As more and more brick-and-mortar stores are making the transition to e-commerce, some retailers are moving in the opposite direction. They have realized the value of storefronts. A study conducted by Rutgers University in New Jersey shows that 78 percent of consumers prefer to shop offline and they spend six times more in-store than online. This proves that physical stores still matter to consumers.
However, opening a permanent physical shop requires a great deal of money, energy, and time, thus making it an impractical option for most retailers. But don’t worry, you can still create an in-store experience by opening a short-term sales space which is popularly known as a pop-up shop.
Pop-up shops have actually been used by various retail businesses around the world over the years. However, the marketing strategies used for promoting pop-up stores are getting more and more creative. Unlike permanent physical stores that focus on sales, the main purpose of pop-up shops is to increase brand awareness. To optimize your marketing activities, you must need marketing automation software. This software helps you capture more targeted leads also enhances relationships with your clients.
Table of Contents
Although marketing a pop-up shop is similar to marketing any other temporary event, there are some special techniques that you can apply to achieve optimal results.
1. Get the Right Theme
Before you look for the right location, you must first think of a theme for your pop-up shop. Think about something that is going to attract your visitors, something that is currently trending, or something that is going to make visitors love your store.
Unique and creative themes can certainly help you bring in a lot of visitors. However, you need to be careful when choosing a theme. Don’t choose a theme without adjusting it to your brand. You should use a theme that reflects your brand so that your visitors can easily learn it by heart.
2. Choose the Right Location
After finding the right pop-up shop theme, the next step thing to do is to choose the right location. The spot you choose has to be strategic and is widely known to the public. Make sure the location can bring in visitors that fit your target market.
You can choose a space that is commonly used by brands that are similar to yours. But, if you want to reduce competition, then you can choose another potential location.
3. Collaborate with Other Businesses
Collaborating with event organizers or maybe with other retailers that are relevant to your brand can help you attract more visitors and get more publicity. Music festivals or bazaars usually invite media so you can take advantage of this opportunity to introduce your brand to the public.
Also read: How to Create In-Store Experiences That Boost Traffic and Sales
4. Build Online Buzz
Your pop-up shop may only last for a week, but you should be able to take advantage of the momentum to boost the awareness of your brand. Therefore, online promotion should be done months before the opening day.
Use the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) marketing strategy to make your campaigns more effective. Stimulate curiosity among your Instagram followers by posting teaser photos and videos. Send your customers promotional emails announcing the special deals they can get if they come to your pop-up shop.
If you have more funds, then consider collaborating with an influencer. With thousands of followers, they have on Instagram or YouTube, they might not just help bring in many visitors to your pop-up shop but also put your brand in the spotlight.
5. Use an Automated Solution
Most people choose to come to pop-up shops hoping to get a faster checkout experience. That means you need to provide a system that can speed up and simplify the checkout process for your customers.
Cloud-based POS systems can help your staff find products faster, know stock availability, and log important customer data such as their credit card information. With this system, your staff can manage payments via smartphone or iPad. If the internet connection is lost, the transaction will be able to continue running and all data will be processed to the system once the system is reconnected with the internet.
6. Run an Instagram Contest
Creating a contest on Instagram is another effective method to create buzz for your brand. You can offer attractive prizes to customers who post their photos taken in your pop-up store. Don’t forget to create unique hashtags to improve impressions.
7. Utilize Live-Streaming Video
You may have already created buzz months before you launch your temporary store. However, remember to maintain excitement while it opens. One of the easiest ways to arouse excitement is utilizing live streaming video on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
You can also use a streaming platform that comes with PPV streaming features to monetize your content and generate revenue from your live streams. You can interview visitors or ask customers to review your product. Keep your followers updated on what is happening in your pop-up shop.
8. Keep Promoting After the Event
Even though your pop-up store has closed down, a great wrap-up of the event will make it more memorable for your visitors and customers. You can post the moments that you captured on social media to remind the public of how exciting the event was.
Send thanks to customers who visited your pop-up shop via email or SMS. This will make them feel special and encouraged to visit your next event. Take advantage of all visitor data you get for the purposes of newsletters, campaigns, and promotions for upcoming events.
Conclusion
Those are some tips for you when you want to open a pop-up shop. A pop-up shop is an offline store that is cheaper and attracts the attention of many customers because of its unique concept. Pop-up shops focus on sales and the main goal is to increase brand awareness.
However, offline retail businesses usually still use manual methods in their business activities, causing businesses to be less effective and efficient. Pop-up shop business is a modern business that should use software to help integrate its business activities. Hash Retail Innovation by HashMicro helps you maintain stock availability, employee productivity, customer management, and financial transactions. Let’s immediately try the free demo and feel the ease of managing your business.
