On-site shopping centre events – worth the expense? (Copy)
The on-site event has long been a staple of the shopping centre marketing programme. A marketing solution to guarantee a spike in footfall, a successful achievement of KPIs and a means of getting column inches promoting the centre while it looks its best.
With the relaxing of COVID regulations, this summer has seen a return of themed events at shopping centres across the country – but are they still ticking the boxes they need to tick – and are owners and operators getting the required long-term return on the investment?
Live music, beaches, street food vendors, interactive installations, licensed character appearances, outdoor cinemas, treasure hunts, workshops…these are all likely to feature during a summer when there are more stay at home holidays being taken and the visiting public are craving activity and entertainment more than ever. That would suggest that this summer is the perfect time to maximise the potential of a well planned, targeted and engaging event on site. The potential is to go beyond massaging footfall figures and confidently comparing them against like for like figures from summers past, but to leverage the opportunity to build a connection with visitors, and a platform to communicate with them in the future.
An event is intended to attract people that wouldn’t necessarily visit the shopping centre to simply shop, and to expose these ‘new’ visitors to the centre’s offer. Invariably the communication programme to successfully promote the event is a significant proportion of the annual marketing budget. There is an opportunity to transform these events from one dimensional footfall drivers to the first stage of a long-term customer engagement programme. With computer vision technology coupled to customer (or visitor) journey mobile applications linked through centre wi-fi, centres are able to gather real-time data from their visitors. The value is two-fold: The traditional measurement of success in terms of footfall is much more accurate as it is linked to unique visitors and how long they remain on-site; the second is that an initial dialogue has been started with new visitors on an opt-in platform that enables the centre to offer timely value-added messages. So essentially rather than being one-off event visitors coming in to the centre for distraction and entertainment, they become much more valuable as engaged responsive leads that can be primed to return and shop.
Data gathering is a two way street where the consumer holds the power of veto, which is exactly how the relationship should work. An area where retail has improved markedly in recent times is building consumer relationships so that the data exchange can happen. Admittedly, the majority of success in this area has come from the on-line channel, but increasingly physical shopping spaces have the technology available to follow suit and can benefit from the resulting metrics and become much more efficient in their communication and marketing spend. The success of on-line retail has proven that the shopping public are prepared to share their data, provided that the information that comes back is relevant or interesting to them. If a centre is able to send timely messages to potential customers about stores, offers or activities that are known to be interesting, then the likelihood of a positive experience, both of the brand and the shopping on-site, increases dramatically. This in turn increases the chance of a return visit, and the precious commodity of peer to peer endorsement of the centre.
The key to all of this is that the centre itself remains the determining factor to success. The technology provides the engagement platform, the event may provide the content or driver, but the physical shopping centre and brands that live there are elements that have to deliver on customer expectation. Deliver on that expectation and the summer event can be the start of a beautiful and profitable new customer relationship.
To chat about how CAKE can help with integrating technology in to your retail marketing strategy, please drop us a line!