Getting Started with Social Media: What 5th Street Market Has to Say

Kim: So if a retailer said, “I can only do one thing from a marketing perspective, what one thing should I do?” what would you tell them?
Somer: Well, that’s a hard one, and here’s why: because the social media is not necessarily easy in the sense that it is time-consuming, but it’s free. So it’s one of those things of like it’s hard to justify not doing it because it’s free to people, and I tell tenants that all the time. I know it takes a little bit of time, and a little bit of commitment to do it, but in a market like this, when everyone’s complaining about marketing having to be the first thing to go because they can’t afford, it’s right there. But then when it comes to traditional advertising and marketing and all those sorts of things, while they’re not necessarily-- and I wouldn’t say that they were any less time-consuming, because you have design and figuring it all that, and all of those sorts of things, it’s obviously much more expensive. I don’t know, that’s such a hard question for me, because it really depends on the business. There’s certain businesses that I would recommend different things to. I don’t know, what would you say to that, Lins?
Lindsey: I’d say, where I worked before in retail that was really successful, at the checkout, when you’re checking out, if you collect their email address as part of the database. Once you have that, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re having an event or you’re having a sale or you’re just wanting to send out an eBlast refreshing your store image, that is the audience that you know has been there. Instead of having them be able to access you whenever they want to, if you can actually get to them, then I’d say that that would probably be the-- instead of them findi ng a newspaper, if it happens to be the one that you’re advertising in--
Somer: Yeah, because if they’re not already your customer, you’re much less likely to get them in the door, versus people who you know know your product, who shop with you, who know what you’re about-- all those sorts of things. As a prime example, one of our events that we just started last year, that was primarily tenant-driven-- it was kind of a tenant idea, so to speak-- is our Holiday Gala, and we’re going to do this again this year, and hopefully from years to come. It’s a holiday event where pretty much the general basis of the event is each of the stores have their holiday party, where they invite their clientele, all their customers, their database, to come in and either-- and they’re all a little bit different. Some of them use the time to have some sort of a sale-- “This is your one time to get 25 percent off,” or whatever it may be-- before holiday shopping. Some of them is just to say thank you and to have a party with champagne and hors d'oeuvres and all those sorts of things. They all have a different feel to them, but it’s an opportunity for each individual store to give back to the customer, and also kind of the market to give back to their customer, and that’s probably been our most successful shopping event, of any type of shopping even that we’ve tried to do before. So that is a good-- yeah, I agree with that one, very much.

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