10 Ways to Market Your Retail Business Cheaply
Marketing a product whether it is new or has been around for a long time is no easy feat. Consumers are strapped for time and are bombarded with information in a 24-hour news cycle fuelled by social media.
The best retailers are able to get their message through despite all of the clutter. While it may seem as if the only way to break through is by spending millions of dollars on Facebook marketing there are other ways of getting your target customer’s attention from offering free samples to launching a compelling newsletter. Try these ten inexpensive ways of marketing your products that other retailers have used with great success.
1. Offer free samples
How many times have you gone to Costco just to try some free samples? We all have. Free samples encourage shoppers to try products they normally wouldn’t buy. Free samples are really just another form of marketing retailers use to generate more sales. Speaking about this Tara Miller, Trader Joe’s Director of Marketing, said: "so what a lot of people might not know is the biggest marketing expense we have at Trader Joe's is actually just letting people try our food.”
Providing free samples whether its food or clothing taps into a universal sales principle called reciprocity. Author Robert Cialdini writes in his best-selling book Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion that: “one of the most potent of the weapons of influence around us [is] the rule for reciprocation. The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.” “By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favours, gifts, invitations and the like.” Retailers like lululemon also successfully use this strategy to get customer to spend more.
2. Sell a loss leader
Loss leaders are one of the oldest tricks in the book. Costco for example, sells commonly purchased items like rotisserie chicken or hotdogs at low prices to get you in the door. Costco’s hotdog combo is actually the same price it was in 1985. Speaking about this Bob Nelson, Senior Vice President of Financial Planning and Investor Relations at Costco said: Costco generates “very little money” on the combo deal, but “we get so much more mileage out of it than we would by raising the price to $1.60 and making a few more million dollars.” Because a customer believes they are getting an uncommon deal they are more likely to spend more.
3. Leverage the scarcity principle
Adidas, more than almost any brand, understands how vital scarcity is to building and sustaining a brand. When Kanye West launched the Yeezy Boost 350 sneaker with Adidas he did so with a limited release drop. It is estimated that for many of West’s limited release drops only tens of thousands of shoes are available for sale which then sell out almost immediately. Author Robert Cialdini has written extensively about the scarcity principle. His teachings can be boiled down to the simple fact that: “people want more of those things they can have less of.”
Even Adidas CEO Kasper Rørsted confirmed what the brand’s secret sauce is when he said: “as we’re moving new Yeezy products into the market, we will do what we’ve done also in the past: create scarcity around the new products we are launching, make sure we have the hype, and, over a given period of time of course, drive volume into that market.”
4. Have compelling store signage
Trader Joe’s has put considerable thought into details like store signage. Signs inside of a Trader Joe’s are often handwritten with fun copy like the one below. A small detail like this can make a customer laugh creating a positive experience enticing them to spend more and return again next time in search of a shopping experience that simply feels better than others.
Picture of a sign at Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe’s also uses fun names for its private label products like Reduced Guilt Mac & Cheese, The Everything But The Bagel Sesame Seasoning Blend, and Bollywood Popcorn. All of these “details” provide one more reason for shopping at Trader Joe’s versus another grocer.
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5. Start a blog
Beauty company Glossier emerged out of the popular blog Into the Gloss which was launched by Emily Weiss in 2010. Prior to starting her blog Emily Weiss worked at Vogue, Teen Vogue and W magazine. The blog gained traction due to her popular interviews with beauty mavens such as Kim Kardashian who provided insight into their beauty secrets.
Over time Weiss became known as a beauty expert who had tested and reviewed hundreds of beauty products. The blog also enabled her to gain a deep understanding of what types of beauty products customers want. Weiss then translated a dedicated millennial readership as well as an Instagram following into a set of loyal customers when she launched Glossier in 2014.
6. Launch a compelling newsletter
You may not know this but Gwyneth Paltrow’s popular lifestyle brand goop started out as a newsletter. It all began in 2008 when Paltrow sent her first weekly newsletter which focused on lifestyle advice to family and friends. A year later the newsletter had nearly 150,000 subscribers. By 2018 goop had over 8 million subscribers. goop’s newsletters are very popular with open rates of up to 40% which is twice the average for the lifestyle category. Those newsletters produce 35% of the traffic to goop’s website. That growth did not happen simply because Paltrow is a celebrity. Actress Blake Lively who also has a huge following launched her own lifestyle brand and website called Preserve in 2014 but the actress was forced to quickly shut it down within a year due to a lack of interest.
A newsletter can be a way of providing advice and insight to existing and potential customers. Over time trust is built between you and your audience which can then translate into sales. It also allows retailers to have a one to one relationship with their customers. You have your customers’ email addresses and can contact them directly. This is something you cannot do if you are selling on Amazon, marketing on Facebook or if a customer walks in and out of your store without leaving contact information.
It was not until 2012, four years after Paltrow sent her first newsletter that goop ventured into eCommerce. Speaking about why she waited several years before monetizing her brand Paltrow said: “I was doing something from a very real, very honest place.” “There wasn’t anything commercial about it. So when we decided to foray into commerciality, there was something to trust.”
7. Leverage someone else’s brand to market your own
Without a large marketing budget at their disposal Warby Parker leveraged the platform of established brands in order to build its own. It did this by relying on PR to generate an audience when its eCommerce website first launched. Since Warby Parker considers itself a fashion brand it decided it would be best to be featured in the best women’s and the best men’s fashion publications to generate buzz about its business. To achieve this goal it hired a PR company which successfully pitched profiling Warby Parker in GQ and Vogue. Both magazines ran stories on the brand on February 15, 2010 the day Warby Parker’s website launched. Based on the buzz generated from both of those publications, Warby Parker’s website ended up crashing after launch. Warby Parker was able to meet its first year sales target within three weeks and within four weeks it sold out of its top 15 most popular styles leading to a 20,000 person waiting list for its eye glasses.
8. Focus on radio and less popular print magazines
Sometimes the best action is the one that most people aren’t doing. Menswear direct to consumer brand UNTUCKit realized this when it first tried to figure out how to acquire customers.
In the early days of the brand the company tried the traditional step of hiring a PR agency to gain exposure. But after going down that route it decided to take the unconventional approach of firing its PR agency. If felt that the PR was not giving the brand the exposure it needed. Instead UNTUCKit placed ads on sports radio and in print airline magazines. While these are not the kinds of marketing moves that everyone is talking about these vehicles often have more captive audiences than a fast moving social media feed.
You can try the conventional but if it’s not working why not take an unconventional approach? Taking the less travelled route may have less competition with better exposure. The exposure can also come at a cheaper price. UNTUCKit found that for approximately $350 it could reach 200,000 potential consumers using radio ads. After its first local radio ad placement in 2013 it had 1,500 website visitors in less than 10 seconds versus a normal level of traffic of 150-200 visitors.
Speaking about this approach, UNTUCKit CEO Aaron Sanandres said: "I think that the biggest lesson is to be curious, right, think about the different, maybe nonconventional ways, that you can get your message to the right audience, whoever that audience is for your particular business." "As long as you can measure it."
9. Write a book
Travel company, Away, also used a unique but highly effective approach when launching its first product. The company started out by selling a single piece of luggage. It’s an everything you need all in one piece of luggage that is stylish enough to be seen on the best Instagram feed. During the run up to launch which was scheduled to take place before Christmas in 2015 the company ran into a big roadblock. Away’s first run of luggage orders would not be ready until after the holidays. Disappointed with the prospect of not being able to capitalize on the lucrative holiday season, Away Co-Founder Jen Rubio came up with a novel idea to drive sales.
She came up with idea that the company should write a book to promote Away as an exciting travel company that people needed to know about. The book would be sold in the holiday season prior to the arrival of the luggage orders in February of the next year. The Places We Return To is the book that Away commissioned and sold. The book features personal travel stories and photos from 40 taste makers. It is a beautiful hardcopy book that would look nice on your coffee table.
And the stroke of brilliance - enclosed in the book was a gift certificate to purchase a single piece of Away luggage. The price of the book was $225 dollars, the cost of one piece of luggage.
Away promoted the book as the perfect holiday gift for the travel lover (aka their target customer). 2,000 copies of the book were made. Vogue magazine ended up featuring the book which contributed to Away selling hundreds of books on the first day it was available. Within a few weeks the books and along with the company’s first run of luggage sold out.
Often what looks like a challenge (i.e. your Facebook advertising budget is running out) can be a blessing in disguise as it forces you to think of more creative ways to acquire new customers.
10. Try community-based marketing
lululemon uses a community centric marketing approach. While brands like Nike and Adidas have built their brands through big name endorsements, think Serena Williams or Michael Jordan for Nike, lululemon has largely marketed its brand via word of mouth. It does this through its free events but also through relationships with brand ambassadors.
Brand ambassadors are essentially influencers such as local yoga instructors. These ambassadors teach yoga classes for free on lululemon’s behalf and the free classes draw in existing and new customers. In exchange for teaching classes ambassadors get perks like free clothing. CNBC reports that typically lululemon does not pay endorsement fees instead it partners with athletes that are aligned with the company’s values.
One of the reasons for lululemon’s success is that it has never strayed far from its original vision of leading through its community. Speaking about this: Jono Bacon, an expert on community strategy and leadership and author of People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams said: “Nike is edging into community-building, but its business is still anchored to a large extent on big marketing campaigns and paid celebrity endorsers.” “On the other hand, lululemon has created a much more powerful community through its 1,500 member ambassador program and its user-generated content.”
When starting lululemon, founder and former CEO Chip Wilson’s vision from the beginning was to market the brand using word of mouth. lululemon had very little money to spend on advertising in the beginning so instead Wilson’s goal was to drive brand awareness via word of mouth with customers spreading the word about the quality of lululemon products.