then engage with them to convert them into leads. These leads should then be nurtured with relevant communications around pertinent events or products that they are interested in, until such time they are ready to buy.

5. Be Front of your Customers Mind

Dependent on your business, prospects are more likely to purchase from you or visit your location, if you are front of mind when they have a requirement.  Whether a venue, attraction licensed premises or retail store , you want prospects to think of you first when they are looking for the perfect ‘Day Out’ or are interested in purchasing a new piece of art, homeware or holiday.  To ensure you are front of mind you will need to communicate to your database (customers and prospects) on a regular basis but with relevant and interesting information so that they do not unsubscribe when they become disenchanted with what you are saying.

6. Behavioural Marketing

Communicate with your database based upon their interests and what you perceive they might be interested in.  A mother who has been interested in a family day out – will be interested in visiting again. Target school holidays or occasions. A prospect that is interested in landscape art will be interested in other artists within this genre. A customer who watched a comedy will be interested in up and coming comedy releases.  If you can communicate based on a person’s interests you are that step closer to converting a sale.

7. Repeat Business

Don’t miss the obvious up and cross sell opportunities that you have with a customer. If they have purchased a top you can sell accessories to match. If they have purchased a ticket, do they want a meal on the day as well? If you have a customer who visits frequently, offer a loyalty card or season ticket pass to upsell.

The above techniques will help to create more effective targeted marketing, if you would like more information on how to better understand your customer base please contact us now   [email protected]