It’s true that digital marketing and inbound marketing is crucial for advertising your online store, but did you know that it’s just as important for your brick and mortar store? These days, people automatically turn to Google when they’re looking for products and services, whether those products and services are made and sold on another continent or right around the corner in your neighborhood.

Owners of brick and mortar shops are facing some pretty large challenges. The practice of showrooming–customers testing out products in a physical store and then ordering them from another vendor online–is on the rise, and this practice can be particularly damaging to indie shops.

But it’s not all bad news for brick and mortar stores. Physical shops have some distinct advantages over online stores. The key is to capitalize on those advantages. You’ve got to learn how to be flexible and use the power of only marketing to enhance your offline sales. Here are a few online marketing tips for your brick and mortar store:

Improve Your Local SEO

One of the big advantages that brick and mortar shops have over online shops is that you can provide products to local customers right where they are. You can also handle customer service in person, using real employees and genuine smiles.

Improving your local SEO will help you to reach local customers more effectively. Use local keywords in your blog posts, social media posts, and web page copy. Make sure your business is listed in online business directories like Yelp, Citysearch, and Foursquare. Optimize your website for mobile phones and tablets, and claim your Google My Business listing. Encourage your local customers to write reviews of your brick and mortar store. Reviews are highly influential in attracting new customers.

Embrace the Showroomers

While it can be maddening to watch people come into your store, browse through your merchandise, and then order it online, it’s more productive to embrace the showroomers and welcome the traffic they bring to your shop.

In fact, savvy brick and mortar store owners are partnering with manufacturers to increase traffic to their stores. Consider asking manufacturers to send people to your shop in order to try out their products. Manufacturers can even offer discount codes for your customers. What’s in it for you? You get increased visibility and foot traffic and the endorsement of manufacturers. Greater traffic usually leads to increased sales.

Reverse the Showrooming

There’s another interesting new phenomenon in the retail world, and that’s reverse showrooming. In this scenario, shoppers do their research online and then go to a physical store to make their purchases.

You can encourage this behavior by integrating mobile features into your shoppers’ in-store experiences. For example, you could create an app to identify what’s on sale in your store (Target’s Cartwheel app), allow customers to shop online and pick up their products at your store (WalMart’s Grocery app), or offer digital terminals so customers can easily find what they’re looking for while they’re physically in your shop.

Develop Your Niche Expertise

What is it that your brick and mortar store provides that other businesses just don’t have? What makes your business unique and attractive? It’s crucial that today’s brick and mortar stores not only answer these questions but that you showcase as well.

One of the most attractive attributes of brick and mortar stores in a digital world is that you probably have passionate, highly knowledgeable people working in your store. In fact, they might be so knowledgeable that they could teach workshops or classes at your store or share their knowledge in other ways. Post recommendations, tips, and expert advice from your knowledgeable employees on your blog and social media accounts. People will want to come in and meet your experts.

These online marketing tips are just a handful of the many strategies available to bring more customers into your brick and mortar store. Contact us at Park Slope Softworks to learn more about how to use digital marketing to help your business. You can also get a free SEO analysis of your current website to find out how customers are responding to your content, layout, and design. As your inbound marketing company in Brooklyn, we’re looking forward to helping you.