Retail Marketing Strategies For Tough Times

Have you identified the “pain” your customers are feeling and can you formulate a positive message in your marketing strategy to recognise that and address it, head-on.

Travellers, like me, are missing being on the road. Select Travel realises this and has pivoted its marketing messaging, asking me if I have, “Tested positive for missing travel?”.

My challenge to you is simple:

(a) Do you know the pain of your customers?
(b) Are you addressing that pain head-on?

Have you then shown empathy with your customers. Chrissie and Kym from Select Travel have followed the headline with an empathy letter, that does not promote their product, but empathises with their customers.

They use sentences like:

“We hope you are OK and managing to get through these interesting days”

“We thank you for your lovely phone calls. It is appreciated. We miss you.”

“We remain positive and cannot wait for our borders opening safely.”

Select Travel’s core business is overseas travel. That does not exist at present and therefore the answer is to diversify. Their package now includes customised vacations within Western Australia.

We are all having to change our product mix. Do not hold onto the products that will not sell. Selecting the right product range is essential for survival.

Who can a travel agent network with?

The local coffee shop. Select Travel has sent all their customers a personal coffee card that can be redeemed at Cambridge Corner Store, which is located in the nearby shopping centre. The card has to be handed in and it has the clients name on so that Select Travel can measure the success of the campaign and who used the token.

My challenge to you here is this... What business in your location can you network with and do a joint marketing campaign with to grow your trade?

We are all being told to buy local and customers want to buy local.

Select Travel points out that Expedia, Wotif, Trivago, Kayak and Tripadvisor are all American-owned and that Skyscanner is Chinese-owned.

These are all Select Travel’s competitors.

Select Travel is owned by locals in Perth and they have printed the following marketing slogan on their flyers...

“So book with Select Travel and be part of the solution”

Is it obvious in YOUR marketing material that you are a local business and part of the solution?

This marketing campaign was not expensive, it was a campaign targeted at existing advocates of the business. It addressed the needs of the business and the wants of the customer.

The newsletter finished with a clever list of movie picks that the customer should watch:

Lost in Translation;
Midnight in Paris;
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel;
Wild.

What a great way to use movies to inspire the customer to travel!

If this had of been a food outlet, it could have been movies based on food.