Happy Birthday, Rooted in Retail: A Special Q&A Episode

Welcome to Rooted In Retail. I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. Here we have engaging and informative conversations with successful indie retailers and industry experts. Together, we learn, connect, and grow. Don’t miss our live after the show every Tuesday night in the Rooted In Retail Facebook group. All right, here’s today’s episode.

Oh my goodness. It’s Rooted In Retail’s first birthday. I can’t believe it’s been a year since I launched this show. If I look back and see all the amazing guests that we had and the content and the reviews and our network, our community, we have just built this incredible community of retailers who are tuning in and participating in our Facebook group and listening and reviewing.

I’m just so thrilled with this show and I absolutely love doing it. And you are in for a treat for today’s episode, because in celebration of our one year anniversary birthday here, I put out a call in our Facebook group for Rooted In Retail, asking people to submit a question that I will answer on the show.

It’s like we have our very own call in show here and I have six people who submitted questions and oh my goodness, these are so good. You’re going to get so much value out of today’s episode with all six of these questions. So let’s dive in. 

Okay, so I put out a call for questions and here’s the deal. If you like this episode, if you like the call-in show, I need to hear your feedback. So you can DM me, you can email us hello@crystalmediaco.com, or you could share in the Rooted In Retail Facebook group. And if you haven’t joined that group yet, you’re going to want to join.

There’s a lot of great activity that happens there and we do the After the Shows there. So, let’s dive in. This is audio based, so I’m going to share my screen and then you’re going to have the ability to hear my questions. The people that submitted these questions and let me get the first one. So here we go.

How retailers can market in their town outside of the local newspaper

Crystal Vilkaitis: Hi, it’s Elizabeth Weaver. I own Elizabeth’s Chocolates in Marietta, Georgia. And here’s my question. How do people market in a town where their local newspaper only has a 3 percent following? There are people that are on social media, and I get that’s a great place to go. But how do you reach the people who don’t read the paper and aren’t social media followers?

All right, Elizabeth, that’s an incredible question. And what I’m hearing from this question is the newspaper is not going to be a place for you to be submitting any kind of news, press releases, asking to write a column, or advertise because the readership is so small. And yes, you see the opportunity for social media, which is awesome, but it sounds like you’re wanting ideas outside of social media.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got lots of ideas for you. First up, I want you to do some research and really understand where your customers’ time and attention is being spent. Now, maybe you know this, maybe you’ve done some of this research. Maybe you’re feeling like I don’t really know where to research or how to find my people, or I just haven’t spent the time to do it.

Two easy ways to conduct customer research on Facebook without running ads

Crystal Vilkaitis: What I want you to do is go in and look at, yes, I want you to look at social media. I want you to see if there are Facebook groups that are local for your town where you could participate in those conversations. You could use the Facebook ads tool without running any kind of ads, but you can use it to do research where you plug in your customers, your demographic, age gender, their location.

If they have any specific interests, you could probably even put in chocolate, and it will tell you how many people in your area are on Facebook that you could advertise to if you’re trying to focus on the local area. Which it sounds like you are. And so, then that could give you a good idea of the sample size there for Facebook.

And if you’re not looking to create social content, because it does take time, for sure. You could consider running paid ads, which are more you set that up and then it’s running for you and it’s generating that traffic, sales. Obviously, you want to have a full strategy there and it depends on what your budget is, if you want to pay for ads. But that is a platform, a research tool, and could be a potential tool for you to get in front of your customers.

The marketing asset every independent retailer needs to retain more customers

Crystal Vilkaitis: Also, I would wonder how you’re leveraging your current customers. Are you able to launch any kind of referral program? Where if they refer a customer or they send somebody or bring somebody in, they’re both getting free chocolate or a gift certificate. Leveraging your current list somehow, in some way.

And then also when you’re leveraging your list. Well, and here’s the deal, hopefully you have an email list. So, if you do not have an email, that would be one of the very first things that I do. The second you listen to this episode, I would start working on building your list because in my opinion, every single independent retailer should be doing email marketing.

It’s where we see a lot of the sales happen, where we see a lot of the foot traffic actually come into the stores from email. So, you can use social media, whether it’s organic posting or your ads, to build your list to then email to invite them in. So, if you don’t have an email marketing strategy, I think that could be really strong for you.

If you already have a list, then leverage that list where you could do ads to that list. You could send out this referral program or, of course, events and maybe you’re already doing events. This is a really great way. Events are a great tool and strategy to have something that’s happening in store to drive the traffic, as we all know. But then that becomes really great social media content because so often when we’re not really sure what we should be posting.

And so, when you post to social about this awesome event and you have countdowns and you create an event page and you send out emails for the event, maybe you’re doing ads for the event, you’re more likely to have a lot more people there. And especially with a product like yours with chocolate. It makes me think of a really great book that’s called Rework.

I don’t remember who wrote it. It’s a very quick read we’ll link to it. I love it, but in it, one of the tips is to act like a drug dealer. And what that means is you give a sample. And if its good, people get hooked and they come back for more. So, for you just to do events and get people in to be tasting the chocolate. If you could do a chocolate tasting, I once did a beer and chocolate tasting at new Belgium brewery here in Colorado for Valentine’s Day.

It was so cool. I got to taste amazing chocolate that was made by a local chocolatier. Pair it with new Belgium beer and it was this amazing event. And then I got to know that chocolate company. There’s opportunities there where you could partner with local businesses to do events with them too.

Effective ways to collaborate with local businesses to promote and market your store

Crystal Vilkaitis: We need to build the brand; we need to get your name out there. We need to partner if you’re working with other local businesses, you could maybe do a giveaway in their shop. At a cafe, you could sell it there. There could be signage about how to enter to win, you know, “Our friends are at Elizabeth’s Chocolates are giving away free chocolate. Here’s where you can enter to win.”

I would also leverage those local assets that you have of other businesses that have similar people that would buy your chocolate. And also, different local community events that maybe you could be a part of and give samples and have bundles, like bundle the products.

Bundles are great to promote on social, things like that. Also, Elizabeth, I would look at maybe sending in the mail, a postcard, good old snail mail. I know that you have to have a budget for this, because you might need to buy the list and then you’re paying for postage and print, but it’s worth trying.

Maybe you try it with a smaller sample size of a hundred people to see how many people are redeeming, but just keep in mind that marketing is so much a numbers game. So the more that you can connect with people, the more audiences. If you had a thousand people that you were sending this postcard to versus a hundred, obviously that’s going to be a better sample set data wise for us to see how people are resonating with the postcard. And if they’re coming in or if they’re scanning a QR code on it to get their free chocolate or to shop online and save whatever that is.

So look at print. I think there’s a lot of opportunities for independents to leverage print. We’re so bombarded on social, and you can do really like visually beautiful designs, as long as it matches your brand that pop in the mail and feels like a gift, especially with product. If people bring it in and they get a special gift, like just through their mail, they’re getting something. And it needs to be something they want to get, right? That they would come in and get. 

Two other things for you, or three, I guess. I would look at, and maybe you’re doing this already, Elizabeth, but connecting with corporate clients. And doing that on LinkedIn is where you’ll find them. 

Or even just like cold calling and going into businesses, whether it’s you, a salesperson, and asking them, “Do you give gifts to your clients?” Do you have snacks or goodies for clients that come in? We could be your corporate client, a partner.” And then also maybe pop-up shops.

Going back to events, I’m actually seeing a rise in pop up shop resources and more people doing this. Doing a pop up at another local event, or you just create your own pop up in different parts of the town to get people to know you more.

And you’re kind of going to different areas. If you ship, if you sell online, then that could be a good way to drive up that business for you when you’re going to different pop ups in different parts of your town. 

Crystal’s insider tips for using ChatGPT to create marketing campaigns in minutes

Crystal Vilkaitis: And then finally, this is something you should do. I went to ChatGPT, and I just asked for ideas for a fun, catchy, unique name for a campaign. This is my exact prompt. “What’s a creative campaign name that I could use that puts chocolates front and center? And is all about how chocolates aren’t just a good Valentine’s gift. It’s a movement, something fun makes people laugh, makes people want to belong to the brand and buy chocolates.”

Because I think you have an opportunity, and I bet a lot of our listeners do, to really create a campaign. Some sort of messaging to really elevate the brand and have something that’s memorable that gets in front of people and you just repeat it over and over again, that they are like, “Okay, I know Elizabeth’s chocolates. I know I love her chocolates. I know exactly where to go; I’m hooked on these chocolates.” 

And so, by having a campaign that can help. Now, I just put that prompt in and quickly, here’s three ideas for you. You could use ChatGPT, for free, to put in similar prompts to come up and spend a little bit more time.

I spent less than a minute on this but spend a little bit more time to come up with some ideas for you. One was ‘ Choco Liberations Beyond The Box’ and having a launch event, limited edition products, engaging content, interactive social campaigns, community challenges, merchandise, and swag. This plays on the idea of freeing chocolates from the confines of being seen as just a traditional gift. It suggests the movement.

Two other ideas: Cocoa Combo, Stir Up the Fun. This campaign name emphasizes the ideas of chocolate as a conversation starter and a catalyst for connections and fun movements. It’s about bringing people together, sparking joyous interactions over the love of chocolate.

You could do interactive chocolate tastings, have a cocoa combo kit or story sharing. And finally, Sweet Rebels: Join the Chocolate Revolution. The campaign could highlight rebel packs, introducing a line of sweet rebel chocolate assortments, flash mob, and surprises like this. That’s very much like grassroots guerrilla marketing.

If you did some kind of really fun flash mob. I love that idea. And then Rebel Rewards where you could have a loyalty program around this. This idea is all about breaking away from the norm and celebrating the rebellious spirit of choosing chocolates on any occasion. So again, I spent one minute on ChatGPT to have these three ideas. 

And the goal of this is that when you have something, some kind of strong messaging, that’s where it could go viral in your town and people are sharing. You post it to social media, but then they’re sharing, they’re tagging, they hear a radio ad, you’re on a local podcast. There’s just so many different ways.

So again, do the research to figure out where your customers are and then when you have a strong campaign or brand or movement that you’re sharing on all those platforms where your customers show up, you have a strong chance of increasing your sales. 

How to drive foot traffic to retail stores in a rural town of less than 5,000 people

Crystal Vilkaitis: Elizabeth, I hope that was helpful and keep listening because my next question is from Ann, and she has a similar question. Let’s go ahead and share my screen and listen to what Ann has to say.

“My name is Ann Parker, and our store is Parker’s Goods. My question is, we live in a small community of less than 5,000 people. Our closest neighboring town is 30 miles away and the others are even further. The townspeople don’t think, or they think that all the businesses downtown are expensive and they won’t even come into them.

How do we get more people to come in to see that we’re not expensive? We tried everything we can think of. We just don’t know what to do anymore. We need the foot traffic to make it just don’t know if anybody has any ideas in rural communities, how to get those people in. Thank you.” 

And thank you so much for your question. I’m sure other listeners can relate to this too because we work with independent retailers. Sometimes we’re in these small towns and man, when you’re limited to 5, 000 people, it makes it a lot harder to drive that foot traffic. It sounds like we have to focus on driving foot traffic. It also sounds like you have to break down the perception of being high priced because you’re downtown.

And so a few ideas for you, you might’ve got some good tips from what I just talked about with Elizabeth. Definitely analyze some of those ideas for your own store. And then also you might be doing some of these things, but here you go. Events are a great way to drive people to the store.

People want something to do on the weekend or at night. We had a really great episode with Beth Rich on the show. We’ll link to it. If you haven’t listened to that episode yet, Beth talks about how other businesses use her store as an event space. And then because they do like their event there. Let’s say a ladies networking event, they’re in the store when they’re done. 

She allows for those groups to have a percentage off in the store, so then they can shop and then they’re done. And so maybe doing something like that is a good way to have your store be the venue for people to hold their events.

Also, things like workshops, educational workshops, or festivals or artists showcases. Obviously, you want these types of things to really connect to your brand, your customers, the products that you sell. If you don’t sell any kind of artwork, you don’t deal with art artists, then that kind of idea wouldn’t resonate, but think of those things and go to ChatGPT.

And you could put in the types of products that you sell and have it give you creative, unique event ideas that you could put on. That kind of brands you for these are the products or this is the feeling, or this is the community involvement that we really want to spearhead and be the leaders of.

And you have that thing, which is the event to then market. And then we’re sending out press releases and maybe we’re have the local news station there. And then we’re posting to our social media and we’re creating an event page and we’re maybe posting in local groups or surrounding area groups.

And then maybe we’re doing a Facebook ad, if you have a paid ad budget for that. And then of course we’re email marketing too, if you have a list. If you don’t have a list, build your list. Like I told Elizabeth. So, we’re leveraging, we have this one thing that we’re properly marketing and promoting through all sorts of channels to really let the entire town know that we have this event that’s happening.

One unforgettable marketing strategy that can transform your brand in a local legend

Crystal Vilkaitis: Then when they’re at the store, there could be an opportunity for you to have some sort of signage. Or again, I think of a jingle or rhyme or slogan that helps people know that you are not expensive. And maybe just getting them into the store and seeing your products. They’re like, “Oh wow, this is actually reasonably priced. I didn’t realize that.”

Maybe that’s enough. Maybe you don’t need the jingle or the song or the rhyme. But if you do, use ChatGPT. I used ChatGPT for you and I seriously spent like another one minute or less on this. And I asked, I basically said, “Can you share three creative campaign ideas that has a rhyme, or chant, or jingle that people would remember that’s fun, that encourages them to go downtown?” And that we’re not expensive.

Now, I don’t love the ideas that it came up with, but again, I just did the one prompt. I didn’t spend hardly any time. I think you should use ChatGPT. Go in there, try to find some sort of engaging messaging that really encourages people to go downtown and that it’s not expensive and find that messaging that really connects with you.

So this is an example of a jingle. “Come on down. Don’t skip a beat. Fine downtown deals on every street. Where prices low meet quality meets your downtown store where everyone meets.” The chorus is downtown prices down. So sweet in our town, we stand with deals. You can’t beat. 

Do you like my jiggle? If you want me to sing it for you, I’d be more than happy, but I doubt you’re going to want that. I’m not kidding. This took me a minute to use ChatGPT to find this. They also have a pennies parade to the downtown fair. I don’t want you to really focus on pennies.

That seems like you’re so cheap. It has a chorus of, “With every step a deal to a door, our downtown shop, never a bore. Bring your pennies and you’ll find quality and savings combined.” There could be an opportunity, and then you take that jingle and you create a video and you put that on social media, short form video.

You have a Reel for Facebook and Instagram, and a TikTok, and you’ve got a pinned video to the top of your page and then you have a commercial in your local radio station. You maybe are doing a Facebook ad with the jingle. And so you could combine that with that in-store event idea, or this could be a completely separate thing. But I feel like there’s an opportunity for you to do a campaign that brands the downtown. 

And ideally you have the other businesses that are helping you in this too, because then you’re leveraging their social media and their current customers. There’s some sort of like movement about downtown and the messaging has to be like, “This is where you find unique deals, unique gifts, unique finds without a high price point.”

Ask ChatGPT to create. What is that name? What does that campaign? What’s the jingle? And then everybody’s using it to really revive and have this be like a really exciting, fresh place that people want to go. You could also do, if you find this event that works really well for you or everybody downtown, this could be an annual thing, a biweekly thing that you do.

For example, here in Fort Collins, Colorado, we have a mall. The mall is slow. That mall I used to go to every weekend, I loved going to the mall as a kid. I would take the bus to the mall, and I would go, and I would just walk around. And sometimes I buy things and I would get an Orange Julius and a snickerdoodle cookie and a pizza roll.

That was my thing. Oh man, taking me back. I can almost like taste it and I loved going to the mall. Now malls are slow, at least in our area. And I’ve heard this from other people too. So what our mall did is they have winter farmer’s markets. It’s an indoor farmer’s market where, biweekly, they have over 80 small businesses and they focus specifically on small businesses that come in.

You’re inside and it gives people something to do a reason to go to the mall and you get to connect with small businesses. So that is a great idea for Elizabeth’s Chocolates. And is that something that you could do with your other local people? You don’t have the mall space, so maybe this is going to be a springtime market or a summer market.

But the key here is that you want to make it desirable. There’s also a market here in Timnath. I live in a very small town; they do a market. Dustin and I were so excited. We showed up to the farmer’s market and there was like nothing there. I never went back. So, we got to make sure that there’s maybe live music, and tastings of things, and the energy is good.

And you have multiple people that are showcasing products, you can enter to win, kid face painting. Have it be this fun event that people want to go to and look forward to. So that could be an opportunity. Some additional ideas for your paid ads, like I talked about with Elizabeth, I think can help you use Facebook as a research tool to see the size.

It might make sense to advertise to the people in the other towns that are 30 miles away to drive to your store. Especially if there’s something special, a big event, an open house, these events that we were talking about could be worth advertising to those people. We run ads like this at our ad agency.

You could do an ad like this for 30 bucks. We’re not talking hundreds or thousands of dollars here. That could be a very wildly effective ad for you to drive traffic in for $30. Also leverage, if you have a loyalty program, email marketing. 

When you should include the price points of your products on social media

Crystal Vilkaitis: Plus, as you’re using social media, because there’s this perception of high price, I would add the prices when you’re posting products so people can see what the actual price is and be like, “Oh, this isn’t as expensive as I thought I had in my head.”

If you have any kind of bundles or special offers or things like that, you could be posting that to social. Include the price, but I also want you to create social media content that speaks to the pain of your customers. Because you’ll intercept their attention. So, what do they struggle with? Ask ChatGPT.

What do my customers struggle with? This is the kind of story I have, this is where I live. I have a whole training around this called the 30 Post Framework. We’ll link to that free training in this video. Its video based and I show you what prompts, two prompts to put in to figure out what those pain points are, and what the social media content should be for it. Which will create 30 posts for you, a month of content within seconds.

I want you to post that kind of content. And then anytime you are talking about a product, I want you to include your price. The last thing I would say is, are you selling online? I don’t suggest this for everybody, and I’ll talk about that later in this episode, but because you have such a small town, you could be advertising the surrounding areas and send them online versus coming into shop.

You don’t have to advertise to the whole nation if you sell online. It could be these surrounding areas. You could offer to buy online, pick up in store, and that’s free. Otherwise, there might be a little shipping cost for these people, but because you have such a small audience group, and if these things don’t work for you, I would start considering an omni channel approach where you’re selling through your Instagram and your Facebook and on TikTok and online.

Now, when you sell through those social platforms, the audience is already there. It’s just a matter of creating great content, like we just talked about. Maybe doing some ads to have them buy your products right while they’re on the app. When you have your online store, you still have to market it. You could use social media to drive traffic.

You could do paid ads. You could do email marketing. There’s a lot of different ways. You could even go to ChatGPT and plug in, how can I drive website traffic to my store? This is what I sell. And it will give you a bunch of great ideas. So that could be something, maybe your next step. If you are just really struggling to get people to come in.

Is user-generated content helpful for retailers on social media?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Great question, and thank you so much for submitting it, and I’m wishing you so much luck and foot traffic. Okay. Let’s hear our next question from Matt.

“Hello, Rooted in Retail. This is Matt Harris and I love Rooted in Retail. I was lucky enough to be a guest on with Crystal a ways back and it was awesome. And I just love what you do, and I do have a question for you. First, I am a jewelry designer, Matt Harris Designs. I specialize in pearls.

But I also have an estate jewelry company where we, on consignment, sell different types of jewelry, not just pearls. And my social media following has been growing quite a bit. And my question for you is, in your experience, to what extent is it helpful to have user generated content or customer generated content?

In other words, I’ve been thinking about encouraging my customers to send and post and tag pictures, or maybe videos of them wearing my jewelry. And enjoying my jewelry. And the idea there is that this shows that real life people are buying and enjoying, as opposed to the usual model photographs. Keeping it real.

I’m curious to see if you think that’s a worthwhile venture and then maybe if you have an ideas on even how to encourage it, maybe a contest or a giveaway or something. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and thanks so much.” 

All right, Matt. You have absolutely got to do it, yes.

Keep it real. Get user generated content. Social commerce is fueled by user generated content and influencer marketing. Often where we see people buying products is when they’re seeing it on their peers, like when they see the lifestyle shop. But not the magazine quality, like the high end, I-know-it’s-an-ad. It’s the real-life stuff that’s selling items.

And that tip goes for anybody that’s listening to this. This is why something that we teach for over a decade is to be taking the photos in store of you, and then getting your customers to take those photos because we get the perspective of them. And so that’s that user generated content where our customers are taking those pictures for us and that we love that because then it also saves us time on creating that content.

Matt, yes, you absolutely want to focus on this and especially because you make the product as well and it’s jewelry. You can knock it out of the park, and I know you have this explosive growth already with social. I think that you can even go bigger with this kind of mindset. So let’s talk about how you can get some people who are posting and get your customers to post.

The first thing is you gotta ask. I would be curious how you are asking current customers to share and to post content. For example, when people buy, whether it’s online, if it’s in a store. However, they’re purchasing your jewelry. How are you asking? Do you have any kind of material in the box?

I could see this being, really needs to match the brand. I know you have high end custom, so it could be this really beautiful invitation almost to ask people to share on your social media. Make it easy for them. There could be a code: you could follow us right here. Tag us, you could be highlighted.

I would ask ChatGPT to maybe write me what’s on that card. Is there a way to have kind of a rhyme or a poem about the importance of taking the picture and sharing? And having your design being a part of their life and a part of their style and a part of their statement. Fashion is so much a statement.

And so having you be a part of that you’re grateful for and you’re honored, and you want to see it online too. You don’t even necessarily have to have a contest or giveaway. I would start with that kind of card, with that kind of messaging. Just to see if people will post because they just want to show off how amazing this piece is.

And they’re so connected to you and your brand that they’re like, “Yes, if Matt asks me, I’m doing it. He’s so talented. I love Matt. I get to know him through his social, through his videos. I love the work; I definitely want to post for Matt.” And then when they start seeing that you’re resharing that, people love being in the spotlight and being highlighted.

I think that more and more people are going to then want to share their pictures and be on your social, especially as you build your platform. When they’re on the designer’s platform, they feel incredibly special. I think that you’re going to be on your way to that. The key is obviously to share, to post, to tag them, to thank them.

You might have somebody who’s really active and amazing and you send a special gift where you’re like surprising and delighting. You’re not even saying enter to win. It’s just for some of those people that do it. You send them something special just because they did it. So I would focus on some of the print, like the mailers that goes in with the products.

You have to ask. For example, you gave me a beautiful pearl necklace. And I’m not kidding, Matt. I had it sitting here, because I was going to show it and it’s packed because I’m heading to the airport in like 40 minutes because I’m wearing it at my Old Hollywood-themed dinner that we have for our retreat attendees.

We’re hosting the oasis of opportunity retreat. I’m going to help build. We have all women. I’m going to help these women build their business and we’re kicking it off with an Old Hollywood dinner. It’s going to be so fun. So I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I have Matt Harris pearls. I’m bringing my pearls.” So I will get a picture for you.

I will tag. But the key here is that I know that you give these pearls to friends of yours, to influencers and you’ve got to ask. You’re very kind. You didn’t ask me to post probably cause you’re like, “Here you go, thank you.” You’re not looking for something in return, but the simple ask makes me want to do it for you.

If you came to me and said, “Will you share? Do you mind sharing a photo for me?” Oh, I would hands down do it. And I bet every single person that you gave any kind of free product as a thank you, or you did some kind of exchange, ask. We often forget to ask people want to help. So definitely ask that can jumpstart some of this content.

What every online store needs to effortlessly collect social proof and automate the entire process

Crystal Vilkaitis: Also, when people are buying from you, you should have a review collection automation built in. And this goes, especially, for anybody who sells online. So when people buy your products, ideally there’s a lot of different software out there that can ask for the review. Podium is one of those examples we’ll link to it.

I think it’s just podium.com where after people purchase, they’re going to get an email and or a text to rate the product, or rate the experience. And you don’t just send one of those, you’ve got to send a couple. Ratings and reviews, especially on product, or if you have a service. And Matt, because you’re a custom jewelry designer, if I’m hiring you to do anything custom for me, then I really want to see high ratings and reviews on your products.

And so you want to be asking for that, but it needs to be automated through software where they keep asking, keep asking, keep asking. Because for example, I got my grandma’s car detailed. It was a mobile detail, I set it up. They go to her house. They detail her car. When they were done, they send me the text.

If your grandma thought this was great, could you rate and review us? And I’m like, “Oh, my grandma did love it. I’ll do that in a minute.” And then I get totally sidetracked and two days go by and I get another text and it says, “Just want to see if your grandma really loved her car. How’s she doing? If you guys loved it, any chance you could write a review?”

And I was like, “Oh my God, I totally need to do this.” And then again, I was like in the middle of a conversation. I didn’t do it. They sent me a third one. And I’m like, okay. I have to do it right now because she loved the car. They did great, they were so easy to work with. I’m making the time right now and it took me a minute to do it.

I wanted to do it from the very first one that they sent me, but I was busy. I had stuff going on, then I forgot. So you have to keep having that automation that keeps reminding people. And if it can sound like you, not like a bot, not automated. But a human, then you have a much better chance of getting people to actually respond to that.

So I would set that up, Matt. And then I would also ask people to share pictures wearing their designs and wearing their jewelry. You’ll see this on a lot of big box stores. I think I was on Rent The Runway or something like that, or The RealReal or something where you can like rent clothes. And you’re looking at the pictures to see what it looks like on people, right?

So if you have people that are submitting, like you asked for that, and then I would have copy in there that you’re giving us the right to use this on our social too, and to publish your picture on our website. But that’s another way that you can start curating that content. Something else that I thought of for this example is a brand that I always reference, that just built their brands so fast and their e-commerce sales so fast using social media is Beard Brand. 

Now, Beard Brand has oils for men’s beards, and now they have other stuff, but they really just started out with oils for beards. And what they did is they would have a Beard of the Day and they would ask their community To submit photos of their magnificent beards that people were very proud to share.

And they would just post it on social and tag Beard Brand and Beard Brand would select randomly. Or maybe not, maybe it was very specific and they had criteria on who they chose, but they would choose somebody every single day. And then they would feature that person and tag them. And it became this whole movement, this kind of this big, amazing community of bearded men that they were proud to be a part of.

And they were tagging and then they just had explosive growth within six months of launching this brand. They were doing a hundred thousand dollars a month on their Shopify website online. And a big part of that was social media on Facebook and Instagram. They were really engaging their people. Also on Reddit too, because the guys that they wanted to work with were on Reddit.

So my point here is that you could maybe do a Design of the Week or a Customer of the Week, or, if you’ve got maybe a name for the people that purchase that or trend setter or the. It’s the stylish woman of the week or like whatever, however you want to say it. I’m sure you could use ChatGPT and come up with something amazing to spotlight somebody.

And maybe it’s weekly versus daily, but then who knows? Maybe as you’re selling more products and you’re getting more content, you could do something that’s daily or you could be collecting a bunch and then you do a theme and the month of whatever month you want to choose. I would align it with jewelry.

I would align it with pearls. I know that pearls are the birthstone for June because I’m a June birthday. And because you’re a pearl expert. So maybe in June, you’ve collected all these amazing pearl pictures and you do one a day and you’re tagging them. They’re then sharing it, really great user generated content.

Maybe you’re also really just focusing on trying to get pearl pictures in honor of June. And that’s your focus in June. So lots of different ideas there. The last thing I’ll say Matt is you can also hire content creators and we’re going to see a lot more of this in the future where matchmaking services of brands and designers with content creators.

There is a site called Tribe, tribegroup.co and we’ll link to this. I’ve never personally used it, but it is a platform that’s been around for years that match makes the brand, the designer, with the content creator. And the thing is these content creators, you can direct what you’d like to see. So it’s not like the model photo, but it’s more of the creative social posting.

They get these platforms, they understand what content works well. They want to resonate with your customers. They can become your customer and create really great content for you. You have to have a budget for that. I think how they charge is based on the size of the content creators’ social. If you’re having them post on their social too, or I think it’s per project, depending on what kind of assets you need.

And then you pay a flat fee. I’m not certain, reach out to them, see exactly how they charge, but that can fast track your paying for that content. Great question, Matt. Can’t wait to see all this user generated content on your social media. 

What’s the best advice to consider when you’re deciding to sell or close your business?

Crystal Vilkaitis: All right, next question is from Linda. 

” Hi, Linda Moore here from Merle Norman Cosmetic Studio in Allen, Texas. My question is, what is the best advice to consider if deciding to sell or close your business? Thank you for Rooted In Retail. You have the best guests with practical retail advice, it’s awesome.”

Thank you, Linda. You are awesome. I’ve known Linda for many years, and when I saw her question come in, I was so excited. Linda, great question. I bet you’re not alone in thinking this way, right? I think it’s a smart thought as a business owner. We always want to think what is the exit? You’re not going to do this for the rest of your life, or maybe you are, maybe you want to. But there might come a time where you want to retire or you want to do something different.

And so we asked this question. So I’ve got a couple of pieces of advice. And then I also asked my friend, Kathy Wagner, for some advice too. Because she specializes in helping retailers close their business, if that’s something you decide to do. My advice, I heard this from somebody a long time ago where if you’re thinking about selling your business or if you don’t have the energy for your business anymore.

You don’t feel as much of being in love with it or the excitement for it. Ask yourself this question. If what you do became illegal, so your store Merle Norman, if it became illegal to sell cosmetics. You would go to jail. You have to immediately close your door. You cannot do this anymore, you’re done.

Do you feel sad? Do you feel a sense of relief? Do you feel angry? Are you like, “No, I’m going to fight for this. I want to do this. This is my light, I love doing this.” What kind of emotions come up for you? And I’m sure most of us are going to have a little bit of that sadness because we started this business for a reason.

You love your customers, all those things. That’s not the point. It’s more about how do you feel? Is there any kind of relief? Is there any kind of excitement for doing something different? I think that’s a really good question to help us identify. And you can even ask in like certain areas of your business, like maybe you have some service offerings, different product lines, categories, and you could even ask, “If this category became illegal, how do I feel?”

If the service became illegal, because sometimes we might chip away or remove some of our offerings to have more of a business that we love, that we bring that energy to. So ask yourself that question, just to make sure that you’re ready and that’s where you’re pulled and what you want to do.

And here’s the deal too. Like you might be like, no, I’d be mad. I love this, but I also just don’t want to do this business anymore. That’s fine. 

One key strategy that can help retailers get more money when they decide to sell their business

Crystal Vilkaitis: The next thing is if you are deciding to sell, whether you are going to sell or not, but something that’s going to help you get more money for it is platforms and lists. You want to provide assets to the future buyer. So those assets, number one thing in my mind from a marketing perspective, is your email list. 

We need to have a database, the larger group of customers and potential customers. And you’ve got the data, you’ve got their email address, their name. Ideally, you’ve got their birthday, anniversary brands, they carry any kind of segmentation that you can do with that list.

The better, the more rich that data is and the more it is, the higher valuation you get for your business because people can be walking into already existing database of people that they can send an email, make money from it. So also I would focus on building your social too. Now keep in mind, you obviously don’t own your social media following.

That’s why I say list is number one. You own that. If you could get cell phone numbers too, that’s really important. Then we can grow our social media following. So that’s something I would focus on. If you know you want to sell in a year or two, one area where I would make a priority is grow my list of quality people as much as I can try to get more data on them and grow my online audience.

Now I asked my friend, Kathy Wagner with Retail Mavens, what she would do. She actually shared with me that they have a program called Life After Retail.

And so you can check that out retailmavens.com/leavingretail and we’ll link to that as well. They actually have a free class at that link. So you can go, you can get some more information, Linda. And anybody listening to this. And then if you want to work with Kathy, go to their social accounts.

You can DM them or you can email clientcare@retailmavens.com. But here’s what Kathy said. Just some high level stuff for you. She said there is indeed life after retail. Surprisingly, it isn’t crucial to show a profit on your financials. Don’t discard the idea of selling. If you’ve shown a loss, it is essential to have the best cashflow you can in a perfect world.

You can work on that for two years before you want to sell. We find that most retailers are sitting on a gold mine and there is more money to be made from selling their business than they think. A final thought here, first step is to come up with a sales goal for your closing sale, having a closing sale.

It’s the amount of money you want to walk away with and pay down your debt. A well run store closing sale, a well run store closing sale puts much cash in the bank. And the golden rule to remember in managing your sale. She says your primary goal is not to liquidate the inventory. Your primary goal is to achieve or exceed your sales goal before you run out of inventory.

So again, check out Kathy and her free resource at retailmavens.com/leavingretail, if you want more information there. I think these are some great points and thoughts for you to consider and little seeds to plant, Linda. And keep us posted on what you’re doing there. And if you have more questions as well, especially if we continue this call in show.

How do we balance our in-store and online experience for different customer avatars?

Crystal Vilkaitis: Okay. Next question is from Julie, let’s listen in.

“Hi, Crystal. This is Julie from TeaLula in Park Ridge. My question to you is how do we balance our in store and online experience for our customer when they seem to be really different from our perfect customer. Thanks so much and happy birthday to Rooted In Retail.” 

Thank you, Julie, for this question. Now, I definitely had some follow up questions that I didn’t ask you. This is a really good question for some coaching. So I hope that you find my answer helpful, my answers and my ideas. Because without having some additional information, it’s a little harder. The biggest thing that I wanted to know is, do you know for certain that your in store customer is different than your online customer?

And maybe you do see some different buying behaviors, purchasing behaviors, purchasing paths, maybe how much they spend. That might be different. Location might be different. Maybe you’re targeting people outside of your area, but if you haven’t done it, I would be very curious to really spend some time and understand your in-store customer and your online customer and find the similarities. And find the differences and be crystal clear on what those are.

Because with the similarities, that type of content you can really use on your social media. If you’re finding there’s popular products that they really love, there’s a certain flavor of tea that everybody likes, it’s so popular. It doesn’t matter if it’s in stores, online, then we can be talking about that on social.

We’ve got it. In store we have signage, we have banners on the website. Like you’ve got this full cohesive marketing around those similarities, the same kind of messaging. That you’re finding people that are resonating with. The differences is then once you have some of what makes it really different for them, then you can cater to those different audiences in unique ways throughout that different platform.

So for example, one thing that is going to be different online versus in person is the experience. The experience in store is it can be very sensory. What we’re seeing, what we’re smelling, especially with tea, what we’re hearing with music , the steaming of the water. There’s so many different sensory things that are happening in store that you’re just not going to get online.

Online we care about that quickness of the website. And the ease of finding my favorite tea or finding a gift for a tea lover. Be in the mind of that online shopper. Why are they there? How can you quickly help them? And that might be different than how you’re serving in store. 

They might want to sit down, stay for an hour, have a cup of tea. And that’s where they’re different. And so if that’s the case, we could be sending out emails to just our in store clients about, “Hey it’s time to come in, relax, enjoy this new tea or do a tea tasting with us. Come in, hang out.” Where online, it might be more about this month’s feature tea or for the tea lover in your life, they’re going to go crazy over this new tool, this new pot, this new design, whatever it is.

So making that list of the similarities, the differences, and then leaning into those would be one of my tips. Your brand is going to stay the same throughout. When I’m online, when I’m on social, when I’m in store, when I’m reading a magazine, when I’m hearing your ad on radio, like podcasts. Wherever you’re showing up, it should be consistent.

So we really want to build the brand and have that consistency no matter where they are, but just some of those focuses could be different for those different audiences. By the way, I do think that if tea tastings is something that you do a lot in the store and people love it, it could be something that’s done virtually. And maybe you’ve tried that, maybe it didn’t work as well. But if you haven’t tried it, that is sort of a way to bridge the gap of saying we do this in store all the time and people love it.

So we’re offering this virtual tea tasting and here’s what you get. It could be a do it at your own pace. You don’t have to sign on at a certain time on Zoom and do this together. It could be like your whole fun tea tasting for you and grandma or for a bachelorette party or for you and your girlfriends or date night or whatever.

Like you could have different packages for that, that people buy online and you could promote those in store. If you know your people in store love tea tastings, maybe they want to take one home with them. And so that could be another area where we’re bridging that gap. In store and online, you should be up selling, cross selling.

You’re just doing this a little bit differently in stores, more service based relationships, having really great sales people who are really personable and attentive. Where online, we use technology based off of you bought this, you would love that. And so making sure that those aspects are built in so we can have both the cross selling, upselling, happening in both channels.

Also maybe do this already, but you can bridge the gap as well where you can have people buy online, but pick up in store. And when they do pick up in store, do they get a free cup of tea? Like, okay. I’m going to do all my online shopping, all my gifts.

Maybe there is a great bundle. Maybe there’s something exclusive that people can only buy online. You don’t actually stock it in store, but then come in. If you’re local, pick it up and you’ve got a free cup of tea waiting for you. Also, online reservations, maybe if you have classes, tea tastings, events, we’re leveraging online to get them online to buy their ticket or reserve a spot.

And then while they’re online afterwards, you’ve bought your ticket, you’ve reserved now shop. And then you’re strategic on what those collections are or what they can go see online. That maybe is exclusive. I think you can have some exclusive in store only and exclusive online only to make those audiences feel really special.

Having your reviews. Similar to Matt, as well, of getting those online reviews. And then you can take those online reviews and print them out and have some signage in store of what our online shoppers are saying, maybe there’s some pictures of them and you have your community of pictures of people that wrote reviews and that buy products online.

And then you’ve got pictures of your people in store. So you’ve got this like fun community on the wall that shows your online shoppers, your in person shoppers. That’s great social media content. And you can encourage people to do that after they check out with a picture of the wall. So they could be like, “Oh, I could be a part of this wall. That’s so cool.” 

When we love brands, we want to belong to them. So I think you have an opportunity around tea. Like people love tea, they’re so passionate. And so ways to bring in that community. Same with the Facebook group, maybe you’re doing this already, but that’s another way where you can have in store people and online people be a part of a group.

In a Facebook group and facilitate those convos, share specials, exclusives, VIP stuff with them. Also, when we think about AI, I know that Sheila is the owner of TeaLula. Sheila is funny and fun and jokes and playful, and so is there an opportunity to have create a bot? A Sheila bot that is over on the website, and you feed the bot, you train the bot to talk like Sheila. To kind of have her sense of humor. 

And if they have questions about products, it’s in the tone of Sheila. What would Sheila do? Or ask ChatGPT to come up with a fun name for this that is maybe related to tea or to TeaLula, the brand. And it could be Sheila’s face and so that’s another way you’re bridging the gap.

Or it could be you, Julie. I know that you’re in the store a lot and you’re on the social content. And so people get to know you, like maybe have a couple of different people and maybe sometimes Sheila’s on and sometimes you’re on for the bot on the website, but that’s another way to kind of bridge that gap.

What’s cool is if you’ve got the avid online buyer that loves the Sheila bot, but has never been in store than one day they’re traveling and they make a point to come in and they actually get to meet Sheila in person. And that’s a fun moment again, where we get to belong to the brand.

It’s something that’s so unique and so much deeper than just buying tea at the grocery store. So I think that you have a lot of opportunities to assess and analyze the audience, find the similarities and differences, play into those, and then bridge the gap in some of those different ways that I mentioned.

Crystal’s advice on how to uncover your customers’ pain points and what they really want from you

Crystal Vilkaitis: Finally, Julie, if you don’t do any kind of survey, I would totally survey my audience. Hopefully you have an email list, send out an email, survey them. Do they shop online? Do they shop in store? What is their go to? How often do they buy?

Your POS system ideally has those, some of those metrics on how often they buy their popular items, how much they spend, but if you don’t have that information, you can survey.

And then also just surveying and asking them what they want more of, like how can you really show up for them? And what are their biggest pain points? Where can you support them? Ask ChatGPT, work with it, go back and forth to find some really great, like 10 questions or less to get more information out of your full list to really understand their path to purchase. And what they want to buy and who they’re buying for and how you can bridge that gap for them, whether it’s in store or online.

Lots of great opportunities. Keep up the great work, I love it. And I know I’ll see you soon at EVOLVE. 

Last question is from my friend, Nick. Let’s hear what he says. 

Why Crystal takes a stance against this popular marketing tactic for local retailers

Crystal Vilkaitis: “Hey Crystal. It’s Nick from One Shop. And my question is, what’s one belief you have for local retail marketing that you believe that many others, or the general public, believes the opposite of? So you’re taking a counter stance on?” 

Ooh. All right, Nick, I see you. This is a tough question for me. I really sat here for a second and was like, Ooh, that one really made me think. And two things came to mind. The first is something I’ve been saying for many years, which is I don’t think that independent reretailers who have brick and mortar physical storefront necessarily should sell online. And I think that is shocking.

And look, I’ve said that even before COVID. The times have changed, yes. And e-comm is on the rise and more retailers sell online and they’re doing great. But I still stand by this because just because you launch an ecommerce website, which is a lot of work, which is money.

It’s time does not mean that you all of a sudden have a flood of new business and traffic and sales. You have to market it. And often the retailers that I work with have not done enough to market their brick and mortar store. We talked about so many marketing ideas today. If you don’t sell online, you could just chip away at a lot of these different ideas to start building your business.

Start getting more. I’d even talk about how do we get our customers to buy more from us? The easiest way to sell is to sell to your current customers. So that’s a strategy in itself. How are you really marketing? And selling and focusing? And making it a priority and becoming obsessed with your own marketing for your brick and mortar store to build that business.

Often retailers don’t put in the energy, don’t put in the time, don’t make it a priority. And instead, we’re like well, somebody tells me I should sell online. My competitor sells online. There’s Amazon. I know the consumer shops online, so I should start an online store. For some, it totally makes sense. And for some you’ve built such a great brand over here and you have that customer data and your marketing and you’re knocking out of the park that when you launch your store to these people, boom, it blows up.

And I talked about that on my episode with Josh Orr on a earlier episode on Rooted In Retail. He gave an example of that. But if you haven’t done enough over here to market, I want you to start there. Do not get distracted by building an ecommerce website until you’ve done everything you can and have become obsessed with your marketing.

You’re obsessed with marketing your brick and mortar store. The second thing, Nick, is that this is a newer thing for me. Over the past year, I’ve just been thinking so much about retailers and their pain points and their struggles and how we can really help support them at Crystal Media. And I’ve traveled all over, I’ve spoken all over the country and I’ve met so many retailers and, primarily, I’m teaching social media.

And what happens time and time again is that I’ll teach social media and I’ll give you the tools and the strategy and everything you need to do. And try to make it as easy as possible. But yes, you still have to go home and do the work, and majority of the people that are in that session with me don’t do the work. I often come back and speak at places several times and they’re in the same place. And I’ve heard so many times from people, “I didn’t do anything. I was so energized and I didn’t do anything, but I’m going to do it this time.” 

And some do. Some do it, some show up, some make it a priority and some grow their business with social majority of the people. It’s just so daunting. They don’t like social media. They just don’t like it, some hate it, some refuse it.

They just won’t do it because they don’t believe in it from several different reasons. They don’t like Mark Zuckerberg or privacy policy, or they see the bad side of social, which definitely is there. So they don’t want to participate in it from a business standpoint. And I am here to say that’s okay.

I’ve been the girl that’s been teaching social media for over a decade and I want to make it more acceptable to not use social media and to help retailers know that you can still grow a very profitable business without marketing on social media. Here’s the deal, social media is one of the best ways to connect with customers every single day.

It is where the time and attention is being spent, but it does require you to show up daily consistently. And if you’re not putting in the work, you’re going to be wasting the time. You have to be strategic on the content and you have to be consistent and you get that opportunity. It’s an amazing opportunity for all businesses to connect with their customers.

But if you’re just not going to make it a priority, then I need you to focus elsewhere. There’s so many other ways that you can be marketing your store. I talk about being 15 mile famous, focus on what’s local to you. Email marketing is one of the best things you can do. And that tip is so fitting because Nick owns one shop where it’s an email marketing platform.

He built it. So, you know, I couldn’t email. You’re going to see more sales from email typically than you will social media. So I want retailers to spend less time getting so caught up in trying to figure out the quick shortcut to social media so they can be this massive star and sell a bunch of products using social.

That’s hard to do and takes commitment. You can do it, absolutely. But it does take commitment and it takes somebody who wants to do it. If you don’t have somebody on your team, you don’t want to do it. There are other ways and that is okay. And so I think that can be controversial because of who I am, what I’ve taught.

I’m not saying that social media doesn’t work. I’m not saying that. At all. I’m just saying that doesn’t have to be your thing. If that doesn’t make sense for you, and I want you to just check yourself before you wreck yourself, check yourself to make sure that you’re not getting caught up in it. 

And you’re just never going to use it. You’re wasting time. Let’s just call a spade a spade and be like, “This is just never something I’m actually going to use. So I’m going to put my effort and learn something else and I’m going to focus on growing my list,” or whatever that thing is for you, but you need to focus on marketing and be obsessed with it.

However, it’s going to make sense for you and where your customers spend their time. So please put in the effort, make it a priority because marketing is key to staying relevant and showing up and being the choice of your customer. Nick, thank you for that question. It was great. Everyone who sent questions, thank you.

That meant the world to me. Wow, I hope that you found this episode helpful. We talked about so much. If you liked this, you gotta let me know. Cause I’ll do this all day long. I loved doing this. If you like the call-in questions, please DM me on Instagram or email me or put it in the Facebook group for Rooted In Retail.

Let me know if you liked this episode, because maybe we’ll do more in the future. Thank you for being here on Rooted In Retail. It’s been one heck of an amazing year and just wait to see what’s to come. I’m so excited for the guests that we have, the angles that we’re going to take, maybe some more sit-down in-person interviews, some really great things planned for you just to be a free resource to help independent retailers grow their business.

So thank you for being here, it means the world. If you love the show, let me know. Write a review and I am rooting for your success. I’ll see you next week, bye. 

Thank you so much for being here. It means the world to me. Don’t forget to join the rise and shine newsletter, which is social media news. You need to know sent via email every Monday morning, go to crystal media, co. com slash rise to join. And don’t miss the newest episode of Rooted In Retail, which drops every Sunday morning.