Whether you wish to get the newest smartphone, purchase new clothes, grab some drinks, or watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster movies, a shopping mall has it all. However, with so many malls and trends going against shopping centers, it has become more difficult in recent years to increase foot traffic.
As of 2017, nearly 90% of all retail sales in the U.S. happen in brick-and-mortar stores. Due to this, it has become necessary for malls to invest in marketing to attract local audiences. You need to come up with innovative methods for promotions, and one way of getting it done is by involving your tenants in it. Remember, a shopping mall is only as good as its tenants. If you’ve got good brands under the roof, you can expect a higher footfall. Let’s look at some of the ways through which you can involve your tenants in your shopping mall marketing strategy.
1. Highlight Their Promotions
Whenever there’s a promotion at one of your stores, you should consider promoting it. While this would mean giving added publicity to your tenants, you must remember that the crowd that they attract would be coming to spend money not just at their store but other businesses in your mall.
Your goal should be to get as many customers to your mall as possible. If your tenants don’t make money, you’ll soon lose them to other shopping centers. And this would mean an empty mall, which becomes a dead investment.
One way of promoting this is by sending out SMS messages to all your regular customers by using a shopping mall marketing software solution to send these messages. Because you’ll be gathering recipient data from everyone going to your mall instead of the individual tenants gathering their own, you’ll have a much bigger database to message meaning a bigger impact when you send a text message.
2. Giveaways
Come up with a contest where shoppers at your mall can win exciting prizes. The details of this competition must be shared with your tenants as well so that they can promote the contest to their own customer base.
Whenever your mall visitors purchase from any of the participating tenants, you can provide them an entry into the contest. For instance, you could have a competition where people who spend $100 can enter to win a prize like a big screen TV. This would prompt all your mall visitors to head to the participating outlets and buy from them so that they can win this prize.
However, for this to work, you must ensure that the prize that you’re giving away is of sufficient value. Remember, the prize is the main attraction here, so if it isn’t good enough, no one is going to participate.
3. Impromptu Events
If one of the stores in your shopping mall is hosting an event or competition, you should make it a point to share this with the shoppers in your mall at that time. A great way of doing this is by using proximity marketing .
This way, whenever any mall visitor connects to your Wi-Fi network, they’ll instantly receive alerts about events or competitions taking place in the mall. As they’re already in the mall, they may become interested in checking them out. This, in turn, will help to increase sales for your tenants. You can also use this method to reach out to those customers who aren’t in your SMS marketing list allowing you to gather demographic information and place them on segmented lists so you can market the right message to them.
In addition, you can also utilize proximity marketing to promote various other things, such as giveaways and individual store promotions while customers are onsite buying other items.
4. New Store Notifications
Whenever any new store is opening in your retail shopping center, you can use local media outlets or influencers to market your mall. This would be helpful if the new store is a big brand that isn’t present in any other malls in that city. In this situation, you would need to partner with that tenant to promote the opening event.
When you collaborate with the store owners, you’ll get access to a dual audience. This will help you stir up excitement in the city, and you may be able to get a huge crowd on the opening day of the store.
5. Customer Loyalty Rewards
Yet another way of marketing your shopping mall to your customers by partnering with tenants is by giving out customer loyalty rewards.
While you can use incentives to increase sales from current customers, it also helps you get new customers. This is because people love to get something in return for their purchases. This way, you can easily spread the word about your loyalty program and get new customers while retaining the old ones too.
6. Photo Contests
You can leverage photo contests to promote your brand and that of the tenants, as well. By asking your customers to take photos or selfies of their experience at your mall, you can get lots of user-generated content.
Word of mouth can be used to increase visibility for your mall. In addition, you can encourage visitors to use a branded hashtag on social media which you can track and even share on your social media profiles. Additionally, those whose photos are featured on your profile will be more than happy to take more pictures in the future.
You could also do some cross-promotions by asking the store owners to share the photos on their social media accounts.
Final Thoughts
When you’re running a shopping mall, it’s important to understand that your tenants are your partners. You must do everything in your power to promote their stores so that you can get visitors to your mall and keep their businesses thriving. Generating buzz online through user-generated content is a great way to do so.
In addition, you can partner with tenants to host giveaways, promote their sales, and create customer loyalty programs. You must also generate excitement in your city when a new store is opening in your mall. This will surely get you some crowd!
What are the other ways through which you can partner with tenants to promote your mall? Let me know in the comments.
