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Tips for Avoiding the Retail Apocalypse

By Lorrie Baumann

While retailers like Sears, JC Penney and Macy’s have all announced massive store closures over the past few years, there are retailers who have continued to grow. The strategies that they’re using to thrive their way through the retail apocalypse are available to you too, says Brian E. Gracon, President of Brian Gracon & Associates, Inc. and author of “Meconomics 101.”

“The retail apocalypse: everybody’s heard about it, and you might think it’s impossible to fight,” he told an audience during Sweets & Snacks 2018. “The good news is that the same techniques that can help you fight the apocalypse will also help you grow your business.” Sweets & Snacks 2018 was held May 22 through 24 in Chicago, Illinois.

You can follow the examples set by recession-proof retailers like Starbucks and Ulta Beauty and focus your marketing messages around three important ideas: your customers’ self-images, providing an entertaining experience, and pampering your customers, Gracon said. You can focus on just one of these areas, but your messages will be stronger if you can manage to work in two or all three of these ideas. Then, you will want to make sure that you’re also executing these messages in your stores, starting with training your staff to reinforce your messaging as they interact with your customers.

You can focus your marketing messages on your customers’ self-images by thinking more about who your customers are and why they’ll buy from you, as opposed to describing the merchandise you’re trying to sell to them. While some of your customers will tell you that they’ve just dropped in for a new whisk or a mango tool, the subtext behind that is likely that they want your help to feel like they’re successful in their kitchen. When your messaging uses a tag line like “You can do it. We’ll help you learn how,” or “You don’t have to be a gourmet chef to have the right tools,” or “Make your kitchen as unique as you are,” you’re appealing to their self-images and feeding the emotional needs that will keep them coming back to you, Gracon said.

You can also use tag lines like these as training provocations when you’re talking with your staff or as topics for blog posts or newsletter articles. “You need to have execution in the store that reinforces what the customer expects based on your marketing,” Gracon said. “The majority of effective advertising is around self-image. Make sure you’re targeting self-image…. What’s the emotional driver for the purchase decision?”

Leverage an entertainment strategy by ensuring that your customers are going to enjoy their visit to your store. One way to do this would be to create a scavenger hunt that allows customers to find things in your store, either new items or things that they didn’t even know existed. “I was delighted when I first discovered a cherry pitter device. It’s that discovery, that adventure a retailer can bring to people by revealing things customers don’t know are out there,” Gracon said. “It’s about the treasure hunt. You never know what you’re going to find in the store, and that’s fun.”

Providing expert advice is another way to entertain your customers while they’re in your store. So is a demonstration or a sampling event. “Successful companies are emphasizing that they’re interesting or fun,” Gracon said.

Take a look at your sales process and see if you can identify ways of making your customers feel pampered. That might mean assembling a few gift baskets to display in your store during the holiday season, so that customers who are pressed for time will know that they can just run into your store and pick up a quick gift during their lunch hour or on their way home from work. Maybe they’ll even decide to get a gift for themselves. Or see if you can find ways to convey the message that the products that you offer might be an indulgence that your shoppers really deserve. Then make sure that you’re doing your best to make their check-out process easy and fast. “Anytime you’re thinking about making a change, you should ask, ‘Will it make the experience more fun for the customer?’” Gracon said. “It’s always got to be about the customer and the customer experience.”

Providing an entertaining experience in the store gives people a chance to feel they’ve been pampered,” he added. “If they have so much fun at the store, they can congratulate themselves for knowing something that they didn’t know before – to shop at your store!”