Reaching Younger Customers

Q: I have a better men’s store that has been in business for 30 years. As many of our customers are aging, we’ve updated our store and products to appeal to younger customers. My question is: how do I find younger customers?

Jake Fell: Your question should be: “How can younger customers find my store?” And the short answer is to implement an Inbound Content Marketing Strategy.

The days of blasting your pitch through newspaper, the yellow pages, radio, TV and billboards to find new customers are over. Modern consumers spend vast amounts of time online consciously probing search engines for answers to their questions and browsing social media for entertainment. Brands now recognize this and seek to provide consumers with the insight to make informed decisions by creating and curating content. By implementing a content marketing strategy, retailers have a tremendous opportunity to win local search inquiries and be discovered on social media.

Content marketing is not focused on hard selling, but on simply communicating with customers (and potential customers) and providing information they’ll find useful. Content marketing is a practice that involves the creation and sharing of valuable information about your store, products, brand, events, culture and vision with the intention of driving profitable customer action. The idea is to inspire business and loyalty from buyers by delivering consistent and ongoing beneficial information.

Delivering useful content on a blog that is optimized for search engines creates a way for prospects searching the web for topics related to men’s apparel to find your store. Additionally, a blog that publishes content to social media channels provides your customers a way to endorse your business to their peers by sharing and “liking” your content.

The good news is that the cost of implementing a content marketing strategy may be far less than what many retailers have been spending on direct mail, newspaper ads, yellow pages, magazines and cable TV. You may also be able to produce great content yourself and empower your insightful staff members to contribute.

Jake Fell is the Director of Business Development at eMarketing Logic