Building Brand Ambassadors for Local Retailers

My last piece was on building brand ambassadors for service industries. Now let’s talk retail. This is not for giant box stores. This is for local boutique, mom and pop stores. You own or work at a store that participated in Shop Local Small Business Saturday over the holiday season. Now that the holiday shopping season is over, you need to keep those feet walking through your door and credit cards swiping.

Perhaps the idea of building brand ambassadors is a little difficult to grasp for a retail establishment. But if you’re local, you have an advantage. More and more consumers want to support their local communities. How much is up to you. It depends on the friendliness of your staff, your location, prices, etc. There are a variety of factors that impact whether or not you attract customers and get them coming back. You know this already. But if there are those who do come back regularly, you can monetize their dollars even further.

Say I walked into your store and fell in love with your super friendly staff and amazing prices. Even if the prices aren’t the lowest, I love your location because you’re close to home and you offer unique products that I can’t find anywhere else. I might perhaps verbalize all these things to your staff. You might even hear me speak these accolades. My information should be taken immediately. You’ll want my email address, social handles, and birthday. With this information, you can start building brand ambassadors.

Video Greetings and Newsletters

The reason you need the email address isn’t just to send your normal email. No, you’ll need it to send video emails and newsletters. Videos have a higher open rate and conversion. So instead of your normal sales promo email, shoot a video instead. You can use a company that specializes in sending video emails for the best results. You want to know birthdays because you can shoot a special video birthday greeting card. You can do this for all your customers or just ones that really come back show you the love by spending quite a bit at your store.

Social Media

You’ll also want to reach out to these brand ambassadors on social media. Tweet them. Tell them thank you for stopping by and shopping. Take a picture with them and post it on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. If they interact, that increases your exposure to their network. Plus, if you send them a video greeting or email, they can share it on their social channels. You’ll want to be ready to retweet and share too.

You want to cultivate relationships with these brand ambassadors. You want them checking in on Swarm when they’re at your store and you want them posting about their purchase. Get them talking. Give them a reason to talk by making them feel special. Offer them something you don’t offer all your customers. You’d be amazed at how a little one on one attention in person and on social media can turn a shopper into your biggest evangelist.