What is Retail Marketing in Australia? Exploring Strategies and Trends for Success
Was your retail business hit during the COVID-19 pandemic? This pandemic certainly disrupted every industry in Australia and around the world. The retail sector also saw a massive setback with the lockdown norms and changing consumer behaviour. Businesses were also searching for new retail marketing strategies for survival and growth.
It is noteworthy that the retail industry is a major contributor to our country’s economy. In 2019, this industry accounted for around AUD 329.6 billion in Australia. However, the pandemic resulted in a drop in sales during the first and second quarters of 2020. Physical distancing norms, lockdowns, and stay-at-norms were the major problems for the retail industry.
If you were also running a business during the pandemic, you must have seen many businesses either closing or shifting their business model. Many switched to omnichannel presence to remain active in the competition.
We Aussies live in one of the most urbanised societies in the world. More than 24 million Australians live in the urban areas of Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane. It creates a huge demand for retail stores for everyday survival. However, you must be aware of the competition and segmentation in the industry.
All You Need is Marketing
Every retail store needs an effective retail business marketing strategy to survive in Australia. The constant influx of new technologies and evolving consumer preferences transform the modern shopping experience.
According to a report, around 78 per cent of Australians shop online and offline. Thus, it becomes essential for retailers to invest in a multi-channel retail marketing strategy to enhance their marketing capabilities.
So Who Exactly Falls in the Retail Industry
A retail business marketing strategy is necessary if you fall into one of these categories;
- Supermarkets
- Hypermarkets
- Traditional grocery stores
- Convenience stores
- Discounters
- Clothing retailers
- Electronics and home appliance retailers
- Department stores
- Warehouse clubs
- Home shopping
- Direct selling
- Vending
- Department stores
- Health and beauty retailers
- Home and garden retailers
If you’re in the retail industry in Australia, our blog will help you build the most effective retail marketing strategy. It would help you to gain more customers and establish brand awareness.
What is Retail Marketing in Australia?
Retail marketing is how businesses promote physical stores, products, and services. It revolves around restructuring pricing strategies, advertising, checkout processes, store layout, and promotions.
Effective retail marketing also includes the “4Ps” of marketing;
- Product
- Pricing
- Place
- Promotion
These days retailers also add two more “Ps” to the formula;
- People
- Presentation
Let’s understand the 6 Ps.
Product
It is the most vital component of a retail marketing strategy. Consumers visit a retail store to buy products to solve needs or desired functions. Thus, it is critical to focus on the offerings while drafting a marketing plan in the retail industry.
Price
A retailer is responsible for defining the price of a product. It would play a crucial role in popularity and sales. Your customers will often look for value-for-money products.
Placement
It refers to where you sell the product to your customers. For example, you can sell the product in a physical store or eCommerce website.
Promotion
It refers to your efforts and activities to create interest in your products. Promotional strategies include public relations, sales, and advertising through direct mail and digital channels.
People
These are brand representatives like employees, partners, or contractors who will interact with customers. They will inform the customers about the product details such as price, availability, and features. You must consider training these individuals for your retail marketing strategy.
Presentation
It refers to the in-store setting of a retail business. You can work on your retail space layout, wallpaper, furniture, and signage to improve the presentation of your retail store. For example, Apple uses a clean and aesthetic store design in its retail marketing strategy.
Are You a Retail Marketing Manager?
You might be responsible for using offline and online marketing approaches to drive sales and awareness. A retail marketing manager could be an individual or an entire team of managers. These are some responsibilities of these professionals for building a real business marketing strategy;
- Starting and managing online marketing campaigns.
- Create, print, and mail direct mail marketing pieces.
- Providing complete campaign reports to the management.
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
Top Marketing Trends in the Retail Industry
Consumers are Looking for Relevant and Seamless
As a retailer, you must meet consumer demands for engagement and personalisation to retain your business. The shopping experience is as important as the products and services you sell. Personalisation and integrity could be the key driving factors in customer advocacy.
Retailers delivering targeted and relevant messages in the customer journey can attract and retain more customers than others. For this reason, you need power tools like direct mail to build a customer-focused retail marketing strategy. It would help you create relevant customer experiences throughout the customer journey.
Using Data to Understand Customers
Collect complete consumer data if you want to understand their needs and preferences. You can use multiple channels to gather this information and hyper-personalise the experiences. Digital and direct mail marketing make drawing the complete customer persona much easier. It would help you to draft a one-to-one retail business marketing strategy.
Engage your customers at every touch point, and engage them with the right message. It would help you to acquire more details about your customers.
The Measurements Go Beyond Customer and Revenue Growth
In the past, retail marketers only focused on customer and revenue growth for their businesses. Nowadays, these are responsible for various business metrics, including market share, development, return on investment, brand awareness, customer lifetime value, etc. Thus, they are accountable for measuring and improving the entire customer experience. It would help if you also took keynotes for your retail business marketing strategy.
It has become essential in growing competition and market segmentation. It would help to consider more opportunities on seasonal spikes such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, etc. If you are running a direct mail campaign, you will need a solid platform like PostGrid Print & Mail API. It would give you more visibility into your marketing campaigns.
And Why Do You Need Retail Marketing in Australia?
You could be a newcomer or an existing player in the retail industry. Yet, you understand the competition and challenges in Australia. Thus, you will also need the right retail business marketing strategy to gain new customers, retain existing ones, and build brand awareness.
These are some more convincing reasons to show the importance of retail marketing;
Gaining and Retaining Customers: An effective retail business marketing strategy will help you attract new customers and retain the existing ones. You can promote your products, services, and shopping experience through your advertising campaigns. The right strategies also help influence customers to choose your brand over others.
Standing Out From The Competitors: The Australian retail landscape is highly competitive. Thus, it would help to have the right retail marketing strategy to showcase your USPs and stand out from the competition. It may involve building a unique brand identity, direct mail campaigns, and highlighting the key benefits of shopping from your store. You can gain a competitive edge by conveying the appropriate value to the customer.
Boost in Sales and Revenue
Is your sales performance failing to meet your expectations? All you need is the right retail business marketing strategy to encourage customers to buy more from your retail stores. It can also influence them to increase the frequency of their purchases with attractive sales and discounts.
Establishing Brand Awareness and Reputation
Every business wants to create a brand factor to gain recognition from customers. Retail marketing allows retailers to build a strong brand identity with consistent messages across different marketing channels. Thus, they can expect to build trust and loyalty with their customers. Marketing methods like direct mail can be vital in creating this confidence level.
Enhancing Customer Experience
The shopping experience is just as essential as your products or services. An effective retail marketing strategy helps businesses to gather customer feedback through various channels. They can draft multiple campaigns to address pain points and provide the best solutions. It would lead to an increase in customer satisfaction, repeat business, and positive word-of-mouth.
Ideal Campaign Types for Your Retail Marketing Approach
You might be thinking about the right campaign type to launch your marketing strategy. Here’s what you can do:
Announcements and Events
Are you planning to launch a product or organise an event? Use your marketing channels to promote this information to your target audience. It is an evergreen strategy to lure potential shoppers into your retail stores. You can create hype and anticipation with the right retail business marketing strategy.
Triggered Campaigns
You can use a direct mail platform like PostGrid Print & Mail API to launch triggered campaigns. It would automate starting your campaign and reaching the right customers. Try installing this on post-purchases, win-backs, and more.
Create Loyalty Programs
Do you want more repeat customers for your business? It is much easier to attract new shoppers to your store if you can retain these customers.
You can send them exclusive offers to continue shopping at your company. In this way, you would build better and long-lasting relationships with them.
Obtaining Reviews from Your Customers
We Aussies care a lot about our reputation, right? For retail businesses, it helps build a good reputation and credibility among shoppers. You can launch a marketing campaign to request reviews from your existing customers.
The Perfect Game Plan for Retail Marketing
Retail stores can exist in various shapes and sizes in our competitive economy. However, the customer journey in this industry remains the same. Understanding the stages of this journey becomes critical for retailers to draft a compelling retail business marketing strategy.
It also helps you to find your weakness and strategically overcome them. Ultimately, this leads to more sales overall.
It would help if you learned about these stages in a customer journey;
- Discovery
- Purchase Decision Making
- The Purchase
- Post-Purchase Phase
- Customer Retention
- Evangelising
Let’s understand the complete customer journey in a step-by-step manner;
Discovery
The customer would discover your retail store from a marketing channel at this stage. It could be the beginning of a long-term relationship with your prospects. You must create an inbound marketing strategy to engage shoppers and build a community. They might not be customers, but your retail marketing efforts could be the initial discovery point. Businesses often focus on digital and direct marketing to build this discovery point for potential customers.
You should also use an omnichannel marketing approach to deliver great content across different channels. It would motivate them to step into the next customer journey process.
Purchase Decision Making
Now that you’ve got their attention, it’s time to influence them to make a purchase decision. Your retail marketing is successful when you can provide the ideal products for their needs. Thus, personalisation can play a significant role in influencing people in the decision-making process.
Direct mail marketing is a powerful tool for personalising your message and influencing consumers.
Using generic messages will only work if everyone else is using them. It will help if you highlight your key USPs creatively and innovatively.
Modern retailers use a direct mail platform like PostGrid Print & Mail API to convert leads into paying customers.
The Purchase
Do you often get those fries while getting a burger at your favourite fast-food restaurant? Today, retailers use different methods to upsell or bundle their products and services. The checkout process could be a critical point of your retail marketing strategy.
Strong referral programs can enhance lead-generation campaigns. It would encourage loyal customers to refer your company to friends and family. A referral program can be effective in almost any industry. But are they spending enough to reach your ROI?
The purchase phase is more important than you think. It also helps you understand a customer’s shopping history and preferences. If you are running a direct mail campaign, then consider sending a welcome letter or a follow-up mail like this;
“Hello Peter,
How do you like your new smartphone? Aren’t you looking for a network upgrade? If you visit our retail within this week, we would be delighted to give you an additional discount on your XYZ SIM card.”
Post-Purchase Phase
Many shoppers expect regular communication for their purchases from a retail store. Thus, many businesses prefer sending shipping updates, delay notifications, and other important information. Customer engagement should be a crucial part of your retail business marketing strategy.
Extending the lifetime value of your customers should have a high priority. It would help if you found innovative ways to encourage customers to remain loyal. Thus, you cannot stop communication in the post-purchase phase. Instead, try to engage them in a loop of conversation with your retail marketing strategy.
Customer Retention
Community building and customer engagement are essential to retaining your shoppers. Many businesses achieve this by innovating their in-person customer experience. Thus, you must also provide a reason for customers to revisit your store.
Customer loyalty programs are a great way to lure and engage customers for a long time. You can also focus on making your store locations more than just transactional places. It would be best to use a direct mail platform like PostGrid Print & Mail API to retain more customers.
Events, meetups, referral programs, and tutorial classes effectively retain them.
Evangelising
Word of mouth is more critical in retail marketing than paying customers. Your customers may visit your store and purchase 1 or 2 AUD. Yet, individuals who tell their friends and family about your business are more valuable.
It is the last stage of your customer’s journey, where you can expect them to make referrals independently. You can gain customer loyalty by appropriately implementing your retail business marketing strategy.
However, you can also expect this level of evangelising with clienteling. It is the process in which brand excite their customers to introduce business to their circle. It would help if you were strict with a data-driven and personalised shopping experience. This experience would require you to build a community or create a sense of belonging.
Modern retail markers use using personal touch instead of generic messages. It helps them to engage with their customers through the journey truly. All you need is the relevant personalisation, communication, and segmentation tool.
Using Direct Mail for Retail Marketing in Australia
Around 56% of direct mail recipients in Australia share their direct mail pieces with other members. Thus, you have a much greater scope for visibility and mouth publicity with direct mail.
Are you still thinking that direct mail is sluggish and expensive? Technology’s effective use makes direct mail one of the most capable channels for yielding results.
You use this communication channel to reach your target audience directly. Sending mail to physical mailboxes is far more effective than advertising on social media platforms or through emails.
Even in the age of digitisation, Australian businesses are still focusing on direct mail marketing to reach prospects on a more personal level. You can also use PostGrid’s Print & Mail API to gain more customers and retain existing ones.
Here’s why you need direct mail for your retail business marketing strategy:
It Gives Your Better Response Rates
How many people take the time to reply to your emails? At the same time, direct mail has an incredibly higher response rate of 37%. People consider physical mail more authentic and tactile than other forms of communication.
Higher Open and Read Rates
Your shoppers can immediately ignore your email or social media ad. Yet, they must look at your direct mail before throwing it in the trash. Thus, your retail marketing strategy has more chances of attracting visitors.
You Can Personalise Your Mail
As a retailer, you can personalise your direct mail with a platform like PostGrid. It could make your marketing material more personal and relevant, which results in conversion. You can touch and address their pain points with high-quality snail mail pieces.
A Trustworthy Marketing Tool
Direct mail has been there for decades, saving you from the disadvantages of digital marketing. Even seniors are also habitual of receiving direct mail in their mailboxes. At the same time, the younger generation prefers direct mail for their novelty impression. For this reason, you need to consider physical mail for your retail business marketing strategy.
Easily Trackable Results
Unlike traditional direct mail, PostGrid Print & Mail API helps you track the effectiveness of your retail marketing campaign. The central dashboard gives you enough tracking tools and analytics to monitor your mail pieces.
Conclusion
If you run a business in Australia, this is the perfect time to upgrade your retail marketing strategy. PostGrid’s direct mail platform enables you to automate your marketing campaigns. You can send letters, postcards, brochures, checks, and catalogues with complete customisation options. We help to automate your retail business marketing strategy.
Apart from retail marketing, you can use our platform for
- Compliance communications
- Sending invoices & coupons
- Order statements & History
- Custom statements & forms
- Tax form processing
- And more!
Retail Businesses prefer our direct mail platform for:
- Incredible scaling possibilities
- Smooth integration with tech stacks
- Effective tracking & analytics
- Customisation options
- Regulatory compliance
Signup to boost your retail business marketing strategy.
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The post What Is Retail Marketing appeared first on PostGrid.
source https://www.postgrid.com.au/what-is-retail-marketing/
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