Put your best foot forward
November 19, 2008
By Norrelle Goldring, Director, Shopportunity, for Marketing Magazine August 2008
Driving store and category footfall in an era of consolidating shopping trips
We have discussed elsewhere in this magazine the anticipated shift to consolidated shopping trips and heavier focus on perceived value for money as the economy slows.
It doesn’t have to be all bad news though. There are a number of levers that can be pulled aside from deep discounting and being on perpetual sale. The retail marketers who win in this environment will be those with a deep understanding of their shoppers – what drives them to their store in the first instance, then back for another trip and another.
Following we have listed some of the top ways to drive store traffic and footfall. Most of them can be applied at both total store and individual category/product level and offer ways that suppliers can help retail customers meet their objectives.
FOOTPRINT #1: KNOW THE REASONS SHOPPERS VISIT YOU, AND EXPAND ON THEM
Do you know what types of shopping trips your shoppers are on, and what occasions they are buying for, per major category? If you don’t, it’s time you found out. By understanding shopping missions (trip types) and occasions you can position your store as a destination for specific purposes. Gifting is one example. Could you range a selection of gifting items, preferably in a specially signed gifting section? ‘Healthy snacking’ is another occasion. Ranging ‘must have’ and impulse items such as milk and bread (and COMMUNICATING that you range these, so you become a destination for them) is another.
Understanding and playing to dominant consumption occasions and dayparts will also help you drive traffic to your store by shoppers for whom your regular offer would result in only occasional visits. An example in the USA is store-in-store offers, where mass merchandisers such as Target and WalMart have installed quick service restaurants such as Pizza Hut and Panda Express, and coffee shops and juice bars such as Jamba Juice, at the front of store to capitalise on meal and snack occasions. Obviously once shoppers are there for a meal they will be more likely to browse the rest of the store.
Likewise, you can increase the range of services you offer. Grocery stores in the USA offer bill payment, photo processing, dry cleaning and pharmacy script fulfilment services, among others. The name of the game here is category and service breadth, rather than depth. Australian Government restrictions on this type of horizontal expansion are expected to loosen over the next few years, and there are already examples of it in the Petroleum & Convenience channel with lottery services and BP’s Wild Bean Cafes. 7-Eleven has recently bid for Bill Express, so in the near future you might be able to pay your power bill, and collect your dry cleaning, at the servo as well. And of course you’d be buying a drink, snack, or newspaper while you’re there.
FOOTPRINT #2: PROVIDE NEW NEWS
If shoppers are passing your store in the street, or your category in the aisle, what looks different to last time that would make them go in or look again? Window displays should be changed weekly or fortnightly, and certainly more than monthly. Stock needs to be switched up regularly and what’s in the windows changed to suit so there is always something new or different to look at. Where possible shelf signage in the aisles should highlight what’s new on at least a monthly basis (Lord only knows that new product introductions are frequent, so this shouldn’t be a problem!).
Even where a product isn’t new, is there a new way of presenting it to freshen it up? What can you match or accessorise with what to create this impression? How can you communicate new or non-core ways to use the product? This applies equally to foods (think recipes) and household cleaning and maintenance items as it does to fashion items. Can you tap into trends such as the celebrity culture to highlight the trendiness or downright fabulousness of your products? ‘Babycare booter scooter, as used by J-Lo …’; ‘The Zone Diet (book), endorsed by Jennifer Aniston’ …
What’s needed here is to provide reasons to explore your store or category on an ongoing basis, coupled with communication of what the news is. You need to regularly provide new items, or old items presented in new ways, for exploration.
FOOTPRINT #3: A LITTLE BIT OF SOMETHING ON SALE, ALL THE TIME
A store wide or category wide sale might make your floor sticky with footprints for a week or two, but then what?
Rather than blow all your energy and promotional dollars on a couple of big sales, you might be better pursuing a strategy of ‘Always a bargain to be had’. The principle here is that the bargains apply just to certain items or certain categories, not to the whole store, and that the items or categories on sale are rotated. This creates a feeling of ‘treasure hunt’ with shoppers as they never know what they’re going to get (and hence have continuing reasons to visit your store). You may be better with lots of little sales rather than one or two big ones.
Fashion chain Queenspark have pursued a strategy of ‘always on sale, somewhere’ by running regular, but store specific, sales which they communicate to their database direct via text message. These store-specific (not chain wide) sales serve not only the purpose of driving footfall but usually of clearing old or end-of-season stock, a similar strategy to the fruit and vege stalls who slash prices on the lettuces and strawberries at the end of each day.
If your store is in a mall, get involved in any offer and voucher runs mall centre management may be doing. These will drive new shoppers to your store, and you’ll only have to offer up discounts on one or two items to participate.
FOOTPRINT #4: ADD VALUE WITH FUN AND EDUCATION
High involvement, high engagement, complex and/or high risk categories are ripe for education and training sessions that you can provide free or at a small fee to cover costs. PetCo in the USA run in-store pet training and obedience lessons for which shoppers book in advance. Naturally they buy more pet products (training treats, toys, accessories) whilst or after Rover has been a good boy in his lesson.
A growing category due to the health and wellness trend, Vitamins is an example category crying out for shopper education – what vitamin does what? How much of it should I have? What foods can I get it from? What is to stop pharmacies and vitamin stores from running special evening education sessions, complete with games and prizes to make it more interactive, to drive traffic during ‘out of store’ hours?
Demonstrations are another example, particularly for making perceived complex categories look simpler. A category crying out for this is bottled spirits for use in long drinks and cocktail making. In the way that there has been a clutch of wine appreciation courses offered in the past few years, an enterprising bottleshop chain (or training chain) could offer long drink mixing and cocktail making demonstrations and classes in-store. These would be accompanied by offers on the spirits demonstrated, and the mixers they were presented with.
FOOTPRINT #5: DRIVE REPEAT TRAFFIC AND FREQUENCY
You know the old adage about 30% of your shoppers being worth 70% of the sales, and that for every dollar you spend getting an existing shopper to spend more, you spend three dollars trying to get a new shopper. So how can you drive your existing shoppers back more frequently? Here are some ideas:
- Offer free services. Pharmacies for example could offer free cholesterol checks, blood pressure tests, weight control advice, arthritis management advice.
- Have post-sales service offers. Bring in your widget that you purchased 3 months ago and we’ll check it for you/replace the XYZ part of it free/run a virus check. Best Buy’s computer and entertainment service concept Geek Squad do this really well. Penfolds offer Red Wine Clinics (opening, checking, topping up, and recorking of its older red wines) that are run offsite but are an idea that could be translated into a store environment.
- Direct marketing – build and use your database, particularly if you have seasonal or regularly rotated stock. Fashion chains My Size and Queenspark do this well with their new seasons catalogues which are mailed out to their database once a quarter. It’s not unusual to be in a My Size store and see shoppers wielding pages torn from the catalogue.
- Drive traffic during quieter times of day and days of week with special offers or some of the aforementioned education sessions. Have specials that apply only to Mondays or Tuesdays, for example. Or Happy Hours that apply between 3 and 4 pm.
- Build, use or participate in a store loyalty program. Allied to your direct marketing activities, mailouts with offers specific to your loyalty card base will drive higher profits because loyalty program customers generally have higher basket spends. And if you’re located in a mall, ensure that you are part of the mall’s centre card and loyalty program.