Over the next five years, the retail sector will experience more change than it has in the previous century. Providing experiential marketing can keep apace with this change, we believe that in-store ambassadors and brand-owned experiences could truly excel. Read our five step guide to success…
1. Collaborate with retailers
Using creativity that fits with a retailer’s core values and practical requirements can make you a really valuable partner. When planning activity, try and establish what the common core values are between your brand and the retailers, and how you can make activity feel exclusive to them. From a practical point of view, be aware of a retailer’s Omni-channel approach and how you fit within it. Work out how you can leverage the retailer’s magazine; blogs; website; social media and mobile to drive traffic to your in-store ambassador. If your brand experience helps the retailer to overcome their business challenges too, they will be prepared to go the extra mile to help you succeed.
2. Use technology to your advantage
By combining the physical and the digital, brands can undoubtedly increase the power of their in-store experiences. Tablets especially offer brands sleeker ways to engage shoppers. As well as instigating verbal dialogue, tablets can provide guided shopping; video and audio content; the ability to interact with social networks; newsletter sign-up; valuable content such as blogs about the product and a data capture mechanic. Brands need to start conversations in-store and continue them long into the future. Furthermore, retailers are beginning to adopt mobile payment techniques. If brands can integrate with these systems, they will ultimately control the entire sales process, which is quite a powerful thought. From a retailer perspective, freeing up their tills and driving maximum sales will always be a big win.
3. Deliver a brilliant experience
Brands need to capture the shopper’s imagination in an instant. There is no blueprint for creativity, but we can highlight some critical considerations. Firstly, ensure that the experience overcomes your target shopper’s barriers, both functional and emotional. Secondly, be consistent with your out-of-store message and content; let the shopper make the connection as they move along the path to purchase. Thirdly, develop an experience that can live in-store, both with and without your ambassador, ideally something that can be operated by the shop staff themselves. Finally and most importantly, use the best and brightest staff to represent your brand in-store. Make sure you recruit and fully train ambassadors that will appeal to your target shopper as well as integrate with the retailer’s team.
4. Engage store staff
Make every attempt to take the store staff on your brand journey; by doing this you will create advocates and sustain the power of your brand experience after you have gone. Training is invaluable, so create and disseminate digital material that is portable and easily accessible. Bring to life your brand training outside of retail hours to reduce distraction, and remember to make it memorable and inspiring. Once trained, incentivise your colleagues to deliver your brand messages and drive sales. Mystery shopping support and sales data are great ways to monitor store staff performance, and reward accordingly. And finally, from a courtesy point of view, brand ambassadors should integrate and socialise with their surrogate team members; an ‘us and them’ attitude can be negative for all.
5. Evaluate and optimise
Set your evaluation objectives at the very outset. Use these objectives to define your operational approach, such as the number of stores and ambassador shifts. Once the activity is live, the most straightforward measure is sales data. Be sure to request the retailer’s Epos data, with a control set, in the activity negotiation stages. As well as instant sales, remember to keep track of secondary sales, both in-store (when you are not there) as well as online, with promotional codes. In terms of ongoing reporting, ambassadors are unique in the sense that clients should be offered real-time performance data. Be sure to work with your agency to analyse this data and make changes to the activity, if necessary, on a daily basis.
The Network Experiential offers a full retailer brand experience service. This includes planning, creative, staffing, implementation and evaluation. Please get in touch for more details.
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