Are you using your store personnel to drive social influence & sales?
Social Influence
Most of the brands and brand owners hesitate to allow their store personnel’s to develop their social influence & help the brand create a “community”.
My article may not go well with digital agencies as they will tend to lose their clients.
As a retailer, one of your key strength is direct access to customers, and this gives you an opportunity to build a social “community” and drive product loyalty and build future sales.
Store employees and their interactions are becoming more important for brands, with consumers becoming more discerning and competition for their dollars at a high.
To ensure the right store representatives/personnel’s are in place, brands’ hiring processes are becoming more demanding and challenging.
To learn about Artificial Intelligence and skincare, read here
How store personnel’s use social influence?
Today, each one of us are micro/nano influencers as we all are present on prominent social media channels.
The trick is to use your store personnel’s social influence to build your brand’s community of loyal shoppers.
British Jewellery brand Astrid & Miyu has just started experimenting with this concept successfully.
Astrid & Miyu recruits talent through traditional job sites and LinkedIn, with an eye on applicants with their own business or a significant social following. Both offer the opportunity to create awareness of the brand among a new audience.
While the brand’s store employees are not paid to be influencers who leverage their own followings, they regularly take to Astrid & Miyu’s Instagram, TikTok and YouTube accounts while in-store to make recommendations or offer explainers on how to wear the brand’s products and use its services. Live streaming the videos straight from the stores.
Mantra here is – People love to buy from People with whom they resonate and feel connected.
Using store personnel in brand’s “How to use” videos or tutorials help reach new audience.
It’s much better than paying macro influencers thousands of dollars to promote the brand.
It’s all about Organic growth versus Exponential growth.
To learn more about, importance of niche retailing, click here.
Social influence – Brands need to embrace “content creation”.
Brands need to create trust amongst their users and hence content creation becomes a critical tool to:
- Building trust
- Converting customers into raving fans
- Bringing Authencity & social relevance in the process of shopping
If you are a business owner operating in the beauty/fragrance genre & want to grow your business & need a retail expert to help you achieve your “Vision to Reality” framework then feel free to write to me at riteshmohan@yahoo.com & schedule a discovery listening call over a #coffeechat.
