5 Ways to Digitally Market Your Brick and Mortar Feminist Business
There is all this talk about how businesses are seeing incredible sales and growth during this unprecedented time living during a global pandemic. What have they done that you can apply to your brick and mortar business? They successfully pivoted with the help of digital marketing.
While customers are wary about shopping, dining out, and enjoying typical activities at public venues, their need for clothing, items for their home, food, entertainment, and more have not waned during the pandemic.
If your brick and mortar business is seeing greatly reduced or nonexistent sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital marketing can help to keep revenue flowing in. Here are five ways that you can improve sales for your brick and mortar business:
Sell Online or Create a Virtual Experience for Your Customers
Whether you are located in a region of the country experiencing high or low COVID cases, your at-risk customers are unlikely to be returning to your brick and mortar storefront anytime soon. That does not mean that they won’t still want to support you from home—especially when you make it easier for them to do so by digitally marketing your business.
Do you sell clothing in a physical boutique? Convert to an online boutique and offer a promotion to drive existing and new customers to purchase online. Are you a wedding photographer with graphic design skills? Create an Instagram story (better yet, a Reel) highlighting how you test shoot and scout locations for wedding announcement photos.
The importance must be placed on creating an online experience that feels similar to the experience that you once offered in-person. For those of you with tangible products, think feasibly and don’t try to list every item you sold in store online—prioritize your most popular products first and invest in quality product photography. And, if your business offers in-person services, consider virtual offerings such as a cooking masterclass if you run a restaurant or a curated subscription service if you run a bookstore to bring these experiences to your customers at home.
Stay Front of Mind
Be transparent. Everyone is affected by COVID. Let your customers know how it is impacting your business and the steps you are taking to continue delivering the products, service, and experience they have grown to love. You could share your story on social media, in a video, or write an honest message via an email newsletter to your customers.
If you are not already utilizing email marketing and social media to connect with your customers, now is the time. Continuing to send communications and post updates about your business will keep you front of mind for your existing customers and has the potential to bring in a lot of new business from folx outside of your local area.
This will require you to plan your email and social media efforts in a content calendar and ensure you are consistent with the communications you send out. During COVID-19, customers are bombarded daily with messages across a variety of platforms and devices. As they remain indoors customers are more likely to engage with digital marketing to stay informed and find offers that appeal to them.
You don’t need to be “always on” but your business must certainly stay in your customers’ top 10 of businesses they have interest and intentions to purchase products and/or services from.
Work to Simplify Your Systems and Processes
Use this time to start or revamp a project internally that helps your digital marketing efforts be effective for your backend, too. If you have been unhappy with any parts of your business in the past, now might be a good time to look at how to improve and simplify.
Take a hard look at your products and services to assess if any should be cut due to lack of interest from customers or because the cost to stock them is now prohibitive. Review your business systems, i.e. POS, order fulfillment platform, or customer support tools, and determine if there is now a better solution that meets these needs and remains cost effective for you.
Are there any functions that you could outsource during these unprecedented times? Social media, email marketing, and/or managing an ecommerce platform can consume a significant amount of your time as a business owner. Allow yourself the space to focus on other core areas of your business while entrusting these digital marketing functions to an external expert—such as a digital marketing agency or a freelance marketer.
By simplifying your internal systems and outsourcing digital marketing, this allows you to direct your energy fully toward what you do best—providing the right products/services/experience to meet your customers’ needs.
Grow Your SEO
So many brick and mortar businesses have spent years or decades relying on foot traffic and word of mouth to sustain their businesses. While that has likely led to a loyal customer base, foot traffic and word of mouth alone may no longer be enough to keep revenue coming in. If there is any “right time” to evolve and embrace digital marketing, COVID is certainly that time. The most complex area of digital marketing for most business owners is search marketing.
How do you transfer real life word of mouth and traffic to the digital space? By growing your search engine optimization (SEO). The ways that you achieve this are based on how well your website is structured, having the proper SEO descriptions and alt-text on your site, experimenting with solid landing pages, and more. Ensuring your website or ecommerce platform includes descriptive keywords can help folx in your local area and beyond discover what you have to offer.
Most importantly, use the free tools that search giants like Google make available for brick and mortar businesses like yours. Do you have an up-to-date Google Business Listing (a.k.a. Google My Business profile)? When potential customers search Google for their needs, you want to ensure your business is represented accurately when it populates in their search results. For example, if your brick and mortar has closed and you are moving to an entirely online model, make sure that folx searching for you don’t see a red “PERMANENTLY CLOSED” label on your Google Business Listing.
Search marketing is a key part of digital marketing that can guide customers to your business, especially when they are spending more time indoors.
Take COVID Seriously
We are living through an unprecedented time and so much can feel uncertain. As a business owner you want to ensure your business remains active and withstands this specific test of time. However, no matter what, take COVID seriously and follow strict guidelines when reopening your brick and mortar business.
Whether you are located in a low or high case region, take the lead educating your customer base on the importance of health safety. This looks like requiring masks, proper sanitation for your customers and staff, lots of hand sanitizer and posting guidelines prominently before customers walk in the door in order to reduce the burden placed on your staff of enforcing the guidelines.
If you receive pushback from a small portion of your customer base, remind them of your values and how those values have led them to love your product and services. Do not feel afraid to lose some business over taking COVID seriously, because those who appreciate your efforts will build a stronger affinity for your business.
Meet The Authors
Jen Siomacco, Founder and UX Designer
Jen has worked in technology, marketing, and publishing for ten years. After years as a UX designer in the corporate world, Jen put her skills to work as one of the owners of Catalyst Wedding Co. After seeing both the corporate and entrepreneurial world, Jen is committed to helping feminist small businesses grow into revolutionary brands.
Brittinee Phillips, Copywriter
Brittinee has worked in marketing for a little over ten years. She has a passion and talent for storytelling. Brittinee's philosophy is that storytelling is the most integral part of the consumer and product experience, which is why she makes it a focal point in her approach to product and brand messaging.
Kate Schaefer, Brand and Marketing Strategist
Kate has worked in digital marketing and publishing for seven years. In 2013, she identified a hole in the wedding market and started H&H Weddings, a wedding resource specifically for the LGBTQ+ community.
Kate believes every business should thrive and is dedicated to helping marginalized folx even the financial playing field because capitalism is a bitch.
