As people spend more time at home, sales of DIY products and homeware have soared. Before the COVID crisis, the global industry was valued at $90.37 billion. It is now turning over a staggering $107.03bn, a growth of 3%.
Interestingly many of those sales are still taking place in physical stores. Consumers will buy online. But understandably, many still prefer to see and touch the items they are going to use in their homes and that is highly likely to continue to be the case.
Competition is still fierce from online homeware stores
However, the owners of these stores cannot afford to assume that keeping a healthy share of the market is going to be easy. Far from it, there are many decorative and DIY items people will happily buy online. Competition is extremely fierce.
This means that in-store marketing techniques need to be up to date and highly effective. It’s no longer enough to simply create an attractive display and put some posters or banners up. Store owners need to be far more creative and use marketing mediums that can be updated quickly to tap into emerging trends and to tempt people to buy items they did not know they needed, while in-store.
By far the best way to do that is to tap into the power of digital marketing. This can be done easily using display screens.
Sourcing the screens you need
Buying digital signs for your homeware store is not as expensive as you might think. However, you can keep the costs down by leasing the screens you need (if the option is available in your area). This reduces the amount you need to invest upfront.
Leasing also enables you to experiment gradually. Starting with one screen gives you a chance to learn how to use the software and work out where you want to place further digital advertising displays. Once you are sure of what you need, you can buy the screen sizes with the finishes and controls you need. Many businesses continue to lease because they prefer the flexibility that option offers. Leasing also has the benefit of offering ongoing support and up to date advice about what works best for in-store digital displays.
Come up with effective advert ideas
One of the biggest benefits of digital screens is the fact that you can change what is displayed on them at any time. So, if you offer discounts for pensioners once a week and have noticed that certain items sell particularly well during those times you can create a promo around them. You could create a buy one get the other half price deal. Or you could package a closely related item with them and offer people who buy them together a discount.
Creating the adverts
When you lease digital display screens, you usually get access to thousands of professionally produced advert templates, in formats that have been proven to sell. The copyright enables you to change the text to reflect your offer and use the language you know works best with your customer base. You can also resize, or even completely change, the images. Enabling you to target anyone who comes into your homeware store with anything you want. For example, you might choose to feature items you need to clear or seasonal and trending products.
This sounds complicated, but it is actually really easy to do. Most people get to the stage where they can create and deploy an ad in less than 15 minutes.
Monitoring the results and tweaking your ads
Once you have deployed your ads, remember to monitor how successful they are. Modern digital display screens keep a record of when you change the advert and what is displayed. You can easily check how effective each ad has been by checking your sales data for the appropriate periods.
Sell online too
Wisely, most hardware stores now also sell online. This makes sense on many levels. The cost of setting up a simple website is low, especially if the store is set up on an existing marketplace like Amazon, eBay, or Etsy. All a store owner needs is a decent camera and time to post their listings. It is the type of ‘pocket-money’ work most teenagers are happy to do.
Having an online presence typically enables hardware stores to increase their sales. It also means that should another lockdown prove necessary, there is still a way for you to sell your products. You can even use the adverts you have created for use in-store for your online store.
If you would like to learn more about creating compelling digital adverts and placing them properly in-store and online, take a look at this short how-to guide.
Copyright 2021. Article was made possible by site supporter Christoffer Aasland at GetMarketing.
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