Drive Revenue With On Hold Messages, In-Store Music & In-Store Video. How To Keep Your In-Store Marketing Strong!
Attention is a necessary ingredient for effective advertising. The market for consumer attention has become so competitive that attention can almost be regarded as a currency. The rising cost of this key ingredient is causing marketers to waste money on costly attention sources, or even worse, reduce their investment in promoting their brands. Instead, brands should be focused on how to “buy” cheaper attention and how to use it more effectively.
The cost of buying attention has been rising quickly and consistently over the past decade, while the quality of attention purchased has been decreasing at an even greater pace. One of the first places to start to achieve reduced costs of grabbing your customers and prospects attention is in-store and on hold. Since the dawn of the internet, marketers have fully understood that you have just mere seconds to capture the attention of online visitors so they’re not off and clicking somewhere else. Well, you may be shocked to learn that you have only 10 seconds to capture the attention of waiting callers on-hold or shoppers entering your store.
This begs the question: What are you doing with these attention grabbing opportunities? Custom branded on hold messages, in-store music & messaging and in-store video ads allow you to cost-effectively capitalize on these attention grabbing opportunities and develop marketing strategies that not only capture attention, but also persuade attitudes and behavior that will increase profit margins, strengthen customer loyalty and provide an enhanced brand experience.
So, why does on hold messaging deserves a piece of your marketing budget? Sure, the phrase “on-hold messaging” may not immediately conjure up images of high tech, state-of-the art, glamorous, or even sexy. However, If you still think on-hold message is simply “nice to have,” you might want to think again. Typically 94% of a business’s marketing budget is spent on getting the customer to call, yet only 6% is spent on retaining that caller. I don’t know about you, but this seems awful lopsided to me. When customers and prospects call you and have to wait on-hold, you have a captive, interested audience, which also presents the perfect time for you to engage and connect with your callers and take action as a result of your message. Messaging On hold is the right medium, at the right time to grab and keep the callers attention, after all getting them to keep holding and not hang up is half of the battle. It also present the perfect opportunity give the right brand impression, provide a helpful, rewarding experience and provide relevant information.
When a customer enters your store, you have less than six seconds to make a good impression. These days, consumers aren’t coming to brick-and-mortar stores for the prices or the selection – they can usually find better alternatives to both online. They’re coming for the experience. What are you doing to make the most of each visit that shoppers make to your store? Nearly every successful major brand uses in store music marketing and in-store video ads to engage, inform, educate, and direct customers to specific products.
Why? You might ask. It’s simple. One study conducted by the Journal Of Consumer Marketing, demonstrated that a wine store using classical music saw an increase in the overall customer spend. Other studies show that 70% of purchase decisions are being made in-store and 68% of in-store purchases are impulse decisions. This provides savvy marketers a tremendous opportunity to reach consumers, build brand equity and stimulate and influence their purchasing. Over the past 40 years there have been a number of academic studies into the effects of background music in a business environment that has significant effects on how long consumers spend in shops and restaurants, how much they purchase or consume, and whether they view brands or individual products favorably or unfavorably.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a boom in the use of online video, but once again savvy marketers have come to understand that they can influence shoppers by taking the video marketing platform and moving it inside their store. Sure some shoppers will be too preoccupied with loaded shopping carts and unruly children to attend to in-store video displays, but the evidence so far suggests that many people are looking at them. A Nielsen Media Research study gauged overall in-store video viewership at close to 40%. In-store video advertising offers new opportunities to increased product awareness and impulse buying, decreased perceived customer wait times and provide an enhanced customer experience.
The most common drive in advertising is to get people into your store. Everything you send out is done with the express purpose of getting the phone to ring and increasing the foot traffic as much as possible. There is more to advertising than just getting a person to give you a chance, and if you aren’t taking advantage of on hold and in store advertising, than you’re potentially losing sales. On hold and In store advertising is focused on the idea that once a person has called your business or entered your store, they’re going to be open to buying more than they might’ve first wanted to.
You need to keep in mind that getting someone to call or enter your establishment is only the first step in your marketing. Once you have them, what are you going to do with them? Don’t waste these valuable attention grabbing marketing opportunities.
