The trend for ‘showrooming’ has been continually growing over the past couple of years, with more consumers than ever before hitting the high street to peruse the aisles for inspiration before turning to their mobiles to check if the same products are available cheaper online. As we witnessed over the Christmas period, the trend is becoming far more common.
But showrooming needn’t be seen as negative for retail and there are strategies retailers – both high street and online – should be following within their mobile advertising to secure a sale, rather than just seeing the customer leave their store, and the purchase, behind.
- Retarget shoppers using free Wi-Fi
One of the best ways for any advertiser to target people whilst they are shopping on the high street is to tap into the Wi-Fi increasingly provided free through retailers, malls and town centres. These days it’s easy to find some kind of free Wi-Fi and shoppers make use of these networks while having a quick rest, bite to eat or a coffee. This is a prime time to target the consumer. If an advertiser works with a free Wi-Fi network such as O2’s, then they can reach consumers through relevant, timely ads that are synced up to their current location or recent shopping activity. For example, retailers can retarget shoppers who might have been in your store and left by presenting them with an offer that could tempt them to come back and make the purchase.
- Don’t forget SMS
With so many forms of communication now available, many advertisers forget the benefits of using a simple SMS text message to target their audiences. Location-based SMS messages are still very effective at reaching people ‘in the moment’ when they are on a specific high street because they activate a notification on your phone the moment they arrive. Unlike display ads, which require the user to be browsing or using apps to see your ad, text messages are the optimal way to be sure people see your message whilst they are actually shopping. Send them a text when they are still in the vicinity of your store and you put yourself in a far better position to reel them back in.
- Reach them at home
Of course, showroomers might still intend to buy in-store in the future but they are just conducting early research into the right product to buy. For this reason, you need to make sure your marketing messages reach your target audience later in the day – whether that’s after they’ve made it home or while they’re commuting. A great way to do this is to ensure your mobile advertising targets them during this ‘downtime’ – such as through ads served to their mobile device that are relevant to what they’ve showed interest in buying previously. The best way to do this is to work with a company that takes a programmatic approach to running mobile ad campaigns – deciding which ad spaces to buy in real-time to optimise their relevancy. This makes sure the consumer sees them in the timeliest fashion. Remind them what they were looking at and that your store, whether it’s on the high street or online, offers them the best deal!
