Why Your Business Needs a Background Music Strategy?

The customer experience begins with the first interaction of your brand or organization. If your customers are engaging with your company in a physical space, like a store, restaurant or waiting area their experience will be positively or negatively impacted by the quality of the environment.  Are you using in-store background music to elevate the customer experience?

At most businesses, background music isn’t a top priority but it should be! Music positively affects customers, shoppers and patrons, and provides numerous benefits for businesses, it has incredible value and plays a vital role in making customer experiences more impactful, enjoyable and memorable. Think of it like air conditioning—while it’s difficult to measure the direct impact it has on the customer experience during the summer, you’d be hard-pressed to find a store or restaurant that’s willing to let their customers sweat! When done correctly the right overhead music can boost your business, and improve the customer experience.

Let’s take a look below on exactly how to elevate the customer experience with overhead background music:

Why is background music important to your business?

The moment you walk into a physical business location, customers want to know they’ve walked into a warm, welcoming, and fun environment. All of their senses should be engaged so a sense of anticipation builds for the experience that’s to come. Music is a critical part of that first moment experience.

How can music make the customers’ visit a more memorable/better experience?

As the competition from e-commerce is getting stronger, the quality of shopping experience has become one of the key differentiators for physical retail stores. Music plays a big role in creating and enhancing the shopping/dining/hospitality experience. In fact, four out of five small retailers believe that they would damage their store’s atmosphere if they stopped playing music.

Research shows that the music you play affects not only the store’s environment, but also shoppers’ moods and feelings. By changing the tempo and style of background music, retailers can create a visible change in atmosphere. Analyze your store’s ambiance, what kind of atmosphere do you want to establish? You could for example create a playful space with high-key pop music, or use slow rhythms to build a relaxed, pensive environment.

Make sure your background music fits your brand?

Get it right and it’s an important part of your in-store experience. Get it wrong…man…good luck! Overhead background music needs to fit the brand you want present, and it is an important ingredient to the right marketing mix. If your brand is synonymous with rest and relaxation, is the music too upbeat? Or is it too mainstream for your hip and trendy brand? Is the music in the dining room too distracting to encourage conversations? Too quiet for a retail area? Too mellow to encourage dancing in a bar?

To ensure a brand’s background music elicits the reactions they desire, it’s important to carefully curate a soundtrack that marries what customers see and hear, enforcing the brand’s values and creating a seamless venue experience.

Can background music increase your customers’ spend?

Research conducted in two supermarkets found a massive increase in sales when slow tempo music was played:

“In this study the average gross sales increased from $12,112 for the fast tempo music to $16,740 for the slow tempo music. This is an average increase of 38%.”

A similar study conducted about the affects of background music in restaurants showed:

“Customers spent 23% more money in a restaurant when slow music was played. Interestingly, most of the increase in spending came on the drinks bill (which grew by 51% on average), which is a high margin item in most restaurants.”

 

Final Thoughts…

An often overlooked element of customer experience is background music and the role it plays in how well a customer finds their interaction to be. The right background tunes can help reinforce your brand and build consumer loyalty.

Many brands today (especially in the retail and hospitality sectors) are having to adapt their strategies to keep up with changes in technology, with digital advancements meaning customers are demanding more and making it difficult to gain their loyalty. What’s more, when visiting a pub, bar, restaurant or hotel, consumers are so often disengaged with their surroundings and preoccupied with smartphones that they are oblivious to what’s going on around them, making it difficult for brands to get them fully engaged.

Want to learn how overhead background music can help your brand? Contact us for a no obligation discovery session with one of our business music designers, and get the answers.