5 ways to strengthen your customers’ experience and to be trending with Generation M
You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.
~ Jerry Fritz
Aren’t all customers…customers? Don’t they all just come in and buy what they like? Well Retailers know they have to cater for all customers — from babies, young kids, to frustrated teenagers, to happier teenagers, to young parents, single adults, grandparents and so on. The segmentation is important as shaping up the right sales channel for a market segment increases the possibility of the sale being completed and creating a loyal customer. Through marketing to SOBs placement via in-store music, there are many ways of increasing your store’s sales figures. We will look at five ways to cater for a certain generation that is shaping our future as retail business through their technologies and likes. Gen M is the generation that is strongly one with technology and has recently reached a level of financial stability and freedom in their lives.
There is a belief that Gen M wake up with their phones in their palms, whilst eating, whilst charging the phone, not too far way when they are having a shower and go bed still holding their phones. That is probably true. But however it doesn’t mean the generation born from the mid-90s to the millennium do not go shopping out to our stores nor buy everything they need online. There is definitely a trend towards online shopping but there are products which goes through a completely different thought process. For a few products, it is essential for some people to touch and feel the product prior purchase. They might be quite conscious on how they look, but this generation will choose to sacrifice a lot for comfort.
Here are 5 things you might do to appeal to Gen M — they have recently graduated and making money now and have that sense of freedom to be in charge of their own life. Give them a reason to choose you and not the convenience of other shops.
Make it an experience
Gen M enjoys the social aspects of brick-and-mortar shopping together with their friends. This generation likes to base their purchases, opinions and acts onto others’ opinions. They are very reliant on how their role models are doing and how they peers look or where they shop.
To do this, the experience at your store should start from them finding you on their social media platforms, magazines they read, shows they watch and other places they regularly visit.
Make relevant posts containing the products they will be interested in, affiliate with magazines and people they will trust and turn your store as the “go-to” brand for the generation you are targeting.
Once you have set the idea into the target market, its time to set up a meeting and a date. Choose a slot when most people of that certain segment visit your store, create a feature specific for them and get it trending. For example, Young graduates and third-year University students get 10% off their Saturday evening dresses and trousers if they do their purchase on the coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This will create a cause and place to be. Include the need for their student IDs and get them to sign up to the weekly store discount draw. To allow for this make sure your POS system caters for such campaigns and on the spot database creation. Have a look at Posterita’s features to help you find out the interface giving you the freedom to flexible and reliable campaigns.
Make it a social trend through social media so that they can share their experience
Reviews and comments can have such a big impact on the performance and the customer turnouts. In this age of technology it is a brilliant tool to offer the voice and the platform for your market to communicate and share experiences.
By being active on the social media front, the conversation might get into your favour. You have to have a strong and relevant presence on social media. Be it on Facebook or Twitter — you have to regularly reach out to your market. Give out incentives and Sign up offers. You will thereby build yourself a database of people who might buy from your store. Invite them for launches, special loyalty discounts and other incentives, which will generate a “trust-based loyalty-generating campaign.
No need to constantly post and advertise through social media. As long as your name and brand are affiliated or part of the picture and your posts is relevant to the field you work in, the cognitive process will make members of Gen M to come to you to fulfil their needs.
Your Store’s Experience
Your store’s décor should match the expectancy it created through advertising and through the stores’ windows. It should carry the Brand and the intended vision of the company throughout.
A simple and efficient designed space with fewer products with huge colourful pictures of people modelling the products will appeal to this generation more than a packed shop full of good deals. This generation finds the need to have perfect spiritual balance at the centre of most their decisions. The décor and the color should reflect soothing and calmness all around. Unless your store is for Electronic music and you want flashing light and loud music playing whilst customers are shopping, choose a light and efficient look. Newer generation have a low attention span and makes decisions when all factors are aligned and there are neither distractions nor pressure.
It is common knowledge that colors such as pale green, sky blue or sand beige promote calmness and promotes sales. For example, McDonalds use green and brown to promote its connection to Nature and food and it has been proven to induce hunger in people.
What you see definitely determine your course of action, but the smell and sound in the place is of significant importance as well. The focus should be on the whole experience. Use diffusers to make sure it is not a bad smell they remember of they trip through your store. Some stores have their own range of perfumes as well. This is an opportunity to attribute a smell to the brand. It should not be overpowering or too subtle. It should be present at the right places in the right dosage.
Gen M is very keen on Music. You will see many of them walking around with at least one earphone plugged in or humming a tune whilst walking around. However you run a Store, not a discotheque. I have been to many shops that were empty because of music being blasted around the shop. The sales reps could not even communicate between themselves. A nice catchy tune can be used at a volume where it is ever present yet not overpowering. Customers should be able to freely speak between themselves, with the sales rep or on a phone.
The whole experience through your store should be planned and an enjoyable experience. A memorable visit might turn out to be the first of many more. The plan is to leave such a great shopping experience that the customer will talk about it, leave a review on your website and take friends with them for their next visit.
You do not have to display all your products on the shop floor. At least one or two of each line you sell can be effectively positioned on the shop floor with the proximity of a sales rep can have a higher chance of become a sale than showing them all you products in all sizes for them to come to the till and ask a question about it.
Speaking of a special place, consider creating an area in your store where customers can chill or wait while they are shopping. Wi-Fi and phone charging outlets are essential in nowadays stores. Give the customers an area where they can attend to phone calls, wait for their friends using the changing rooms or the washrooms and for them to have a break. Like we mentioned earlier, Gen M have a short attention span and have a need to feel good in their skin — such an area give them that peace they needed before spending money in your store.
You do not have to bring in costly redesigns and changes to your current Store setup. You just need to take a few minutes to think and think about your target audience and what appeals to them. Remember that making these changes will also create a more upscale feeling for your store, which may enable you to charge more for your products and will definitely increase activity in your store.
The process is simple-
Identify a need for your target customers
Bring your brand/name as the solution finder
Reach them with a call to action through a platform they regularly use
Set a time and place and get them to sign up
Make sure the location is in line with the solution they seek and in line with the brand you envisioned
Make them feel valued and ensure they come back.
Create bundles, packages and the use of discount.
Gen M has access to thousands of trends daily. They know where to get the best deals and discount codes. They, similarly to most generations, love a good bargain. They love a bundle offer or a discount they could tell their friends about. Make sure you have the right products in your bundle offers and the right tools to deliver them. The whole experience should be optimized and streamlined in a smooth and smart manner. Gen M will identify this and promote your activities throughout their social groups.
Posterita POS has an easy to use interface where you can easily give discounts, create bundle offers and packages, and implement Customer Loyalty programs. Gen M loves the use of technology and will find the idea of digital receipts, their customer loyalty points balance sent to them by email and regular offers directly sent to them as an appealing proposition.
Make them feel special by employing Posterita as business partner.
As we have seen in step 4, Gen M loves technology. One of the reasons is that they want to be loved and appreciated. They want a personalized process for them and Posterita is a POS which allows you to liaise with your customers by email, give them Customer Loyalty points to pay back their trust and commitment to your store and design a Customer profile which includes a picture of theirs.
Posterita is robust, reliable, helpful, optimized for current trends and a small increase in your monthly costs and potentially saving you tenfold throughout the year. As you must have noticed through the post, Posterita does assist retailers in the implementing of Sales procedures in many ways. Be it in giving ideas and a platform to implement them, or as an interface to promote prompt and quality service, Posterita has been engineered and built for the long term. Using retail experience and feedback from Retail experts, Posterita brought in the best and the lessons learnt from past mistakes together to create a flexible user-friendly POS interface altogether with a business assistant for all retailers. No matter the size, the field or the business process, Posterita can become you best personal assistant and give you the tools to grow as a business.
Some of the features Posterita is optimized for are Inventory Control, Customer Loyalty features, Product Creation and Editing, Employee Management, Reports and Analytics and a user-friendly Sale-promoting Point Of Sale interface. Each and every business operation has been broken down into short processes and optimized into the feature Posterita offers. The best news is that you can try it out for free for a month before signing up.
If you cannot beat the tide, Surf on it. Technology has taken over most processes. Find the right partner and fight the battle together. Work and effort has been put into making processes faster and reliable, it is time to adapt or perish. Try Posterita and find out how easy it can be.
Visit www.posterita.com for more information.
