Marketing for Boutiques: 10 Actionable Strategies

Owning (or running marketing) for a boutique is stressful.

There are so many voices crowding the market out there. How do you stand out? How do you successfully showcase and draw people to your business and what you’re selling?

Do you need to hire a boutique marketing firm? How often should you post on Facebook? How do you promote your boutique business?

Here we’ll go over some actionable strategies and approaches to marketing for boutiques – to help your business really stand out, and therefore, get more sales.

(We’ll also go over 1 seemingly simple but surprisingly effective tool you should be taking advantage of…)

Email Marketing for Boutiques

Using email in your marketing is a no-brainer.

It’s cheap. It’s effective. It’s widely used – and with good reason.

Since email marketing is so widely used, how can you go about it in a way that stands out?

Here are some tips:

• Run A/B tests to see what kinds of headlines, preview text, body copy, and offers best resonate with your specific audience
• Experiment with different kinds of copy to help develop a unique brand voice
• Depending on what connects with your audience, you can be quirky, business-like, funny, serious, or anything in between - but, in general, try to keep your copy focused on what your customers get rather than what they have to do

All of that being said, below are a few common strategies you can employ with email marketing. (Take these and make them your own based on the tips above.)

1. Newsletters

You can use email to keep your customers up-to-date about what’s new and what’s going on with your business.

You can also use this to help drive people to your promos and discounts, helping you get that extra boost in sales.

Make sure your newsletters give updates that people actually care about. Make sure they provide value and are beneficial to the people reading them – not just all about promoting yourself and your business.

2. Targeted Campaigns

You can use email marketing tools like MailChimp to help you segment your email lists. That way, you can organize your contact list according to various criteria such as purchase history, wish list activity, or cart abandonment.

This kind of relevant messaging can be effective because you’re speaking directly to your audience.

The more relevant your messages are, the more likely it is that people will actually respond to and take advantage of whatever it is you’re offering, because they’ll see more clearly how it benefits them.

3. Flash Sales

Email can be a highly effective way to quickly notify a large number of people when you’re running a flash sale.

A flash sale becomes prime fodder for enticing subject lines that employ genuine scarcity marketing marketing.

And with email software, it’s easy to throw together a quick “flash sale” email blast that goes out to all of your relevant customers and leads.

Social Media Marketing for Boutiques

Social media marketing is a very broad concept. Each social media platform is an entire animal in and of itself.

The social media platforms you choose to pursue may depend on your audience (for example, if you target primarily Gen Z folks, TikTok would be a good avenue, while Facebook may be good for other groups of people).

Let’s go through a few samples of different types of social media.

1. Facebook

Facebook is losing popularity – but it’s still going strong. According to DemandSage, “Facebook has 264 million monthly active users in the United States and Canada alone.”

Therefore, unless your audience consists entirely of the younger crowd, you’d be remiss not to at least consider a Facebook marketing strategy.

You may already know this and might simply be wondering, “How often should I post on Facebook?”

Well, that depends – in general, the more the better (for Facebook, 1–2 times per day may be a good sweet spot). But in actuality, WordStream points out that organic reach on Facebook isn’t great.

So instead of relying much on organic posts, you’ll want to consider Facebook Ads. If you’re unsure how to go about ads, you can consider hiring someone who solely focuses on social media ads, or you could outsource this to a marketing agency such as Neil Patel Digital.

2. YouTube

WordStream also mentions how YouTube is a viable option as far as social media marketing.

When we think of social media, we tend to think of sites like Facebook, but YouTube is arguably the best social media site to use for video promotion.

Consider implementing a YouTube video content publication plan. Think about what videos would provide value to your intended audience, and consistently start publishing and promoting them. You can also take advantage of free video editing software to enhance the quality of your videos without breaking the bank.

Another way to take advantage of YouTube is to ask your customers to post product reviews or other content about your product – the more you can get people talking about your business, the better.

3. TikTok

While TikTok is dominated largely by Gen Z, 59% of TikTok users are actually in older demographics.

Which means TikTok can have a much broader audience than you might think. And it’s growing immensely in popularity!

Keep in mind a few details regarding TikTok marketing:

• Videos can be 1 minute maximum
• The platform can be a good one for using influencers to promote your products
• Posting often is rewarded more

SMS Marketing for Boutiques

Easily one of the best ways to really stand out in your boutique’s marketing is to engage in SMS marketing.

This is the 1 tool that’s surprisingly simple yet immensely effective. After all, 98% of text messages are read. You already know this intuitively – people are constantly checking their phone and always see their texts.

(In contrast, using email as an example, you have no idea whether people will actually see your email campaigns. In fact, you can expect that about 75% of your audience will never even open your email.)

Think about it. If you received an email saying, “3 hours left to get 20% off any [fill in a product you were thinking about purchasing]!!” – would you even see it?

Now imagine you received the same message but via SMS. You’d definitely see it! And you’d be much more likely to take advantage of it.

With all of that in mind, here’s how to engage in effective SMS marketing for your boutique.

1. Find an SMS platform that Fits Your Needs

You obviously can’t just text all your customers from your phone. While some email marketing platforms offer SMS, the functionality is limited.

Your best option is to go with an SMS platform like Mobile Text Alerts that’s easy to use and has all the functionality you need:

• Easy interface, so you don’t have to spend a lot of hassle figuring out how to use it
• Accessible (and knowledgeable) customer support, so you can get help and guidance whenever you need it
• Robust options, so you have the flexibility to dig deeper if you want

Some of the functionality that SMS platforms give you include:

• Options to let your customers sign up by texting in a particular word (this gives people an easy way to subscribe to your texts)
• 2-way “chat” capabilities (this gives you an easy way to carry on individual conversations with your customers, to help build connections and engagement)
• Reporting and analytics (this gives you an easy way to track how your SMS campaigns are going)

2. Give People a Reason to Subscribe

One of the trickiest parts of SMS marketing is simply getting people to subscribe to receive your texts. People are much more hesitant to give up their phone numbers than they are their email addresses.

With that in mind, what you need to do is provide good incentives for people to subscribe.

Usually this involves offering some kind of perk right then and there when they sign up, or on their next visit or purchase.

In addition, you want to communicate the value people will regularly receive by subscribing to your text alerts. After all, it’s quite the privilege to show up in people’s personal SMS inboxes – the same place that they communicate personal messages to their spouse, their grandparents, their parents, their kids, and their close friends.

So you need to convince people that your messages are worth taking up that personal space.

Some examples:

“

Text DISCOUNTS to 43828 to receive exclusive monthly offers that you won’t be able to find anywhere else! (PLUS, get $20 off your next purchase.)

“

FREE shipping on your order if you join our text club by texting INSIDER to 833-756-2839. You’ll be the first to know about new products, breaking updates, and unbeatable discounts!

3. Use Attractive Graphics

Particularly if the product you sell is something visually appealing (for example, clothing or jewelry), you can consider boosting your SMS marketing efforts with visually appealing images.

Pairing your SMS with attractive graphics could help draw attention to the product you’re showcasing and help you see even better success with your SMS marketing.

Texts with graphics are actually called MMS (which stands for “multimedia messaging”). And in case you’re budget-conscious (and who isn’t?), something to keep in mind is that MMS typically cost more to send.

So you’ll need to weigh the pros against the potential higher costs in order to decide whether (or how often) to include images in your text marketing.

Bonus Marketing Tip: SEO

Here’s one more bonus tip…

Don’t neglect the power of the search engine.

SEO is a tricky strategy because it’s ever-changing and it takes a long time to see results. But the results can be amazing!

Some key principles of SEO include:

• Consistently create valuable content
• Focus on a particular topic so that you can become an authority on that topic
• Target keywords that are low-competition and are relevant to your industry
• See what’s currently ranking in Google for the keyword that you’re trying to target, and create content that’s similar – but more useful to users
• Try to get lots of quality backlinks

Some other misc. tips regarding SEO would include:

• Use AI to help you generate ideas for content (but don’t just post exactly what the AI has written)
• Use a tool like UberSuggest or Moz to help you research keywords and how to rank for them
• Try to get good reviews from review services (such as Google My Business)

Help Your Boutique Stand Out with Effective Marketing

Marketing for your boutique doesn’t have to be stressful. You can take it one step at a time and grow as you go.

The above tips can help give you some direction and ideas to try in order to help give your business a boost.

In particular, we’d like to help you stand out with SMS marketing for your boutique. Hop on a free, 1-on-1 consultation call and you’ll get…

• FREE expert advice specific to your situation
• Any lingering questions answered
• A full, live platform demo, so you can see how SMS marketing actually works

Get your free consultation here.