Why Your Furniture Business Needs A Powerful Marketing Plan
Despite changing trends and styles, home furnishings are considered to be a long-term investment for most people. When purchasing a sofa for the living room or a table for the dining room, consumers want to have confidence in the company they are choosing to purchase from. Creating a positive experience for your customer base is essential in any business, but especially one that is as over-saturated as the furniture industry.
Implement The Right Marketing Strategy For Your Furniture Shop
Selling furniture is no longer as simple as offering beautiful products. In recent years, there has been an increase in online shopping for furniture, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. So not only does your retail store have to compete with other storefronts, but you now have competitors who are utilizing mobile marketing strategies to get ahead of the curve. The success of your company relies directly on how your existing and potential customers perceive your brand. Furniture shopping is no easy task, so shoppers will equally remember both the quality of your products and the quality of your service.
In order to stand out from the competition of other furniture brands, it important to implement proven and results-driven marketing ideas and strategies. By doing this, you’ll be able to create a plan that will promote growth, traffic and ultimately sales.
The Benefits of Furniture Marketing
Whether you operate an established shop or you’re starting out in the furniture industry, there’s value in having a strategic marketing plan. Here are some benefits in regards to selling home furnishings.
Sales
When you operate a business, the ultimate goal is to make a sale. By employing strong marketing tactics, you can increase the number of furniture sales by a significant value.
Reputation
Being engaging, transparent and available with consumers is extremely important in this market. As a retailer, you can build a positive reputation by utilizing the right marketing and advertising tools.
Audience
Good marketing allows you to gain data and metrics about your consumer audience so that you can be more targeted in your advertising and marketing strategy.
Trust
When customers trust your furniture brand, they are more likely to make a repeat purchase. A marketing strategy will allow you to form relationships with existing and potential customers.
Knowledge
Not every marketing strategy will be effective. Trial and error help you determine what types of campaigns work and what doesn’t work, giving you more data, insight and knowledge of the market.
Five Marketing Strategies To Increase Sales And Drive Traffic To Your Furniture Store
Furniture retailers need to be equipped with the right advice and knowledge to sell their beautiful home furnishings. If you own or operate a furniture store, here is what you need to do in order to ensure your company’s success.
1. Create A Comprehensive Marketing Strategy Plan
It should go without saying, but a marketing plan is the most key marketing strategy to increase sales and visitors, both online and in-store. A good marketing plan should be comprehensive and cover a variety of factors. You must do your research in order to ensure you are positioning your brand in the best possible way.
Why Do You Need Traditional Marketing?
Print flyers, television commercials, radio or newspaper article ads have been heavily used by furniture stores in the previous century. While many industries now refrain from using traditional marketing, you need to understand that everyone needs furniture but not everyone has assessability to the internet. With this in mind, you should allocate a small portion of your marketing budget towards traditional ads. This will help you to create marketing for older generations of customers who might not know how to use online platforms.
Why Do You Need Digital Marketing?
For any furniture store operating in the 21st century, digital marketing is a must. By limiting your marketing plan to only traditional outlets, you are without a doubt losing sales and isolating potential customers. The majority of shopping these days, from groceries to clothing, is done online – furniture is really no different. The first place the average person will go to is Google to do research on a new kitchen table. If you sell that type of product, you want your website to appear within the first few pages of the search results. This is made possible through SEO, which is a digital marketing strategy that will never die, despite what some experts say. Other digital tactics include social media marketing, podcasts, video content, pay-per-click ads and Facebook ads.
2. Improve Your Company Website
Nowadays, a customer can buy a brand new sofa and arrange delivery with the simple click of a button. Eventually augmented reality will become the new normal, but for now, a furniture company needs to focus on creating a website that is both desktop and mobile-friendly and ranks high in search engines.
Why Do You Need SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an organic approach to getting visitors to your website. By using relevant keywords and links in your online content, you can increase your ranking on search engines such as Google. For example, if a customer is doing research on furniture in the local area, you want your furniture store website to appear on the first page of the search. Data suggests SEO helps retailers attract customers by leading to a better user experience, higher conversion rate, building brand credibility, establishing brand awareness and increases the chances of customers visiting the physical store after the initial search. It is also the primary source of leads and an overall great ROI. SEO is a strategy that is being used increasingly. If your brand is not utilizing this approach, you are essentially putting your business at a disadvantage. After all, your website could display great content and beautiful furniture, but it won’t matter if potential customers don’t see it or feel inclined to make a purchase.
Why Do You Need A Mobile-Friendly Site?
Did you know that approximately 45% of online purchases were made on a smartphone by the end of 2020? With this data at your disposal, it is easy to comprehend just how important it is for your website to be mobile and desktop-friendly. If a new customer does not have a positive user experience and is not able to easily navigate through your website, it decreases the chance of a sale. Not only are they unlikely to make an online purchase, but they also won’t visit your store location for furniture either. Your website is a representation of your business in the online world, so it is crucial that is it accessible and uncomplicated across all devices.
3. Identify And Engage With Your Target Audience
One of the most important aspects of online and in-store furniture marketing is knowing your audience and engaging with them accordingly. Research has shown that furniture brands need to be able to reach out to customers because customers are unlikely to make that effort without reason.
Who Is Your Audience?
Understand the value of knowing your targeted market. To develop effective marketing campaigns, you need to discover the age group, location, annual income, hobbies and behaviour of your potential customers. Once you know the demographics of your customer base, you will be better able to market your furniture brands.
How Do You Use Social Media To Your Advantage?
Social media is one of the most beneficial advertising and marketing tools in today’s digital world. But rather than invest in being present on every platform, find out what channels your target market is using. For example, do you sell trendy, minimalistic pieces but don’t have that on display in your Instagram profile? You could be missing out on the millennial demographic. If your shop sells more traditional or antique furniture, you should consider a strong online presence on Pinterest or Facebook to cater to your older market. Each social media platform has a purpose and it’s crucial to position your brands accordingly.
Social media also allows you to undertake campaigns and contests, which could increase your following. It is also a great way to respond to customers directly. Even responding to negative comments on social media will show others that you are dedicated to the satisfaction and happiness of your consumers, helping to build an overall positive image in the industry.
4. Ensure Your Sales Team Has Great Customer Service Training
Customer service can either break or make a sale. Many times, people have left a store with completing a purchase due to a lack of positive customer experience. When you are operating a furniture business, it is crucial that your team is well-versed in your products.
Why Does Your Sales Team Need To Know Your Furniture?
Simple. How can someone sell a product they know nothing about? If your marketing strategies thus far have resulted in a customer visiting your store or calling your customer service staff to place an order, the last thing you want is for your employees to not know about the furniture the customer is selling. This can create doubt and a sense of uncertainty, more than likely resulting in the customer not completing their purchase. In order to ensure your sales are increasing and seeing growth, you need to thoroughly train your team and make sure they know how to communicate with anyone who calls or walks through the doors of your store.
How Can You Better Train Your Sales Staff?
Training should be completed every time your take on a new hire or get new inventory. Your staff should be knowledgeable experts on every item in your furniture store so that your customers will be guaranteed a high level of service. New inventory training can be undertaken in a seminar format or simply through the distribution of brochures or product catalogues.
5. Use A Product Information Management (PIM) System
When your business has websites, social media accountts and email list that promoting hundreds of different products, that is a lot of information. The best way to handle that data is to adapt to a PIM, which will allow more time to manage your furniture store as opposed to managing information.
PIM software helps companies worldwide to store and distribute data, content, and other materials that are needed to sell products to the target market.
Why Do You Need A PIM?
A good PIM will link all your company’s information together. For example, customers see a chair on your Instagram page. They then clicks the link to your site which will allow them to determine dimensions and measurements. They determine the chair will fit their needs and from your site, they can also see inventory and that there are four available in their area. From there, they decide to visit your storefront location and purchase even more items. Had a PIM not been in place, you would not have reached your target audience. The customers wouldn’t have gone onto your website, nor would they have seen inventory levels which resulted in them visiting the store.
How Does A PIM Help With Marketing?
Did you know that IKEA doubled its sales after implementing a PIM system? By combining your product information with your marketing strategy, you are protecting the best interests of your store and your customers. It helps to build a relationship of trust, convenience and efficiency. When a customer sees that your store shows online inventory and makes it easy to view your site from social media platforms, they will appreciate the effort and convenience you are providing them with.
Attract Customers To Your Furniture Store With A Results-Driven and Proven Marketing Strategy
Marketing is needed to attract customers to your furniture shop or site. Using digital marketing tactics and content will allow you to promote your business’s offerings to a wider audience. Merged Media is one of the leading digital marketing agencies in North America. Their expert and professional team specializes in web design, content creation, SEO and social media management and has provided services to clients all across the globe.
