At this moment, a shopper is researching that new item they want to buy — a bicycle, a sofa, a guitar, a boat — or whatever they get excited about and spend their disposable income on. They might be in any city or town where your brand is sold. Whether they search the internet or hot foot it to their nearest shopping district, the first place they’ll probably come in contact with your brand is through a retailer. It might happen in person at a store, through a Google search, or on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
The retailers who carry your products are your “boots on the ground.” It’s through them that you will reach most of your potential customers. The question is, will they learn about your brand first, or your competitor’s? More to the point, which one will they perceive as the best choice to buy?
Your retailers are in a position to act as champions for your brand — showing customers the relative value and unique features of your products. Give them every reason to do so, and they can become the most important part of your marketing strategy.
How Retailers Communicate With Customers
Retailers benefit from a wide variety of communication channels, some of which aren’t available to you as a big, national brand. The first is their physical location. Customers often prefer seeing and trying products in person, especially for bigger purchases like furniture, sporting goods, or musical instruments. In addition, brick-and-mortar stores have the advantage of visibility. A person simply walking down the street might happen upon a retailer, and recognize the name from everyday familiarity. A store can offer in-person events that let them build relationships with their community, which leads to customer loyalty.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, as in-person interactions have taken a backseat, customers have relied more heavily on internet searches and social media. Social media behavior has changed because of it. More people are using Facebook and Instagram than ever before, and users are increasingly comfortable shopping in these platforms. According to a report by McKinsey, 75% of U.S. consumers who tried a new shopping behavior in response to the COVID-19 pandemic plan to maintain it.
Savvy retailers use social media, including location platforms like Google My Business, to attract customers. Even with a relatively small following, they can gain significant reach, since organic reach is higher for pages with fewer followers. If your brand has thousands of followers, you may only reach a small percentage of them with any given post, where your retailers stand to reach many more. Paid social media further increases reach and more precisely targets potential customers.
Retailers Can Support Your Brand Through Social Media
Retail stores need content that will excite and attract their customers. Why not encourage them to shine a spotlight on your products? Get them to embrace your brand and they will share it with their followers. Show them you’re invested in their success by doing the following.
- Keep retailers updated with the latest product information and any upcoming changes
- Make sure they know about sales and promotions well in advance
- Help them understand the unique benefits of your products through tutorials, demos, and free product offerings
- Be ready to work with them if they experience any issues with your products or need answers to questions on behalf of customers
- Give them periodic shout-outs on your own social media channels
These tactics will build a relationship that encourages retailers to champion your brand to their customers. Smaller retailers face certain limitations, however. They don’t typically employ full-time digital marketing specialists or set aside a large social media marketing budget. They lack the resources for polished photography and sophisticated social media assets. Despite an eager social media audience, they may simply be unable to provide the steady stream of quality content required to engage that audience.
ThumbStopper Makes Social Media Syndication Easy
Many retailers are familiar with social media automation tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite. These tools may save a little time, but they still come with costs, and they simply cannot scale content in an effective way.
When you sign up with ThumbStopper, you take full advantage of the brand-retailer relationship by seamlessly sharing your high quality assets. Retailers save time and money creating social media content and get more engagement with their feeds. They will be automatically spreading the word about your products in a way that your brand alone could not.
Retailers get excited about ThumbStopper, and appreciate when their brands use it, because it makes their marketing more effective and their lives easier. In fact, brands typically experience an adoption rate from their participating retailers of more than 80% in the first 90 days.
Explore ThumbStopper now, and see how it can help turn your retailers into champions for your brand!
