How to Promote Your Pop-Up Shop
Pop-up shops are a fantastic way to generate a buzz around a business or product and reach new potential customers. The benefits of hosting a successful pop-up are endless, but working out how to make your pop-up successful can be tricky.
There are many factors that come into play when you want to make your pop-up successful. These factors broadly fit into the 4 P’s of marketing:
- Price - ensuring your product is priced correctly to attract your desired customers
- Product - ensuring that your product meets the wants and needs of your desired customers
- Place - ensuring that your desired customers can find and purchase your product
- Promotion - ensuring that you create compelling messages around your products and that you communicate them effectively with your audience
Each P needs to be considered and best practices applied. In this guide, we will focus on just one of the 4 P’s of marketing - promotion. Giving you some tips and advice on how to best promote your pop-up shops.
Promote on Social Media
Social media is the first tool that most people think about when they want to promote a product, service, business or event. This is for good reason, unlike many other marketing tools social media is cheap and easy to access, it can also help you reach a huge audience with your message in a compelling way.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok provide an opportunity for businesses to tap into the attention of their audience. In fact, in Europe, the average user spent 1.57 hours on social media a day in 2019.
When you are promoting a pop-up shop, think of it as an event. Unlike regular shops, pop-ups have start and finish times. This can help you generate a buzz and feeling of scarcity.
When you are promoting your pop-up on social media, create intrigue and suspense by posting teasers and drip-feeding information rather than posting everything at once. For example, you may create a series of posts over a number of weeks to release key information such as:
- Location
- Date
- Products that will available
- Anything special that will be taking place
In order to target the right audience, you may also decide to localise your organic social media as much as possible such as tagging the location of your pop-up when you publish news and updates on Instagram or Facebook. This means that those checking out the location will see your updates in their feed.
Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool that offers a level of control and predictability which is difficult to find elsewhere. If you have properly built your email list you will have a ready-made audience of engaged and interested individuals that you can promote your pop-up to.
When you run pop-up shops, it can be a good idea to collect location data when people sign up. Doing this will allow you to segment your data and target those who are most relevant to the pop-up you are running. For example, if your email list has members from across Europe, you may choose to target just German members when you are running a pop-up shop in Berlin.
The more specific you can be with your messaging, such as promoting a local pop-up to local people, the better the results you will see and the less likely it is that you will alienate other members of your email list.
Test Traditional Media
Traditional media platforms such as newspaper ads and outdoor advertising are often overlooked in a digitally focused marketing world. However, these types of media can be very beneficial for promoting your pop-up shop, especially when you use them to target a very specific audience.
Most pop-up shops are hosted in already busy areas such as shopping centres. By using on-site ads in those areas you can let people who already regularly visit that area know that you are coming. You may also target local newspapers and magazines that can help you generate a buzz in a local area.
Work with Influencers
Influencer marketing has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. Working with influencers can bring a whole host of benefits such as drastically increasing your reach and helping you to create content that truly resonates with your target audience.
Working with local influencers can help you drive awareness with a local audience, making it easier to attract those who are within the catchment area for your pop-up.
It is important to ensure that any partnerships you undertake with influencers are authentic in nature. For example, pick influencers who would genuinely be interested in your pop-up and work with them to create content that is both educational and engaging.
You may also invite influencers to attend your pop-up as a way to attract more customers and develop consistency across your campaign.
Partner with Retailers
Working with other local retailers can be a great way to promote your pop-up event, especially if their audiences are similar to yours.
How you do this is limitless, but even something as simple as leaving leaflets on their counter to inform their clients of what is going on can help create a great buzz. You may take this one step further and create combined experiences across retailers such as offering set promotions or discounts.
Use PR
PR is a crucial part of promoting any pop-up event.
When you focus on creating an engaging experience for your customers, it is always worthwhile getting in touch with local and industry press to see if they want to cover the event. This is exactly the sort of thing that would interest their readers and can be an easy way for them to create content.
Undertaking PR for your event is usually totally free and it only takes a little time to create a short press release and send it out. If you don’t think your pop-up is exciting enough to publish news about, then it probably isn't exciting enough for customers to want to visit.
Test Geofencing
Geofencing might sound complicated, but it isn't really.
When you create a geofence, you create a virtual parameter around a specific location. With a geofence, you can specifically target ads, mainly mobile ads, to an audience at a specific location. For example, if your pop-up is located in a shopping mall, you may create a geofence that captures the entirety of the mall. When someone enters this parameter with a mobile device you can trigger an action such as sending a notification to that phone.
This can be a high-impact way to reach people who are within the immediate area of your pop-up. You may send notifications giving generic information, directions on how to find you or even special deals to entice people to make a visit.
Target with Social Ads
Social media ads are a smart way to reach those who matter to the success of your pop-up. Unlike organic social media which rely on luck in terms of who finds your content, using social ads allows you to be super specific about who sees your ads.
Depending on the ad platform you use, there are lots of ways you can target people with social ads. For example, when promoting your pop-up you may target people based on their location, interests in the products you offer and even their buying habits.
Promoting Your Pop-Up Shop
There are lots of ways to promote your pop-up shop. Finding the best way to promote yours will depend on who you want to target and what you want to achieve. Use the tips we have outlined in this guide to get started with your pop-up promotions and then double down on the areas that create the best result for you.