Take Advantage of Independent Retailer Month: 5 Tips & Tricks
Founded in 2011, Independent Retailer Month is an event that encourages buyers to support their local small businesses. It highlights the positive economic and social impact small intendent retailers can have in their community.
Taking place every July, Independent Retailer Month, is a great chance to redefine your brand and boost your audience reach. Since costumers are looking to join the event and support small retailers, this is a great opportunity to do so.
At Impact, we want to give you some tips and tricks so that you can plan your strategy better and make the best of this month. Follow these tips to reenergize your brand and business.
Define your Brand
Small business owners and employees are usually busy running a handful of tasks. Which means sometimes, your brand image and mission may have been relegated to the bottom of your priorities.
Independent Retailer Month is great because it gives businesses a chance to freshen up their image.
Since the internet is now the primary means through which many businesses display their brand, you can focus on defining your online brand image. An online brand presence includes your website, social media, email campaigns and any ads you publish.
To craft a strong online brand presence, ask yourself if the message you want to convey is the same across all mediums. Do the colors and imagery match in tone and style? Is the wording you use appropriate for the demographic you want to reach?
If you want to learn more about revamping your online presence, this blog on Why Digital Branding Is Important will show you how.
Create and Utilize Great Content
This month, the hashtags #IndependentRetailerMonth and #indieretail will be trending, which means it is the best time to take advantage of the attention from current and new customers on small businesses.
Use this time to create content to spread awareness about your brand and to generate new leads. Engage with customers on social media by developing and implementing a video or graphic strategy. You don’t need to invest a lot of time or resources on social media posts, just make sure your content aligns with the type of consumer you wish to reach.
Making content to appear in search engine searches—such as Google—can also bring in new buyers. If you haven’t started, now is a great time to write blogs related to services you provide. Blogs provide information to the reader and show them that you are an authority on the subject.
If you sell artisanal soaps, for example, a blog explaining which natural ingredients can heal dry skin would provide useful information. You can use this content to lead people to some of your shop’s soaps that can help with this problem. Higher blog content can increase the likelihood of your site appearing in searches.
Read this blog if you want to find out other 5 Ways to Generate Leads for Your Business Online.
Remodel Your Website
After you have defined your brand and created some content to engage your audience, consider revamping your website. A website is the first digital touchpoint customers have with your business. Therefore, you should ensure it matches with your brand and goals.
Parameters to consider are design — whether the layout is helpful to buyers, message — if your website embodies the tone and purpose of your business, and optimizing your site for mobile users.
As you set up and remodel your site, consider that the point of your website is to increase leads and conversions. Investing some time in this resource can pay off as users find a reliable way to access your content and get in touch with you.
To learn more about what factors to focus on when redesigning your website and how to improve your website’s performance, check out the blog How to Redesign a Website In 9 Steps.
Delve Into Market Research
Without understanding your audience, a marketing strategy will rely on gambling and guesses of where to spend efforts. Use Independent Retailer Month as the starting point to develop a better marketing strategy for your small business.
Using your existing consumer base, you can analyze why your buyers are choosing your product. This insight can help target similar people or highlight features in your product that you did not focus on before.
You can also collect data from reviews and consumer feedback to understand some of the pain-points your buyers have. After analyzing their problems, you can provide a better solution and therefore increase their satisfaction with your company.
To understand which insights are most valuable and how you can gather and use that data, watch this informative video on Why is Marketing Research Important?
Strengthen Your Accounts’ Passwords
Your business will probably be very busy engaging with people in person and online during Independent Retailer Month. Use this opportunity to head over to the security settings in your platforms and devices to strengthen them.
60% of small companies go out of business within six months of being hacked.
As a small business, you may not have the resources to recover from a cyberattack. But proactively protecting yourself from one, can later save you time and money that could be lost to a bad actor online.
A simple way to start your business security journey is to set up multi-factor authentication (MFA). That is, ensuring that your user accounts are not protected by a simple, easily hacked password.
To learn more about how MFA works, watch this animated video on What Is the Definition of Multi-Factor Authentication?
Bottom Line
Your business can use this month as a steppingstone to revamp your brand and increase leads. Clarifying your image, creating content that represents it, understanding your audience better, and redesigning your mediums are all ways to reach more people.
Take these tips and use them to level up your business during this year’s Independent Retailer Month!
Paid media can also help your company increase leads and sales. Listen to marketing experts in this webinar, Creating a Paid Media Strategy That Works, to learn how to create effective online ads for your business.