5 Steps to Create More In-Store Experience

In-store Experience is BIG news these days

When I started researching in-store experience many years ago, I set up a Google Alert for ‘experiential retailing‘ and ‘in-store experience’, those alerts have remained mostly silent until, well…this year really.

Now, it ‘sounds-off’ like my Facebook notifications, ALL-DAY-LONG.

Direction to Create More In-Store Experience

But, while there might be more ‘Alerts’ now, little serve up insights and direction on how to effectively create more in-store experiences for customers.

Something I’m hoping my new book The Retail Experiment and the infographic below for 5 Steps to Create More In-Store Experience will help shed some light on.

As retailers, you might feel like your customers are listening to you less and less (despite spending more than ever on marketing).

Well, that’s how I felt anyway. Not that long ago, I’d activate an advertising campaign and then brace for the wave of people and sales.

We’d see a fairly big reaction in terms of increased visitation to the store and a spike in sales too. Who would have thought these curves and spikes would wane in such a short period of time?

No doubt you’re wondering what has changed so dramatically since then?

Experimenting In My Store

Well, I did too! So, for several years, I experimented in my own store to find out HOW and WHAT I could do to get my customers attention back – to re-engage them.

I also wanted to start re-building trust and advocacy within my 2500sqm appliance store.

Sure, I was interested in increasing our sales – what kind of retailer isn’t? However, I also genuinely wanted to help them too.

More importantly, I wanted to show customers that I deserved to have their repeated business more than my competitors.

So, after lots of research and testing different concepts, I discovered we needed more work on our in-store experience.

Sure, we had a great team of professionals, but we needed to offer more than just a personal experience with our staff for our in-store customers.

So, I set out to change that first in my store. Then, years later for others, as moved out of experimentation mode and into helping other retailers.

Waking Up Disengaged Customers

And here’s what I found. By focusing on the following key areas, customers were waking up and re-engaging with our store once again;

• Humanics – this is all about the human side of retail. Rather than thinking of the customer targets, journey’s and segments only, thinking about the whole human, their emotional values and human needs. Humanics is all about leveraging the personalities within your store to complete your unique story and offering.
• Experiential Retailing – it’s also about being true to your brand and what types of experiences you should invest in and what you should pass on. Experiences are not about a trends, find your’s here: CX Quiz.   digging deep on what resonates with your absolute best customers and creating experiences that they crave. What are your customers trying to achieve, what is keeping them up at night and how can you come to their aid.
• Retail Storytelling – is about honing in on your unique retail story. Storytelling connects people and ideas and helps customers remember what you are all about.
• Events – a clever event strategy can be an absolute gift to your customer. Driving not only deep engagement but also visitation, dwell times and sales. Events, when executed well and measured, can be a great acquisition tool.
• Mindset – often the most challenging is shifting what being a retailer means to us – who are we and what is our purpose? Customer engagement is all about creating experiences that encourage your customers to interact with you. The creation of these experiences is not about extracting revenue, but rather creating value for customers.

Waking Up Your Customers

When I say ‘waking up’, I mean, customers were opening our emails (our open rates tripled), responding to social posts and increasing their store visits.

So, I’ve put those learnings, strategies and pitfalls into a book called The Retail Experiment, 5 proven strategies to engage & excite customers through in-store experience.

For visual folks – like me, I created this “5 Steps to Create More In-Store Experience”, infographic.

I hope you find the infographic helpful. If you’re interested in learning or reading more about The Retail Experiment – you can download the first 3 chapters free here.

Wishing you ALL the experience your store and staff can handle!

😉 Amy

PS. Let’s connect on LinkedIn –https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyroche1/

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