Retail stores aren’t going anywhere. Some 82% of businesses are confident physical stores will continue to play an important role in future commerce growth, but a new challenge is presenting itself. Foot traffic is on the decline; the number of in-store shoppers reduced by 5% between March 2023 and the year prior.
Once you’ve combatted this problem to increase foot traffic and drive people toward your physical location, your job isn’t over. In-store marketing convinces store visitors to become paying customers. This can include digital signage, free samples, and product demonstrations—all designed to give potential customers enough confidence to make a purchase in-store.
This guide shares how to do it, complete with 11 in-store marketing ideas to get you started.
What is in-store marketing?
In-store marketing refers to any promotion that takes place within a brick-and-mortar shop. It can highlight special offers on offline channels, showcase products, or give customers in-store experiences with the goal of turning foot traffic into paying customers.
How effective is in-store marketing?
In-store marketing gives people a compelling reason to buy the products sitting on your shelves. Depending on the tactics you’re using, shoppers could touch, feel, and interact with the product before they commit to buying it. Smart signage can also tell people how to get the most use out of a product without having to talk with a sales associate.
Some in-store marketing tactics are particularly effective:
- 80% of shoppers purchase more frequently from a brand after joining its loyalty program
- Consumer product brands that included free samples had significantly higher purchase rates than those who didn’t
- 76% of shoppers would rather spend money on memorable experiences than products
11 in-store marketing ideas
1. Design an attractive window display
Your shop window gives passersby a peek into your store. Convince them to pay attention to your inventory with an attractive window display that showcases your bestsellers. It could convince customers to enter the store even when they didn’t intend to.
Experiment with these creative window display advertisement ideas to get started:
- Show your products in the environment they’ll be used, like a pop-up bedroom featuring your linen
- Create seasonal or holiday-themed product displays with seasonal inventory, like incorporating Christmas trees in December
- Use lighting to make your hero products the focal point of your display
- Add window decals to communicate with passersby through the window display, like this example from Nisolo Shoes
2. Use digital signage for dynamic advertising
Studies have shown that 50% of consumers want to watch product videos before they buy. Digital signage helps you cater to this demand in-store with display screens to showcase multiple offers or promotions. This constant change can prevent people from walking past your signs who’ve already seen them before.
You could use digital signage to display retail ads like:
- User-generated content from happy customers or creators
- Tell the history of your brand to build an emotional connection with shoppers
- Cross-sell or upsell relevant items next to certain products (like a billboard that promotes $49 bath towels next to a $39 one)
3. Offer free samples
Almost a quarter of in-store shoppers want to interact with products before buying them. Free samples are the ideal vehicle for doing so. They help you attract customers who can try your product and see its full potential.
If you’re concerned about giving away free products, consider manufacturing smaller trial-sized versions to hand out in-store. If you’re a skincare brand, for example, you could give out small testers of your hand cream for people to try before they buy. Shoppers might buy the full-price item if they can experience how luxurious, creamy, and hydrating the cream is with their own hands.
4. Host interactive product demonstrations
If you don’t have the capacity to hand out free samples, consider hosting product demonstrations in your store. These tutorials share your product knowledge, which helps people overcome a common sales objection: not knowing how to get the most value from a product.
Let’s put that into practice and say you’re selling cleaning products. Customers are skeptical about the product, so you line a kitchen tile with grease and grime and blast it off using your cleaning products. People instantly see that the product works, while also learning how to use it in their own homes.
The best practice is to host product demos at peak shopping times, but you could combine this with other retail marketing strategies like digital signage. Record the tutorial and display it on a big screen next to the item on the shelf. It’ll save you from hiring salespeople to give demonstrations multiple times a day.
5. Implement a loyalty program with exclusive in-store benefits
Once you’ve done the hard work of convincing someone to enter your store and buy a product, convince them to come back with a point of sale (POS) loyalty program. Repeat customers can earn points on every purchase and redeem them on a future order, such as earning 2 points per $1 with each point having a 5¢ value.
Modern POS systems like Shopify can help you manage your loyalty program without manually assigning points to every customer. Simply ring up their order on the POS system and collect data on your shoppers.
Loyalty apps like Yotpo, Smile.io or Marsello will match the order with the customer profile and award them with reward points when they shop online or in-store. When the time comes to redeem them, enter how many points you want to deduct. The outstanding balance will reflect this deduction.
Alt text: Screenshot of Smile’s Shopify POS app which applies 1,500 reward points to get $10 off their order.
6. Partner with other local businesses
There are likely other retail businesses in your local area that share the same target audience. Provided these stores don’t sell the same products as you, there might be an opportunity to cross-promote each other’s products in either store. This retail partnership gives you exposure across two locations despite only operating a single store.
A great example is a clothing store that collaborates with a shapewear or lingerie brand to cross-promote products in either store. The local advertising partnership doesn’t draw people away from buying either brand’s products, but the customer gets a better experience since they can find a complete outfit in one visit.
“The biggest opportunity flying under the radar is collaboration,” says Alex Danco, director of blockchain and systems thinking at Shopify. “It’s the best way to increase the number of buyers who know and care about you in a way that turns you into not competitors but cooperators, perhaps even allies and friends. It’s the best way to have fan bases come into contact with new kinds of brands. Collaboration is truly the win-win way for brands to find new audiences in a way that doesn’t dilute your brands.”
7. Host special events or workshops to engage customers
A customer’s in-store experience is more important than ever before. Retail stores are no longer just a place to shop; they’re becoming a “third place”—somewhere a community can hang out that isn’t their home or a workplace. It caters to the fact that 35% of consumers prefer immersive experiences over products, and the 32% of consumers who say they’re likely to engage with in-store experiential moments.
Host special events or workshops to create immersive experiences in your retail store. If you’re doing in-store marketing for a coffee shop, for example, you could host a hands-on workshop that teaches people how to brew their coffee at home.
Beardbrand goes one step further and uses its in-store experiences to promote the brand online. In its branded barbershops, hair stylists are filmed using Beardbrand products to transform people’s appearance. These videos are uploaded to YouTube where they reach its 2+ million subscribers—a much higher potential customer base than those who pass the physical store.
8. Give personalized product recommendations from POS data
It can be overwhelming for customers to visit your store for the first time, particularly if the window display has drawn them in and they’ve never heard of your brand before. This is where retail staff training comes in handy. Your sales associates can welcome people into the store and help them find the right product for their needs.
Australian swimwear brand Tigerlily enlisted the help of Shopify POS for this. “There's nothing worse than a customer coming into a store and your team being unable to help them,” says its CEO Travis Wright. “That, compounded with the fractured data and time-consuming reconciliation process, made us start looking for a POS system that worked better with our ecommerce platform and allowed us to truly unify those channels.”
Since unifying data from all of its sales channels (including online shopping), Tigerlily could use its POS system to locate customer information and personalize the in-store experience with tailored product recommendations. This in-store marketing tactic alone has lifted average order value by 20%.
9. Advertise gift cards
Gift cards are superb marketing tools to encourage customers to promote the store on your behalf. Studies show that 42% of consumers spend more when they have a gift card, and they don’t have to be reserved for first-time shoppers. Encourage people to come back to your store by offering a free gift card with every purchase, such as a $5 in-store credit to redeem on their next order.
Strategically place these beside your checkout counter to cater to gift shoppers who aren’t sure which product to give.
10. Display QR codes for hybrid shopping
While the occasional customer might pop into your store and buy a product on a whim, it’s a rare occurrence. "Online and offline are effectively one continuous experience,” says Shopify’s director of product retail and messaging, Arpan Podduturi. “Very few people walk into a retail store without having done their homework. They usually started on their phone. They're following some brands and they go into stores with purpose.”
QR codes cater to these hybrid shopping experiences by allowing people to reference online information while in-store. You could use the image codes, which a customer can scan using their smartphone, to:
- Divert people to your ecommerce product page to learn more about the ingredients or materials in a product they’re seeing on the shelf
- Point people towards an online quiz that helps them find the right product (this is especially useful during peak shopping times or for anxious customers who don’t want to talk to a sales associate)
- Offer discounts to purchase the product online, which helps keep inventory in your store since the product can be shipped from a warehouse
Shopify merchants can create their own scannable codes with the Shopcodes app. Choose which URL you want to link to, then print the Shopcode and display it in-store. The app will automatically track the number of orders placed through the QR code.
11. Place impulse purchases by the checkout counter
An impulse buy happens when people buy a product they didn’t consciously choose. It happens on a whim, with the decision-making process lasting just a few seconds. Compulsive purchases don’t require a ton of mental processing.
Find items that are most likely to be impulsively purchased—such as low-ticket items under $20—and place them at the checkout counter. People standing in line can see the products, pick them up, and add them to their order without much consideration, instantly promoting your low-value products and increasing your average basket size.
In-store marketing solutions and tools
Point of sale systems
A point of sale system is the technology that allows you to process customer orders. You’ll need this if you plan to reference customer or inventory information or subscribe shoppers to your loyalty program.
Shopify POS Go, for example, is a handheld mobile device that allows you to retrieve customer data, check inventory levels from Stocky, and ring up orders from anywhere in the store. Since you can take payment from anywhere in the store, there's no need for people to wait in line and form long queues that deter other customers from buying.
Furniture brand Yardbird is one retailer using Shopify POS Go to serve customers anywhere on the shop floor. “We can do everything on the spot using one device,” says regional manager Leigh Jacobs. “It really gives us the ability to be present with our customers. We can sit with them and chat with them, look up dimensions and pricing, and ship it to wherever they want.”
Customer relationship management software
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a type of retail software that houses all of the information you’ve collected about your customers. You can use this customer data to personalize the in-store experience with your shoppers.
Let’s put that into practice. Say a customer named Shirley is coming into your coffee store. You pull up your POS system, which is integrated with your CRM, to discover that Shirley has never been to your physical retail location before. She has made two online purchases in the last six months: a coffee machine and an espresso pod.
This information instantly allows you to personalize your in-store marketing approach. You wouldn’t waste time trying to sell Shirley products she already owns. Instead, you might want to upsell a better machine or educate her about your customer loyalty program.
Mobile apps
Mobile apps are a great way to drive foot traffic and increase sales. Customers can download your branded app to:
- Check stock levels for products they’ve seen in-store
- Join your rewards program and scan their barcode to collect points
- Save their receipts and track the status of any returns
Beacons and NFC technology
Beacons are small hardware devices that use a Bluetooth connection to communicate with shoppers who’ve downloaded your mobile app. You can use beacons in retail to send push notifications when someone is within a certain radius of your retail store. If someone passes the device on your entrance door, for example, you could send a 10% discount code to their smartphone that expires in the next hour.
Near-field communication tags work similarly in the sense that they use invisible signals to transmit data to your customer’s smartphone. The main difference is that customers can scan NFC tags—which are located on a product’s packaging or shelf—to find more information on the retailer’s website. They’re great for showcasing reviews or collecting feedback.
Build an in-store marketing strategy that drives sales
In-store marketing is all about converting foot traffic into paying customers. The key to success is improving the in-store experience with your marketing campaigns, whether that’s QR codes for hybrid shopping or personalized product recommendations based on POS data.
Shopify POS has the technology, including POS hardware, to make in-store marketing campaigns a breeze. You’ll see inventory levels, customer data, and product prices all on your mobile device, ready to take payment from in-store shoppers and convert off the back of your marketing strategy.
In-store marketing FAQ
What is in-store marketing called?
In-store marketing is sometimes referred to as POS marketing. Both phrases include any type of marketing activity that happens within a brick-and-mortar store (usually through a point of sale system).
How do you create an in-store experience?
- Start with the window display
- Host workshops
- Hand out free samples
- Demonstrate your products
- Offer personalized product recommendations
- Use digital signage
- Display QR codes for hybrid shopping
What does a local store marketer do?
A local store marketer drives traffic to a retail store. Their role might also include in-store marketing that convinces people to buy products once they enter the store.
What are the objectives of in-store promotion?
The most common objectives of in-store promotion are increasing sales, providing excellent customer service, building customer loyalty, and encouraging repeat visits.
