How Retail Marketers Can Easily Reach New Customers

The best way for retailers to reach customers outside of their core target segment depends on their budget. For a small retailer (non franchise), the best way to go is with postcards that have a coupon printed on them. However, before blindly sending out postcards, the retailer needs to know the demographics and psychographics of the new target market they want to reach and that this new market can be profitable. For example, if you are a retailer that sells video games, you want your target market to be males within maybe 5-10 miles of your store who are aged 12 - 35. You do not want to send postcards to women who are senior citizens. This sounds like common sense but it amazes me how many businesses waste their money marketing to the wrong target markets.

To discover potential new markets to target, spend time researching who has purchased from you in the past. Look for patterns. When doing this research you may find that a group you never considered to be your core target market is actually a sizable percentage of your sales. Using the video game retail store example, you may find by studying your past sales data that it is women aged 18-40 buying 35% of your games because they are buying games for their husbands, boyfriends, children, cousins, etc. Therefore, you would want to make a custom message for this market saying buy great video game gifts for the men in your life and use this 10% off coupon with you next purchase.

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For larger retailers and chains, you need to do the same thing-- research who has purchased from you in the past and look for segments that make up sizable percentages of your sales. Then, create custom sales messages to advertise to those segments via Internet marketing, social media, postcards, magazine advertising to the publications the segment reads, advertise on cable TV shows the segment watches, etc. The key is you need to have a custom sales message for each niche market (segment). Do not make the mistake of trying to create a one size fits all marketing message as different segments buy for different reasons and they have different hot buttons.

How Retail Marketers Can Easily Reach New Customers

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