Shopping Center Managers – Ways to Boost Your Retail Trade with a Good Marketing Campaign
Every shopping centre today should have an effective and direct marketing strategy that is active and underway. That marketing strategy should be monitored and tracked for effectiveness.
In each period of 12 months a shopping centre should be promoted comprehensively and thoroughly throughout the targeted customer audience and the location. Building the retail trade is what it is all about.
Get all the Tenants Involved
Every tenancy within a retail shopping centre should feature within the annual property marketing process so that sales are optimized for the tenants, and vacancies are minimised for the landlord. That is where a business plan incorporating a retail marketing strategy will be important for the property and its performance.
The returns for the landlord from any shopping centre can be significant and rewarding over time. That being said, the tenant mix and the customer base for any shopping centre needs to be nurtured over time to boost sales across all merchandise groups, and grow the appropriate property identity through the region.
Here are some ideas to help you establish or boost your retail marketing profile for a shopping centre:
- Work with your tenants – Understand the links and relationships between your tenants and the customers. A good tenant can help you significantly with the marketing campaign for the overall property. They can distribute brochures, involve their customers with competitions, and promote website activity for the shopping centre.
- Establish a professional website – Get an interactive website established for the shopping centre as soon as possible. Every tenant should feature within the website. Tenants can be grouped into retail merchandise groups so that any online enquiries from customers can be easily resolved and answered. You may also choose to allow the tenants to have a separate promotional page within the shopping centre website. The tenants within the property can give you specific marketing material on annual basis to be loaded into the site.
- Have regular competitions – Each year you can have a few competitions spread evenly throughout the year. The customers to the property can enter into the competition when they make a purchase of goods and or services with any of the tenants within the property. The competition can also be linked back into the promotional website for the property.
- Recognise the local seasons of trade and the community celebrations – There will be particular times of year where seasonal sales and community holidays dictate certain strategies of retail sales promotion and marketing. Christmas, Easter, and school holidays are good examples of this marketing point of focus.
All of these strategies should be supported by specific marketing budgets and planned promotions. The tenants within the property should pay a marketing levy as part of lease occupancy; the marketing manager for the shopping centre will then design the promotional campaign for the year ahead taking into account the customer base, the tenancy mix, and the required sales targets.
Typically a marketing levy can be calculated or derived as a percentage of rental; the monies for the marketing levy are retained separately and specifically for the process of marketing only. The landlord has nothing to do with the marketing spend.