Back to store - How to prepare for the 2021 back-to-school season in-store!

Summer is for most people synonymous with vacation, sun and relaxation. Offices are running at a slow pace, and so are projects. It's also the ideal time to focus on fundamental tasks and prepare for the back-to-school season, a busy time for retail.

Dans cet article je vais vous partager quelques conseils pour y préparer votre réseau au mieux, afin de mener plus de clients vers vos établissements physiques ! Ceci en utilisant la puissance du marketing digital local et des pages locales Google Business Profile, Facebook Lieux et Store locator.

Here are a few points that are worth considering during this summer period:

1. Always up-to-date data:

First and foremost, all the information published on your local pages must be complete and accurate. This will firstly allow your stores to be well referenced, and secondly to offer a quality customer experience.

Your opening hours are likely to change during the summer, make sure to update them for the back-to-school season in September. You can also take this opportunity to set exceptional hours for the end-of-year holidays.

Also, check all the information available on your pages and update it if necessary (address, phone number, attributes, secondary URLs, link to your website, etc.).

2. Recent images of your stores:

Take advantage of the summer to organize photo shoots of your establishments. The idea is that you can take photos of the front, interior, staff or products you offer in-store to share this content on your local pages.

If you don't want to hire professionals to take the pictures, you can ask your store managers to take 5 minutes to take a few nice photos with their smartphone, making sure the result is of good quality (the photos should be framed and not blurry). You can also organizeworkshopsto train them to take photos that highlight the establishments and their products.

Also take a look at the images you have already posted and ask yourself: do these images still reflect the inside or outside of my store? If not, consider deleting them. You can use the new images to complete your pages.

3. Up-to-date services and products:

Vos pages Google Business Profile, Facebook et votre Store Locator doivent être des vitrines digitales de vos établissements. Il est important que l’utilisateur puisse facilement se faire une idée de ce qu’il pourra trouver en magasin.

To achieve this:

• Take the time to update the available services in your stores for the back-to-school season. Do you offer Click & Collect services? Is Wi-Fi available? What payment methods are available on site? etc.
  
• Depending on your establishment category, you have the option to add your flagship products to your local pages.
  
  Select a few products you'd like to highlight for the back-to-school season and add them so users can view them. You may also have new products planned for the back-to-school season; don't hesitate to add them and feature them on your pages to reach a wider audience.

If you're restaurateurs, you can also plan a moment to update your menu on your local pages so that they're up to date for the September back-to-school season.

4. Organic or paid local campaigns to promote your stores:

A good way to boost your SEO or increase your visibility and in-store traffic relies on publishing campaigns on your local pages. 

Plan your back-to-school posts to share your news, events, promotions, or any other actions that will be available at your stores. These organic posts have recently had an impact on the indirect searches performed by your customers!
To be even more effective, consider combining organic campaigns withpaid campaigns or local ads on Google and Facebook.

5. Quality review management:

Why not take some time this summer to check out the reviews posted on your local pages? This will allow you to identify areas for improvement for your stores and define an action plan to improve your offer and customer experience.

You could also take the time to review the most recurring reviews and categorize them by theme. On this basis, you could write a library of generic responses with a few answers to the most frequently posted reviews on your local pages. Responding to these reviews can be time-consuming, but by relying on this base of generic responses you will be able to respond more easily and quickly to your customers' reviews.

Moreover, the more reviews you have published on your local pages, the better your referencing will be. In this sense, you can take the time to think about the best way to generate reviews on your pages.

For example, you could add a panel with a QR code in your establishment to leave a review. There are a number of techniques and tips to encourage your customers to regularly leave reviews after their visits to stores.

You can also equip your stores with tablets so that your customers can

leave a review directly, which will allow you to easily measure customer satisfaction and take action accordingly.

In conclusion:

Summer is the ideal time to prepare your network's local SEO strategy.
One of the key points of a local listing management strategy is to frequently update the information on your local pages. Google takes into account the updating of information because it considers that the listing contains correct and therefore good quality information for its users.
Complete and frequently updated listings will allow you to gain visibility and reach more internet users.

Do you want specific support to prepare for the back-to-school season?

Feel free to contact me by message :)

To learn more, discover our other articles on the subject:

• Boost the visibility of your points of sale with local ads
• What are the benefits of Facebook ads for a retail chain?
• The benefits of Google local campaigns