Retailers still relying exclusively on the brick-and-mortar model are more likely to struggle than those who have embraced the online marketplace. Still, there are some retail products that seem custom made for the brick-and-mortar environment. To keep people coming through the doors, retailers just have to find new ways to reach them. Enter local search.
Local search, using a mobile device, is one of the brick-and-mortar retailer’s best marketing tools. When it is combined with impulse buying, local search can be a retail lifeline. To illustrate this point, consider a vendor who sells sunglasses in a popular tourist town.
Sunglasses Are a Must
Sunglasses are regular fare year-round. They are a must on vacation. Any plans to soak up the sun at a Gulf Coast beach or hit the slopes atop a Utah mountain must include eye protection. But what do you do if you realize, just as your plane is taking off, that you left your sunglasses in the car?
People buy sunglasses online. But those are planned purchases. By their very nature, sunglasses are more often an impulse buy. Even when you are not on vacation, you are more likely to purchase sunglasses at a brick-and-mortar store because it’s something you think about at the last minute.
This is where local search comes in. People use their mobile devices and laptop computers to search for retailers close to their current locations. If you are on vacation, you will probably be looking for sunglasses somewhere in the general vicinity of your hotel.
Finding a Local Shop
Local search is something that all of the major search engines focus on, particularly when it comes to mobile users. They have created entire algorithms around refining local search. That’s why SEO experts put so much emphasis on it. It really does make a difference.
Let us say you ran a search on the phrase ‘cheap sunglasses’. Because your search is so generic, you might turn up results from Olympic Eyewear, a Utah distributor of wholesale sunglasses based in Salt Lake City. That is all well and good – Olympic Eyewear is a fine company – but they won’t be able to help you find sunglasses as you make your way to Venice Beach in Sarasota, Florida.
On the other hand, search the phrase ‘cheap sunglasses near me’, and your GPS enabled smartphone will point out every little shop between your hotel on the beach that sells sunglasses.
It’s an SEO Thing
Do you now have a better understanding about how impulse buying and local search can work together to bring customers in the door? If so, the next question is one of how you harness the power of local search. Simply put, it is an SEO thing.
Search engines use a website’s content to figure out how to rank pages. Optimizing local search is all about optimizing page content so that search engine algorithms get the local information they need. In addition, local search is enhanced through online directories, shopper reviews, etc.
Unfortunately, SEO is more complex than can be described in a post of this nature. Your best bet is to leave it to the experts. That notwithstanding, brick-and-mortar retailers can compete in the modern marketplace by playing to their strengths. That includes impulse buying and local search.
If your main products are those people don’t normally buy on impulse, there is a work around. Just by adding four or five impulse items to your inventory, you can still get people in the door. That’s half the battle. Do that and you can sell them with the rest of your inventory.
