Establishing standout visual attractions is a powerful way to captivate and engage your audience, whether it's passersby, window shoppers, or potential customers stepping into your store. These attractions serve as visual magnets, drawing people in and creating a lasting impression of your brand. By carefully curating and crafting visually appealing displays, you can effectively communicate your unique identity, showcase your products or services, and ultimately drive foot traffic and boost sales.

The first thing anyone notices about your business is its outward appearance.

If a new sign isn’t in the budget or isn’t possible because of your location, window displays can be just as eye-catching.

While your immediate thought is to try and showcase your premier products and services, this might not resonate with what your customers are looking for.

Instead, you should focus on making your displays engaging.

The best window displays have a side of storytelling and mystery to them, which piques the curiosity of passersby and draws them into the store.

One subtle way to draw customers into your store is the promise of a fast and painless shopping experience.

After all, who likes to wait? Customers are spending a decreasing amount of time in stores but buying more.

This is caused by two factors.

The first is that mobile smartphones allow customers to perform research in-store, which greatly aids their ability to make quick decisions.

The second is a rise in mobile pos systems.

Not only are these devices easier to use than traditional POS machines, but they also allow, well, mobility.

Instead of queueing customers up into a line at the cash register, mobile POS allows a store to use a tablet and assist customers anywhere in the store.

In addition, many mobile POS systems allow for a variety of different payment options to be used.

Some of these choices, like letting a customer pay through their smartphone via Apple Pay or Google Wallet, are much faster than using a credit card to make the payment.

Mobile POS allows a store to use a tablet and assist customers anywhere in the store

So, not only are you being flexible with your payment options, but you are also creating the opportunity for the customers to get in and out faster.

The other benefit to a mobile retail POS system is that it makes your business look sleek and modern.

While a traditional cash register and POS computer are immense and bulky, a mobile POS system typically uses a tablet computer.

Customer Retention: Loyalty programs are effective in keeping existing customers coming back, reducing customer churn, and increasing customer lifetime value. By offering incentives for repeat purchases, customers are more likely to remain loyal to the brand.

Implementing a well-designed loyalty program can be a significant competitive advantage for businesses. By focusing on customer retention, increased sales, data-driven insights, and personalized experiences, a loyalty program can help strengthen customer relationships, drive business growth, and create brand advocates.

By leveraging social media channels, you can create an online buzz about your real-life store.

The most obvious way to achieve this is to encourage your existing “friends” or followers of your social media accounts to get the word out to their friends by sharing your posts and updates.

Unfortunately, most customers will be reluctant to do this, unless they are hyper-active and brand loyal.

With a little spending, you can get the word out yourself. Facebook, has a Local Awareness Ad tool.

This service allows a brand page to post Facebook-based ads that only land on the news feeds of users that are located near their business.

You can even include a call-to-action button or link potential customers to your website and directions to the store’s location.

According to Facebook, some companies have had their local ads reach 10,000 potential customers in the area.

Email is often more effective because it has such high open rates, which significantly improves the odds that potential customers see your marketing efforts.

Additionally, an emailed coupon or incentive is easier for the client to refer back to once they are in the store, whereas a social media post is difficult to find again and may take some scrolling.

Businesses can further enhance their email marketing campaigns by investing in email automation software.

This type of tool makes it possible for a business to target specific emails after certain actions have taken place or an amount of time has passed.

An emailed coupon or incentive is easier for the client to refer back to once they are in the store, whereas a social media post is difficult to find again and may take some scrolling.

Hosting an event at your business not only draws customers in, but it also helps you build a positive reputation in the community.

This is an especially significant milestone if you are a brand-new store.

A workshop is another very impactful event-type tactic that you can implement.

A workshop is typically a class, discussion, or seminar around a subject or topic that pertains to your business.

If you owned a bookstore, you might have a writing workshop where people critique one another’s writing and offer feedback.

If you sell candles, you might host a workshop about how candles are made.

The big positive for a workshop is it draws in people that are interested in subjects related to your business.

For some businesses, the lessons and experience that guests get from attending the workshop encourage them to shop more.

For example, a homebrewing supply store that holds workshops teaching how to homebrew is going to convert many of the attendees into long-term customers because they’ll continue coming back for more ingredients and other products.

The success of any of these tactics and your business’s ability to take advantage of its foot traffic falls on the shoulders of your employees.

They are going to be the ones responsible for delivering that quick, painless shopping experience, driving customers to participate in your email list or events and more.

Thus, it is not just crucial that you hire the right individuals who are going to be a positive force when interacting with customers, but also that you give your employees the proper training.

It isn’t just about teaching employees the how, but also the why.

In other words, they should be shown, for example, how to use your mobile POS system, but also be made to understand the benefits of this more free retail POS system (compared to the restrictive nature of traditional POS machines).

By getting into this habit of explaining the how and also the why, your employees will gain an invested interest in your business’ current objectives and goals, which will help them better serve the customers.