The success of any business, including furniture retail, now heavily depends on its online presence and digital marketing strategies. Furniture businesses must go beyond traditional advertising tactics to effectively engage with a wide audience of potential shoppers and create deeper relationships with their current customers. This blog post will cover five essential digital marketing techniques that can elevate your furniture business: data analytics, social media marketing, interactive content, email marketing, and utilizing an omnichannel approach. Combining these strategies will allow you to understand who your customers are, how and where to engage with them in a meaningful way, and ultimately drive traffic sales to your store.

Use Data Analytics To Drive Decisions

Understanding who your customers are and where they spend their time online is the foundation of every successful marketing campaign. By harnessing the power of data, Furniture store owners can gain invaluable insights into their customers' behavior and campaign performance, allowing them to make informed decisions to drive growth.

Digital marketing gives furniture store owners something that traditional marketing such as circulars, TV advertising, and billboards can't provide: Complete access to reporting that provides a clear ROI for the dollars committed to advertising. By tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as click-through rates and conversion rates, your marketing team can further narrow down which solutions are working best for your store and market and adjust your marketing mix to maximize your budget.

Use Data Analytics To Drive Decisions

• Customer Insights: Understand the demographics and behaviors of your ideal customer.
• Optimize Your Marketing Budget: By understanding which digital channels are most effective for your business, you can allocate your money accordingly.
• Campaign Performance: Measure the success of your campaigns, with the ability to adjust targeting or creative in real time if needed.
• Customer Journey Tracking: Identify where customers may be dropped off on your website and fix any broken links or pages.

Are you interested in identifying the ideal customer in your market? Click HERE.

Once you are aware of who your target audience is (for example, women interested in home furnishings, between the ages of 35-55, who own a home within ten miles of your store), the next step is to identify which platforms are the most effective to reach them. This approach allows you to narrow down your marketing budget to consumers who are most likely to make a purchase.

It is important to use the correct tools to be able to track each of these metrics. Google Analytics is a powerful platform that can be used to track the overall customer journey and how they interact with your website. You can identify where consumers are finding your website, how long they spend on a specific product page, and where you may be losing customers before they checkout. Other tools like Facebook insights, heatmaps, and CRM software also can provide valuable data.

Harness The Power Of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is one of the most impactful ways to build relationships with your local community. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok offer continuous opportunities to create brand loyalty with current customers, as well as brand awareness for potential new customers. There are two types of social media to think about when starting. Organic posting to your business page and social media ads to reach new potential customers near your store.

Platform Options & Why To Use Them:

• Facebook & Instagram: Highly utilized each month and has robust advertising capabilities.
• TikTok: Personalized and creative content that engages a typically younger audience.
• Pinterest: Showcase beautiful furniture designs and inspire potential customers.

Creating high-quality engaging content for your business page regularly is just the start to achieving success on social media. It is important to remember that consumers are visiting social media sites for entertainment, and do not want to be constantly approached with sales messaging. Some of the furniture stores that we have seen have the most success on social media are continuously engaging with their local community while sprinkling in sales messaging to incentivize customers to come in-store.

Examples Of Engaging Social Media Content:

• Posting a local back-to-school backpack drive in August.
• Sharing some fun facts about an employee of the week.
• A photo of a happy customer with the products they purchased.
• A video of an employee walking around the store and talking about their favorite products on the floor.
• Local events such as parades or seasonal gatherings.
• Sharing store history, such as a photo from when the store first opened, or the previous generation owners.

When considering Facebook and Instagram advertising (or META advertising), it can feel daunting to get started. There are many ways that you can set up a social media ad campaign. You can target a specific demographic (such as age, gender, income, and location) or by interests and behaviors. It is also possible to create retargeting ads for consumers who have previously visited your website but did not make a purchase, as well as many other targeting options.

One of the benefits of working with Tango is that we have an entire team made up of advertising experts and former furniture retailers whose whole job is to create successful campaigns tailored to your store(s), leaving your time free to do what you do best, running your business.

Engage Customers With Interactive Content

Interactive content can significantly increase your overall engagement and drive sales by creating a more immersive and personalized experience for your customers. Interactive content encourages participation from your audience and this heightened level of engagement not only keeps visitors on your website longer but creates a deeper relationship with your store.

Customized digital circulars and catalogs take the traditional format that many retailers are familiar with and enhance the overall shopping experience. Interactive digital circulars allow customers to easily browse through a visually appealing and easy-to-consume quantity of products. With just a few clicks, they can seamlessly move through from viewing a product to checking out on your website. In addition, the consumer behavior is tracked so that you can see which products are getting the most traffic, and how long customers are spending shopping on each page.

Digital Circulars and catalogs can be strategically placed and shared across various digital channels, maximizing the opportunities for consumers to interact with your brand. By sharing the digital circular through multiple platforms, you can enhance overall visibility and encourage interaction at every touchpoint. For example:

• Your Website: Feature digital circulars directly on your homepage, or on dedicated promotion pages to encourage shopping on your site.
• Social Media: Share your digital circular on your social posts to invite followers and potential customers to view new products and promotions.
• Targeted Emails: Showcase your digital circular in an email to keep your customers up to date on the products available on your floor.
• Display Advertising: Reach potential customers as they browse online with display advertising that links to your digital circular.
• A QR code in-store for customers to scan

Other types of interactive content include gamification tactics such as virtual contests like spin-to-win and scratch-offs with customizable offers and deals, which entertainingly engage customers. These types of content also allow businesses to incentivize consumers to join their email or text lists for future exclusive deals and offers. This strategy not only helps grow your business's marketing database, but can boost customer interaction, increase brand awareness, and drive sales.

Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent and cost-effective way to not only reach new potential customers in your area but also continue to foster relationships with your current customers. By delivering targeted content to your customers' inboxes, you can keep your brand top-of-mind, build customer loyalty, and increase the likelihood of repeat business.

Communicating to a targeted list of consumers near your store(s) through email can noticeably boost sales and store traffic. However, you want to make sure that you are reaching these consumers in a way that will incentivize them to not only read your email but act on it. Some examples of this are limited-time private events to this email list, special offers or deals, or any of your big seasonal sales messaging when consumers are known to be shopping for furniture.

Creating and growing your customer email list (and sending them regular and valuable messaging) allows businesses to keep their store and products top of mind to people who have already shown interest. A great way to do this successfully is to engage your customers with a mix of content to keep them interested and interacting with your store. Providing content like design inspiration, digital contests, and customer stories makes emails more relevant and builds trust between your store and the audience.

Tips For Successful Email Marketing:

• Create exciting subject-lines: Subject lines are the first thing the consumer sees. Make sure to include information to make them want to learn more!
• Include a Call-to-Action: Each email you send should include an incentivizing and clear message about what you want your audience to do next.
• Personalize Your Email: By addressing the recipients by their names or including personalized products based on consumer behavior, the messaging will feel less generic to your audience.

Create An Omnichannel Experience

An omnichannel approach, which involves reaching consumers seamlessly through multiple digital channels and physical touchpoints, ensures a cohesive and unified brand experience while aligning overall messaging. By utilizing this strategy, your customers will receive the same feel, design, and 'voice' from your brand not only in-store, but in their emails, social media, and when browsing online. This consistently reinforces your brand's overall identity, making it more recognizable and memorable. Ultimately, an omnichannel approach has been shown to boost sales and foster customer loyalty.

An example of the omnichannel approach is if a consumer visits your website but doesn't make a purchase. The person may receive an email with a reminder of the product that they were looking at with an incentive for them to come back and shop. Followed by targeted ads on social media or an ad appearing on the website where they are looking at recipes for dinner. These messages would appear over a specific timeframe, so the consumer wouldn't feel bombarded by your messaging and grow irritated.

Another example is utilizing a customized digital circular and delivering to a targeted audience through multiple digital touchpoints over the length of a promotion. We start with a targeted email that showcases the digital circular and retargets those consumers through social media and Geofenced display advertising. By geofencing the residences of your targeted audience and your store, you can track how many consumers that received your ad, visited the store!

By implementing these digital strategies, you can elevate your furniture business by driving sales, creating brand loyalty, and increasing customer engagement. Utilizing Data analytics enables you to learn valuable insights about your customers and tailor your campaigns to their specific needs. Efficiently interacting with your audience on Social Media platforms allows you to authentically connect with your local community and build a level of trust in your brand. Meanwhile, an omnichannel approach creates a seamless shopping experience across all digital touchpoints for your customers, making it easier for your customers to engage with your store where they are spending their time online. Together these powerful strategies position your furniture business for success in the competitive digital retail landscape and create a thriving brand that customers will remember both online and off.

Are you ready to launch your furniture business into success through digital marketing? Contact Tango today and meet with one of our advertising experts for a personalized marketing consultation and discover how we can help you achieve your business goals!