Retail & Ecommerce
Retail marketing agency for shops that sells at a profit
Retail marketing for shops and online stores, planned around margin, stock and the marketplaces you sell through, so more sales leave more profit.
Overview
What good retail marketing does
Retail marketing gets judged differently from most businesses. More enquiries is usually good news. In retail, more orders at the wrong cost is a slow way to lose money.
The pressure comes from three places. Margins are thin and mostly set by suppliers. Ad costs on the big platforms have risen for years. And the biggest marketplaces compete with their own sellers for the same searches.
So we start with profit per order, before any traffic chart. Pick your type of store below.
Where the money goes
How much of each order is left to spend on winning it
In most businesses more orders is good news. In retail it can be a slow way to lose money, because several parties take a share before anything is left for marketing.
- 1Order value — The number most reports lead with, and the least useful one on its own.
- 2Margin after supplier cost — Mostly set by your buying terms. That’s why price is rarely a lasting edge for retailers.
- 3After the platform share — A marketplace, a shopping feed, a delivery app or a landlord takes a cut and part of the customer.None of them is neutral about your customer
- 4After delivery and returns — A shop pays rent, fit-out and staff. An online-only store pays for warehousing, shipping and returns.The same order leaves a different profit in each
- 5What an order can afford — Know this figure before you build a campaign. That’s most of what good retail marketing is.Spend past it and more orders make the business worse
Where they differ
What no single plan can cover
That's why each type of business below gets its own page.
- The costs aren’t comparable. A shop pays rent, fit-out and staff and relies on local footfall. An online-only store pays for warehousing, shipping and returns and sells nationally or abroad. The same order leaves a different profit, so a cost per sale that works for one can ruin the other.
- Search behaviour splits cleanly. Physical shops live or die on local searches, opening hours and showing what’s in stock. Online stores compete on product and category searches against marketplaces with far more authority than any single brand.
- In one model you own the customer. In the other you rent them. A direct online brand can build a list, track repeat buying and market to it. A retailer selling through a marketplace usually can’t contact the people who bought.
- Things people rebuy and big one-off purchases behave nothing alike. The first is a repeat-customer business, where email and subscriptions decide profit. The second has to win every sale from scratch.
Questions
Quick answers on retail marketing
Should we sell on Amazon or avoid it?
For most retailers, do both and know the trade-off. A marketplace gives you demand you’d struggle to buy. In return it takes a commission, the customer relationship and lots of data about what sells.
The commission isn’t the big risk. The risk is a business where the marketplace is the only place customers find you. Then someone else sets your prices and your growth. Use it as a channel and keep building demand of your own.
We have stores and a website. Do they compete?
Often, because nobody decided how they should work together. The website can undercut the shops. Stores can be missing from Google Maps while the website ranks nationally. And stock is often reported separately, so neither side sees the other.
Start by deciding what each channel is for. Stores usually win on speed, fit, advice and easy returns. The website wins on range and convenience. Once that’s settled, local search and ecommerce stop pulling against each other.
Why do you keep asking about margin instead of return on ad spend?
Because return on ad spend ignores everything between revenue and profit. Two products with the same figure can end up very different once product cost, shipping, payment fees and returns come out.
Working to margin changes what we do. We bid differently across the catalogue. We treat some best-sellers as not worth advertising. And we put more weight on repeat customers than a revenue target would.
How much does seasonality change a retail marketing plan?
In most retail categories it changes almost everything. A big share of the year’s profit can land in a few weeks. Ad costs jump in those weeks. And the work that makes them pay has to be done months before.
So the quiet months are the busy months for marketing. Category pages, content, site speed and list building all need doing before the peak.
Written so far
Industry pages in this sector
Ecommerce & DTC
Ecommerce marketing that grows profit: we find which of traffic, conversion, order value or repeat rate holds your store back, and fix that first.Multi-Location Retail
Multi-location retail marketing for store chains: show shoppers what each store has in stock, and credit the sales that end at a till.Automotive Retail
Car dealership marketing that wins buyers directly, not only through a marketplace, and keeps service bays full after the warranty ends.Specialty Retail
Specialty retail marketing for independent and niche shops. Get found for the expertise a marketplace can't offer, and turn visitors into regulars.
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Last updated · Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor