thread Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers? in Community Corner

What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

Ani_ — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 14:48:40 GMT

Hey Seller Community! 💓

This week we'd like to know...

What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

via GIPHY

Feel free to share any tips below! Looking forward to reading your replies ✨.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

JUYBoutique20 — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 22:09:28 GMT

For me I use text and email marketing. I think text marketing for me is more effective with quick updates, sales, etc. Email marketing for me is great for introducing new merchandise. I also use social media but unless I'm posting a video, I don't really get a lot of interaction.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

TCSlaguna — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 22:28:29 GMT

We have found Square Marketing to be a great way to reach our customers about upcoming events and promotions. Facebook and Instagram have been great for keeping an ongoing conversation with customers and maintaining engagement. In the end, you have to be where your customers are at, and everyone has their preference, so we have to be everywhere.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

weredoughcookie — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 14:07:57 GMT

Its really depends on your demographic. Different age groups like different methods of communicating. Sometimes its best to use a mix, For daily updates i rely on social media, for special deals and no more than once a week i send out emails. text marketing tends to only work on younger generations as the older ones tend to think we are magically spying on them (legit had someone call to remove us from the texting thing because square picked up their number from their card and they didn't like that).

So be aware of how your different demographics like to communicate.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

pawffeeshop — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 17:34:04 GMT

I find at this time we are still reaching out customers best through our social media platforms, mostly Facebook & Instagram. I know in the back of my mind that this is not always going to be the case most likely. I have started using the email marketing on and off and am looking forward to trying that more. We're a relatively "smaller" town and our word of mouth is also great. I like seeing other people's ideas!

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

TheRealChipA — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 19:28:06 GMT

All of them! 🤣

We use Square email marketing, though we have slacked off on that this year. This question was a great reminder to me that not everyone is reachable via social media!

Otherwise, we have a very active FB page. I’m starting to figure out how to use Instagram to post our weekly outdoor entertainment via videos. And we stay on top of the review sites and handle what needs to be handled — Yelp, Google, etc. At the beginning of each season, we do a media blitz. A local PR firm helped us set all of that up last year and it has been a huge success! We are at the point that the media outlets are coming to us first.

Besides all of that, we find our best marketing is the tried-and-true word of mouth. Our customers are our best salespeople. We are also very involved in neighborhood events, and we offer our space for neighborhood groups, apartment complexes, etc, to host get-togethers.

Lastly, my husband and I carry a stack of “Free Ice Cream” cards around with us. Whenever we are somewhere it is appropriate we hand them out to people we meet. Works like a charm!

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

DinaLRosenberg — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 01:17:22 GMT

We love Square's suite of services- both email & text messaging. We use Square Loyalty to reward our frequent shoppers. We're on Instagram and rely on stories, reels & feed posts. We use TikTok quite frequently and think it is an amazing free resource.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

lawnbrook — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 02:52:40 GMT

Social media for us, but being more proactive with marketing is on my todo list.

We are a small winery/distillery and for us not to have an active 'club' or email list is bordering on criminal. I'd like to use the square marketing tools, but struggling a little with how to piece it all together.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

JTPets — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 10:58:52 GMT

In person is always the "best" way to reach your customers, but for ongoing communication we use instagram the most and currently weebly marketing

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

Doran — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 18:53:25 GMT

For us, email marketing seems to bring in the best results.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

TheRealChipA — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 04:14:31 GMT

I’m going to add one more thing to my reply that I should have said. The point of my answer was that my most effective way to reach each customer is the way they want to be reached. That might be social media. That might be email. That might be word of mouth. That might be neighborhood outreach. We do ourselves a disservice by limiting our marketing if we don’t have to limit it. Obviously, I will limit the amount of paid/expensive marketing, for the obvious reason. But otherwise, I will meet the customer on the grounds they prefer I meet them on. If I don’t do that, I won’t reach them at all.

We call that Guerrilla Marketing.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

QuokkaCoffee — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 05:36:06 GMT

Absolutely love this answer! It's so easy to spread yourself thin across all the different platforms--my staff say Insta/TikTok or GTFO, meanwhile I love a solid email newsletter--and third-party aggregators but nothing beats solid word-of-mouth marketing.

We've gotten so far just by referrals these past eight months and I'm constantly reminding the team to always connect the dots: from a single customer we've the potential to meet their spouse, their kids, their pets, their colleagues. And we can offer something unique for each of those demographics!

Btw, how did you vet that local PR firm? And did you set aside a budget with a specific monetary return in mind?

Thanks in advance!

Kat

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

TheRealChipA — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 13:05:06 GMT

Vetting them was easy @QuokkaCoffee. When they started business, they leased a small office space from us. We watched them grow and establish themselves. They are very involved in the community and have positioned themselves as a major player here.

We gave them our goals for our rebranding process. They gave us a menu of options and we chose the ones we wanted. It was a mix of traditional marketing channels as well as social media. From that point we had a budget. We did set aside a budget but we did not assume an expected ROI. In our case we were redefining ourselves, and it was critical to get the word out quickly and widely. Having said that, it was money very well spent. Our rebranding push was last year and it was very successful. This year, many of the media outlets that we used took the initiative to come back to us as they were preparing pieces for local “ice cream season.” The gift that keeps on giving, as it were!

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

MsToYourJoy — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 22:41:37 GMT

I use Email Marketing through my Square/ Weebly Site. I'm so looking forward to the day when Square Marketing and the website marketing merge because I like features from both platforms. I also use Instagram & Facebook.

Hands down Email marketing has always been the most effective form of marketing for me. My challenge currently is being consistent because consistent emails always result in more sales.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

PartyManiaMD — Sun, 12 Jun 2022 14:42:48 GMT

For us I typically stick to google ads because they give us very clear metrics and we only pay for performance.

As a brick and mortar store that's been here for 11 years we have a super limited social media presence and I dislike sites like Facebook where you basically have to pay for engagement. When you stop advertising your page essentially gets no action.

I really like having brought our store online as we're getting a lot of online pickup orders which adds another layer of convenience.

I took over in January and years ago when daily deal sites were popular we could sell 50,000 in a week. I decided to try to run a campaign and we sold 0. Awkward

I have a Marketing background and while I believe in having a marketing budget the product and service is far more important to focus on.

I take advantage of Square's loyalty program and may even experiment with a monthly email or text blast but my customers respect me knowing just how inundated they are with email blasts.

Like corporations need to stop sending 1-3 emails a day, it's just obnoxious.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

threepaths — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 12:57:04 GMT

Thank you your post was very informative! I’m new here - in Canada - and really have no idea how to market myself. Luckily I belong to two organizations who do some of that for me and have provided me customizable literature. That’s the physical part. It was my plan to advertise on social media but after reading your post I will think a bit more, and look into the loyalty program. Thanks again!

Jen

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

Thevioletfox — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 14:21:43 GMT

I'm going to agree with @weredoughcookie on this one - it depends on who I'm trying to reach and about what.

The younger crowd I get best results on Instagram and TikTok. And actually, I probably get the best results from those 2 platforms overall.

If I'm trying to keep things "local" then Facebook groups can be just the ticket.

Email doesn't seem to do very well for me, personally.

I have not tried text messaging yet.

In person and word of mouth beats everything though!

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

threepaths — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 15:03:34 GMT

I think I’ll have some success with word of mouth and in person. But I’m not familiar with tik tok at all lol.

Jen

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

Anthem — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:01:47 GMT

It is so much time and work to connect with customers in ways that create interest, connection, and response. Not something that is easy to do on your own, especially if you're the primary driver of your business as well - kuddos to those of you able to keep up with good consumer communications.

For us, using FB, Insta, & Twitter to provide imagery and consistent messaging to the marketplace has not been great for response and engagement but it does seem to keep our brand consistently out there and keep reinforcing the message and tone we want in the community.

Using email has been solid as a short-term campaign strategy. It has been good when used to create a sense of urgency, support (coordinate with) a social or in-store campaign and to get folks to take action like following social pages, downloading the app, or sign-up for text services.

Texting results are all over the place. Some seem to provide great feedback, others seem to get no response at all. Email has provided the most consistent interaction with customers but still trying to figure out what resonated with customers over text. Seems that same-day offers have worked the best so far.

Co-branding with other businesses in town has also been successful. I provide a generic multi-use code for them to send via their channels inviting their customers to visit our location. As they do we provide an incentive for them to go visit the other business. We also send messages to our customers on their behalf. Not the greatest revenue-generating campaign but probably one of the best at attracting new customers at low risk, low cost.

Re: What is the most effective way to reach your customers?

Twisted-Flavor — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 00:45:32 GMT

Whats your ROI when using email marketing through square?