3 Tips To Entice Shoppers Into Your Store Through Effective Pavement Signage
Sharon Yourell Lawlor
Leading category, consumer and shopper marketing expert
- May 29, 2021
- Sharon Yourell Lawlor
Effective shopper marketing starts with looking at your target consumers and understanding their needs, habits and behaviours. What is motivating these target consumers and impacting their consumer and shopper behaviour? Are there key patterns of behaviour that alter by mission, by day part, by time of year or by how close it is to payday? Understanding your consumers’ motivations and behavioural patterns is essential. But you have to then use this information to create and communicate your retail solutions. It is really important for retailers to use a mix of tools to effectively entice and nudge shoppers along the ‘Path to Purchase’ and ultimately drive conversion within their stores. Retailers must understand the key missions that their target audiences are on, their needs at a point in time, and look to ‘positively interrupt’ these shoppers to encourage them in. It is about knowing the consumer ‘micro moments that matter’ and helping communicate your retail solutions for those ‘micro moments’.
One of the simplest tools to create shopper interruption pre-store is the outdoor pavement sign. Outdoor menu boards or signage displays can be a very cost effective way of interrupting shoppers and guiding them into your store, over competitor options on their shopper journey. Pavement signage gives retailers a key opportunity to showcase their retail solutions for ‘micro moments’. Here are three things to consider when using outdoor pavement signage:
A pavement sign is a great way of ‘positively’ interrupting the shopper and guiding them into your store vs. other competitor stores on their shopper journey. The trick, however, is to ensure that you are actually going to interrupt shoppers with a message that is relevant and beneficial to them. Particularly for those ‘micro moments that matter’. Think about their needs and what missions they may be on as they pass your store. ‘Coffee and Cakes To Go’ works well for shoppers on the go who need a quick ‘refuel’, particularly at key times throughout the day. Chalk boards are very versatile in that the messaging can be changed to reflect day part, days of the week and weather impacts. The same board could be used to prompt evening time ready meals on the way home. Utilise this flexibility of pavement signage to constantly talk to your shoppers and make sure that the messaging is relevant to your audience and their ‘micro moments that matter’. Week day coffees might be quickly consumed on the way to work whereas the same consumer purchasing on the weekend may be in ‘relaxed extended coffee break’ mode.
A retailer’s ultimate aim is to drive shopper conversion (and loyalty) along the path to purchase and a great way to help this is to create a ‘Call to Action’ with your audience. Don’t be afraid to use this tactic but make sure the ‘Call to Action’ is impactful and relevant to passing shoppers. ‘Start your day with a cup of coffee’ is a lovely example of creating that call with consumers. And on a chalkboard display, this message can be adapted for lunchtime, weekend occasions, topical themes etc. As a small, independent retailer, you may want to ask shoppers to ‘support local’. Think about how you can create different calls to action, based on the products you sell or service you provide.
Utilise your outdoor signage to show consumers and shoppers some of your personality. A little bit of humour often works well. Or use the signage to convey something about your store, your staff or your offering. There is a lovely example below of a retail clothing store, which took the opportunity with their front of store signage to welcome shoppers back after a lockdown period. They showed how much their staff were looking forward to opening again with an outdoor board signed by each staff member. A lovely personal touch. Small initiatives like this speak volumes about the store environment and help put shoppers at ease.
