Offline traffic generation skills, a set of effective solutions!

As an offline merchant, what methods have you tried to attract traffic to your store?

for example:

• Have you ever distributed flyers?
• Have you joined Meituan?
• Have you ever done any small activities to collect likes?
• Are you working diligently in your own circle of friends?

But what is the effect?

Every time I go to supermarkets, residential areas, parks, and subway stations where there are large crowds of people, I encounter people handing out flyers . The content and form of the flyers vary, but the result is always the same : they are thrown away right away.

Some people even complained that field marketing is often like "Tang Monk's nagging", repeated every day but not really working.

At the same time, almost all merchants have connected to third-party group buying websites such as Meituan, and the high handling fees have squeezed store profits lower and lower. However, the store’s traffic is highly dependent on these platforms. Once they withdraw, the flow of people will be almost cut off, and they can only grit their teeth and maintain the status quo.

Therefore, for merchants who value their brands, they must have their own promotion channels and customer retention platforms, and the sooner they enter, the better.

With the development of the new media era, various social platforms have emerged. Official accounts, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, etc. are currently the most popular platforms. Each has its own exclusive presentation method and brings a new experience to users.

Short video and other content community platforms such as TikTok have a huge and growing number of users. They are a good marketing and promotion channel for brand merchants. WeChat official accounts are a mature self-media platform that has undergone years of iterative development. It has a stable user base and strong user stickiness. For brand merchants, it is a natural platform for user retention and maintenance.

In fact, many stores and businesses currently have their own WeChat public accounts, but because they don’t know where to start, they are left idle. Therefore, there is always a preconceived idea that public accounts are dispensable.

But is this really the case?

Next, the editor will take you from the perspective of offline store promotion, and re-get more ways to play the official account, making it the final stop for offline merchant brand promotion, and finally create your own traffic position, truly realizing: there is no difficult promotion.

1. Offline marketing should be results-oriented

The conversion rate of traditional door-to-door marketing is usually around 0.3% to 0.5%. Even if the flyer format and activity content are made very attractive, the conversion rate is at most around 0.8%-1.0%, and it is difficult to exceed 1.0%. This is why businesses increasingly feel that the form of ground marketing is useless.

For store merchants, their market scope is the surrounding area, and door-to-door promotion is indeed the best way to quickly attract attention in a short period of time. But the key lies in whether you can change the idea of ​​"winning by quantity" and focus on "quality" so that every promotion and exposure will have a real effect.

The specific change of thinking should include the following two points:

1

The results of the offline promotion should be reflected in the official account, not just letting consumers know

In the promotional information of ground marketing, don’t just say: "Our store has an event these few days, and there are 70% off on all items." The key is to guide fans to your official account (that is, gather people first). If the cost permits, you can set up the official account to automatically push a new customer coupon (give a little discount) to plant this discount information in the consumer's mind, so that he has a real receiving experience. This will be much more effective than just letting him look at the flyers and listen to a few words of promotional slogans from sales staff.

2

Pay more attention to the promotion effect of field sales staff rather than the number of field sales staff

The quality of field sales staff is more important than quantity. You can use some field sales plug-ins on the market and let field sales staff hold promotional posters to guide customers to follow the official account. You can evaluate the employees based on the number of followers. At the same time, you should create a ranking function to facilitate incentives for field sales staff.

The following are several practical and effective ground promotion scenarios that offline store merchants can use as a reference:

• Let all employees of the company generate exclusive promotional posters. If they bring new attention, they can be given certain rewards, which greatly increases the enthusiasm of employees to participate;
• On university campuses, recruit more part-time college students and let them mobilize various forces to promote in precise channels such as forums, post bars, and communities, so as to achieve the maximum effect with the minimum cost;
• If your product is a mass consumer product, you can mobilize people from all walks of life, whether they are mothers or working professionals. Anyone can promote it, and rewards will be automatically distributed based on the results. This way, all employees can be promoted and the effect can be multiplied.

2. Make good use of “free” traffic

In all promotional activities, the two words that appear most frequently are - free .

However, many of the so-called free activities offered by businesses fail to capture the essence. It’s not that the event is old-fashioned, which makes consumers have no desire to participate; it’s that the event planning is okay, but it just can’t be spread.

Therefore, before planning an event, you must think clearly about two questions:

• What is the purpose of the activity? Are the activities themselves always centered around this purpose? (Build momentum for the opening? Increase store popularity? Directly guide in-store consumption? Purely promote the brand?)
• Who is the target audience of the event? The more specific the filter, the better. (Are they mothers? What is their age range? What occasions do they often appear in? What is their consumption standard?)

For example, if you are a children's theme park in a shopping mall, the pre-opening promotion should not just be a roll-up advertisement at the door, hoping that customers will spontaneously see your 20% off opening promotion. Instead, you should start preparing one month before opening:

①Register the official account;

② Make a WeChat graphic and write the rules of the event, for example: Go to the bottom menu of the official account to receive a trial coupon. Three days before the opening, you can use the trial coupon to experience the attractions for free in the store, and there will also be a small gift.

③ Before the opening, if you are doing a ground promotion activity, you can promote this activity in a targeted manner (also on the official account) in nearby communities, shopping malls, and subway entrances;

④ Online community WeChat groups and communities can promote the graphic and text;

⑤ Mobilize all forces to gather traffic on the opening day and carry out centralized conversion.

Always remember: concentrating your efforts on doing one big thing is far more valuable than doing ten small things at the same time. The same goes for planning events. Since you have decided to pay for free events, then make the promotion effect reach its peak and run the event with the idea of ​​creating a hit. The same applies to retention, conversion, and user recall.

3. Maximize the effectiveness of existing passenger flow

Many businesses know this, but all they do is useless, such as:

• Take a photo of the product and post it on your Moments;
• Collect likes and receive red envelopes;
• Share to friends circle to receive gifts
• …

These activities have good intentions, but they all have a common problem: they have no foothold, making it difficult to count the effects, and they do not bring about actual conversions.

Imagine if you simply and directly told customers who came to the store to consume: "Invite three friends to follow the official account, and we will directly give you two drink trial cards or a 10-yuan coupon. The invited friends will also receive a 50-yuan new customer coupon automatically pushed by the official account." This will definitely be much better.

Therefore, the existing customer traffic must not be missed, as they are the natural high-quality channels for store merchants to carry out secondary fission.

4. Use community thinking to maintain old customers

As the development of mobile Internet becomes more stable, the traffic dividend gradually disappears. For merchants, especially store merchants, social e-commerce is undoubtedly a low-cost way to acquire traffic and a natural magic weapon to retain old customers.

Old customers and paying members who consume frequently in the store are all very loyal to the brand. Store owners must add them to WeChat one-on-one, and form WeChat groups that are strongly relevant to the products, such as: new food product internal testing group, high-quality VIP customer group, etc. The more specific the brand theme, the better, so that these customers have a sense of belonging and ownership, and carry out product-related operations and promotions at regular times and locations every day. It can be flash sales or product feedback, but it must be operated professionally. If you don’t have time, you can find a dedicated colleague who is professional and responsible. In short, make sure you provide valuable community services and offer discounts.

Each of these customers is your exclusive promotional resource. When new products are released or activities are launched later, they can help you launch the activities more quickly and achieve the goal of becoming a popular brand.

Summarize

Finally, let’s summarize the following: If offline merchants want to do a good job of attracting store traffic, they must find the best foothold - the official account. And always keep the following points in mind:

• Offline marketing should be result-oriented
• Clever use of "free" traffic
• Maximize the effectiveness of existing passenger flow
• Use community thinking to maintain old customers

If you do these five things, you will definitely be able to solve your offline store traffic diversion problem.

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Author: Xiaoxin

Source: Xiaoxin