There’s mounting evidence that wholesale remains more profitable regardless of the mass shift towards the direct-to-consumer model due to Covid.
It’s been found that wholesale provides greater control, access to data, a higher revenue per item sold, and total gross margin when compared to similar businesses that utilize a DTC model. This can be further demonstrated when comparing these businesses’ EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes).
Contributing Factors:
Increasing competition – as more businesses migrate to the virtual space, more noise is created as more businesses bid for a share of voice.
Privacy – The inception of GDPR and CCPA regulations has limited the capacity for businesses to communicate unsolicited messages to potential customers.
Ad blockers – due to the noise created by the increasing competition and bombardment of ads at various audiences, installing ad blockers have become more commonplace, making it harder for DTC brands to be seen.
Returns and free shipping: e-Commerce spent its early years highlighting widespread “30-day return policies” and “free shipping,” which is taking a toll on DTC margins.
The rising cost of ads – with more DTC competitors in-mark than ever before, the cost-per-click is skyrocketing. This can eat into the merchant’s profit margin or even exclude them entirely if their user acquisition cost is too high.
Although DTC profitability benefits from reduced rent and labor costs, other expenses add up over time. For example, fulfillment, logistics, heavier marketing, technology, and high returns.
Ultimately, both DTC and wholesale have pros and cons, so it’s up to the brand to decide which model is best for their business.
Why are brands attracted to DTC in the first place?
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have created an environment of comfort and necessity around online shopping. People worldwide have adapted to “stay at home” orders that require many purchases to be made online. Even as the world starts to reopen, some of that online shopping behavior will remain.
Additionally, DTC provides companies greater control over their brand, customer relationships, sales channels, and fulfillment.
When does DTC make sense:
While wholesale has a clear edge over DTC when comparing EBIT most of the time, there are some situations where DTC makes sense. However, this often depends on the product.
To determine whether DTC suits a brand, two questions need to be answered:
Can we accurately target the right customers?
Are these customers happy to shop online and from a single-brand source, or would they prefer to shop in-store where there’s a variety of brands available?
If both of these questions are yes, it may be worth exploring a DTC model.
However, keep in mind that, based on data, only brands who also sell their products via bricks-and-mortar stores do well in DTC.
Support for Wholesale brands:
Talk to us today if you’re looking for a powerful way to utilize hyper-local ads to drive traffic in-store and pick your products off the shelves.
Local marketing involves businesses with a physical storefront or those who sell their products via retail stores using digital marketing strategies to target new and existing customers in the vicinity to drive traffic in-store. It’s also commonly referred to as “neighborhood marketing.”
Having the ability to target locally can be potent if executed well. This article will highlight some of the most prominent benefits of including local marketing in your strategy for 2022.
1. Cost-effective
Paid hyperlocal ad campaigns are a fantastic way to target your local audience. However, there’s also a lot of other creative and cost-effective ways to generate visibility in a local area. For example, local directories, community pages, message boards, local newspapers, or events are great ways to get your business name out there.
2. Highly targeted
Given that most customers choose to shop within 10 miles of their home, the geographic area that businesses need to focus on can be limited to that radius. This helps keep budgets down and allows retailers to focus on very clearly defined personas.
3. Attract more customers
With leaps forward in geo-targeted and hyperlocal advertising, it’s easier than ever to attract a crowd and add ‘buzz’ to your business by combining buyer intent and the customer’s location. This is one of the best ways to convert online and foot traffic into new customers because once a customer is physically close to your business, there’s a much higher chance of coaxing them into making a purchase, especially if you have introductory promotions available.
4. Smooth-out lulls
Many businesses experience peaks and troughs throughout the day. For example, a cafe might experience lunchtime rush hour but could be much quieter in the afternoon. In addition, scheduling location-based marketing campaigns helps to smooth out the flow of customers throughout the day. For example, it’s common to see restaurants or bars offer “happy hour,” which usually runs during the quieter afternoon hours from 3 pm – 5 pm.
5. Improved brand affinity
Having your local community as your audience means you will have a clearer understanding of their needs, wants, interests, and trends. This increased understanding will enable you to create marketing messages and promotions that will appeal to your community more meaningfully.
6. SEO implications
Search engine optimization and your organic search ranking are affected by many factors, but one of the most important is the number of backlinks your site has. Backlinks are external websites that link to your website. If you list your business on local directories and social media platforms, this will contribute to the number of backlinks to your site. For example, you are listing your business on Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business, and other directories.
Conclusion
Local marketing has many benefits for bricks and mortar businesses, including helping you reach new audiences, boost your search rankings and online traffic, and help establish your business in your local community.
To support your local marketing efforts, Mobeo drives online traffic in-store with our suite of solutions, which can be customized to fit your individual business needs.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
Mobile wallet marketing is an effective way for brands to engage customers without installing any other apps or opt-in for notifications. To do this, the brand creates digital loyalty cards or coupons that customers can access and use on their mobile devices.
Mobile wallets present businesses with a new channel to communicate with their customers and improve brand loyalty. Urban Airship, one of the most powerful platforms in the world, reported that “Mobile wallets are now among the top four ways consumers prefer to stay updated on sales, offers, and coupons, alongside decades-old channels including websites, email and text/SMS.”
However, it is still early days. Given that this is a very new marketing strategy, an average of 19% of consumers report noticing retailers implementing offers and loyalty programs in their mobile wallets, but this percentage is expected to skyrocket.
So, you might be asking yourself, “what does mobile marketing involve?” and we’re here to answer that question:
1. Coupons
This allows businesses to create various promotions or coupons and send them directly to a customer’s mobile wallet to give them a nudge or encourage them to purchase from your store or location the next time they’re looking to make a purchase. Once the coupon is added to the customer’s wallet, the business can share updates about it through notifications.
2. Location-based
Mobile wallet marketing allows businesses to send notifications and coupons to customers based on their location. This is done via hyperlocal ad campaigns or sometimes even geo-fencing campaigns. When the customer enters the vicinity of the business, the wallet sends a notification to the customer’s phone with a coupon, and clicking this notification redirects straight to the mobile wallet.
3. Cashback
Cashback offers have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years. This is attractive to customers because they receive a rebate of the retail price when they purchase using their mobile wallets. In addition, this is a great way to incentivize repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
4. Notifications
Mobile wallets provide businesses with numerous notifications that they can schedule according to time, date, frequency, and other triggers like the customer’s purchase behavior. For example, notifications can be sent in a push notification, SMS, or in app-message. A lot of the time, the customer can manage the types of messages they wish to receive in the settings section, which helps ensure that they get to digest information in the way they choose to.
Now that you know how mobile wallet marketing works on a practical level, some of the benefits include:
Mobile-only experience: No need for printing or clipping coupons. Keeping the coupon digital and stored on the mobile device ensures it’s always accessible to the customer.
Right time and place: Because mobile wallet marketing can be geo-targeted, you can send reminder notifications about the coupons they have available when they’re within a set radius from that store. Research indicates that up to 63% of customers are likely to enter a store if they receive coupon expiration reminders when they’re nearby.
Real-time offer updates: Due to mobile wallet marketing being an entirely digital customer experience, businesses have the power to update promotions and offers in real-time by simply pushing updated offers straight to the customer’s wallet.
Personalization: Thanks to the highly detailed customer analytics with mobile wallet marketing, coupons can be targeted and personalized based on triggers such as previous products they’ve purchased, timestamps for when previous purchases were made, and more. This ensures that you’re delivered promotional offers for products that you know the customer already likes.
With more and more people using their mobile wallets, it creates a win-win between businesses and consumers. It gives customers access to the best deals while driving brand loyalty and repeat purchases.
Mobeo offers the ability for businesses to create scalable, personalized digital coupons that are seamlessly added to shoppers’ wallets, allowing for online-to-offline conversions, driving traffic in-store.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
Local retail marketing involves utilizing the “4Ps” (product, price, place, and promotion) to attract customers in-store and drive sales.
Local marketing is vital because it’s likely that the vast majority of retail customers live within 10 miles of where they shop, so getting brand exposure to these people is crucial.
Here are a few tips and ideas to help boost your brand awareness in your local area:
1. Understand Your Community
To connect with your community, you need to understand their needs and wants. Focus on understanding things such as:
What activities are popular in the local area?
How do people here like to spend their free time?
What is the demographic and psychographic makeup of the community?
The answers to these questions will help you create the right messaging and marketing activities.
2. Invest in Local Search Ads
As Adweek points out, 45% of all searches on Google now include local intent (i.e., finding nearby businesses), and 84% of those local searches result in a purchase.
For more information on local search, read our blog about “Hyperlocal Marketing.”
3. Talk to local journalists
Media coverage is a great way to build credibility, trust, and brand recognition. It gains a lot of visibility quickly and has the added benefit of helping build your website backlinks and improve your SEO. Thankfully, this process is pretty straightforward (albeit a bit time-consuming).
4. Consider exploring the wild side with Guerilla Marketing
Guerrilla marketing is a strategy whereby a company uses surprise or unconventional interactions to promote a product or service. It’s a type of offline marketing that uses public places to get the word out about your business. If executed correctly, it can be a great way to boost your store’s visibility in a fun and creative manner. A bonus is that guerilla marketing is usually pretty cost-effective.
5. Participate in or sponsor local events
Local events are a great way to connect potential customers, the press and gain backlinks to your website. So, if something is happening in your neighborhood that you think might be relevant to your business, find ways to get involved.
6. Your team can be your greatest asset
A happy workforce is better for business. That’s why companies should strive to keep their employees engaged and motivated. The key is to hire the right people and provide ample training and competitive compensation. This leads to happier employees who feel connected to the business and will perform at higher levels, which means better retail experiences for consumers and increased sales.
7. Leverage social media
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for gaining visibility amongst your ideal audience while engaging existing customers. Have strong engagement on social media; you need to do the following:
Post content regularly, which creates value for the reader
Consider running paid ads
Use social media to help communicate your brand essence
Include hashtags to make your content more searchable
4. Leverage video
When used correctly, video provides an excellent way to showcase your brand and products. Video content should be:
Relatable: Feature people who look like your target customers and make them as relevant to the audience as possible.
Have a clear call-to-action: Mention the CTA in your video, add a link in the description or embed the link directly into the content.
Please choose the proper format and platforms: Decide which platforms to publish your videos where your target audience is most likely to see them (e.g., Instagram, TikTok, Youtube…etc.). Ensure the video length and file format suit the channels you’re publishing to.
5. Focus on email marketing
Email marketing can be a highly effective marketing activity if appropriately executed. To set yourself up for success, make sure you segment your audience customers from non-customers so you can send “first-time offers” or “win-back” campaigns.
6. Run a referral campaign
Referral campaigns are a great way to stimulate word-of-mouth marketing. Again, you can determine what structure works best for your business, but essentially, the idea should be to provide an incentive for your happy customers to spread the word about your brand to their friends and family.
7. Loyalty program
Slightly different from referral campaigns, loyalty programs reward existing customers for their continued patronage—for example, discounts on subsequent visits, free products, birthday discounts…etc. Up to 77% of shoppers participate in loyalty programs and help consumers choose where to spend their money, so having a program set up will keep your business competitive.
Conclusion
Without focusing on local marketing efforts and strategies, your business can miss out on customer growth and loyalty. Local marketing is ideal for any business because it focuses on targeted marketing campaigns in a specific area. These tactics can help create customer engagement and loyalty.
As consumer experts, Mobeo understands how important local retail business is for a community. Customers want to support their local stores. We help connect the two through digital ad localization, which results in increased traffic and sales.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
As the name implies, hyperlocal marketing is a strategy focused on reaching customers in your local area who are already motivated to buy your products. This “local area” is usually a few blocks or streets around your business.
The primary purpose of hyper-local marketing is to increase face-to-face traffic to physical stores by targeting users searching “near” on their mobile devices. It also helps to promote your brand in specific locations. This is achieved by strategically placing the suitable ads in front of the right people at the right time.
When prospective customer types “coffee shops near me,” it’s most likely that they are ready to make a purchase. Reports also show that 78% of hyperlocal mobile searches result in an offline purchase.
According to Google, mobile queries for “near me” and “where to buy” grew by 200% between 2016 and 2019 alone. It shows that the majority of searchers expect Google to consider their location when serving search results.
Why use Hyperlocal Marketing?
Businesses are fast adopting hyperlocal marketing because of its powerful results, particularly those without massive marketing budgets.
Here are some of the benefits:
It makes it easy to convert local customers into paying clients.
Highly targeted audience targeting so less wasted ad spend. For example, ads will only be shown to people in your area who are interested or looking for your products.
Customers who perform hyperlocal searches have a high purchase intent.
It’s easy to set up, run and measure performance.
Great for building relationships with customers because it helps people in your area know that they can depend on you when they need a product or service you offer, which will lead to more repeat customers.
Hyperlocal ads work in real-time, which increases conversion rates because you can provide promotional offers to people nearby who are actively looking for your services.
How does Hyperlocal Marketing work?
Before you start, it’s essential to think about your objectives. For example, are you trying to get more foot traffic to your store? Build brand recognition? Acquire more customers?
Once you know what you’re trying to achieve, you can choose why platform to run your ads on:
Local Search Marketing (Google Ads and Google My Business)
Nextdoor Local Deals: Nextdoor enables businesses to connect with verified residents based on their neighborhood, whether a few blocks or multiple neighborhoods from the business location.
Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…etc).
SEO and localized content (SEO-optimized blogs or content mentioning the hyperlocal area, so your business ranks highest in Google search results)
In-app notifications: if you have your own mobile app, there may be an option to push notifications to users nearby or who have registered their address.
Steps To Launch:
Here are the steps to follow to launch your ads hyperlocal ads:
Identify your audience: Choose your geographic location and radius. You can then use tools like Google Analytics to get to know your audience better, such as their age range, gender, and more.
Choose your social media channels: You can choose where you want your customers to see your ads. For example, Google, Facebook, Instagram, or display advertising on other sites.
Draft the messaging and ad images: You’ll need to make it enticing for users to want to visit your store. You can do this by using an eye-catching image, having a high number of positive Google/Facebook reviews, or including a promotional offer.
Keep in mind a few triggers the ad platforms use to identify people to expose your ads to. The three triggers include:
User search queries where they mention keywords related to your products or brand
Their search history (which shows purchase intent)
Behavioral activity (places your prospects have recently visited)
Campaign Pre-launch Checklist:
Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’re ready for launch!
However, before you send your ads to live, it’s crucial to get the foundations set up first to make sure your ads perform optimally:
Make sure you’re using the right keywords in your campaigns
Target nearby events
Conclusion
Hyperlocal marketing is a great way to drive traffic in-store or to a selected store location. As we’ve seen, this form of marketing can reduce your cost-per-lead (CPL) and increase your return on ad spend (ROAS).
Mobeo helps increase ROI in-store and online, with our ads receiving up to 300% higher engagement statistics versus typical digital campaigns, with a lot less effort and budget. So no matter if you’re attracting new customers or working on keeping the ones you have, Mobeo has a complete solution that can be customized to fit your needs and measurable along the way.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
