Whether you want to make a product launch announcement or just introduce your brand to the audience, a pop-up shop is a fantastic idea. Businesses have different goals and objectives for which they start a pop-up shop. It could be that they want to increase their sales, enhance their brand awareness, build a community to increase engagement, or penetrate a new market. Marketers often come up with great pop-up shop ideas to boost their campaigns and drive more sales.
Although the event is called a pop-up shop, it is more like a party than a shop. Calling it a party will make you better understand what it is all about and how it is conducted. When businesses set up pop-up shops, their focus is more on the audience’s experience than the simple retail design elements. The physical setup is usually at its minimal level, but the thought behind the experience of the event is more significant.
If you can develop creative pop-up shop ideas, you can also generate a high level of excitement among your customers, pursuing them to make repeated purchases from you. You would just need to stock your products and set up a checkout stand in terms of the physical arrangement. To start a pop-up shop, you wouldn’t need to do any costly renovation or construct a complete retail outlet. It’s just a temporary marketing campaign to give a boost to your brand image and sales.
Before we discuss some awesome pop-up shop ideas, let’s make it clearer what a pop-up shop is.
What Are Pop-Up Shops?
A pop-up shop is a trend or small event where a brand or business randomly sets up a sales space for a short period. This marketing tactic aims to create a sense of urgency among existing customers and generate the interest of potential customers to buy the goods that the business is selling. The event is conducted for a limited time and has a specific theme to it. Most pop-up shops feature an exclusive giveaway and are created to provide a memorable experience to the audience.
The pop-up shop concept taps into something that many businesses miss out on in their marketing strategies. It’s about building connections and encouraging the engagement of customers. Pop-up shops are rare events where business owners are out there on the frontlines, directly interacting with the target audience. This is better than building a connection from behind a screen or several layers of hierarchy in your office.
Things To Consider Before You Start A Pop-Up Shop
You need to keep in mind certain things before you set up pop-up shops for your business. Ignoring these could lead to the failure of this marketing strategy.
1. The Location Matters a Lot
For a pop-up shop to be successful, you need to choose a killer location. If you start a pop-up shop at a place where there is very little traffic, you won’t draw the attention of the masses the way you want. If you rent a private cafe, make sure it is popular. If you take some space in a commercial kitchen, make sure it’s in a prominent location. If you take on a storefront, check the traffic of people walking by and passing it from morning till night. As long as you pick a stunning venue, you can benefit from increased sales and customer engagement from your pop-up shop experience.
2. Your Staff Matters More Than Your Product
When it comes to short-lived marketing tactics like this, the way you and your staff deal with the customers makes a bigger difference than your product’s quality itself. Make sure you train your staff well before taking them to join you at your pop-up shop. The goal is to make the audience feel comfortable and entertained during the event. Do not bore your customers by lecturing them or giving too many technical details about your product. Arrange for some games, competitions, pop quizzes and other entertaining activities for all those who join the show.
3. The Lighting Is Important
As mentioned earlier, you don’t need to build walls or construct a room to start a pop-up shop. All you need is a desk for the cashier and a reasonable amount of inventory of the products to sell. But one thing that will really make a difference in attracting the crowd is the lighting at your pop-up shop. It should be well lit so that people can see it from a distance and be drawn to it. Your products should be visible enough and neatly displayed at the shop.
A Few Awesome Pop-Up Shop Ideas
Here are some good ideas for a pop-up shop to start in this year or the next.
1. Rent Your Branded Decor
Your brand website gives the first impression to the audience about your brand. A pop-up shop can do the same. Therefore, it is highly recommended to rent branded decor for your pop-up shop. In other words, use the same theme, colors and style for your pop-up shop that you use on all your other marketing platforms and retail outlets.
You can find a local event decoration company that offers customized services for everything from bars and furniture to props and lighting. Ask them to make the decorations as photogenic as possible, so that you can use your pop-up shop photographs to promote your business further on social media for a long period of time. The attendees are also likely to share photos of the event on their social media profiles, especially if they enjoy it. This will give free promotion to your brand, if your pop-up shop is themed the same way as your brand.
2. Let Your Customers Interact With Your Product
The whole point of a pop-up shop is to drive more sales by giving a chance to your customers to interact with your products. Whatever kind of product or service you sell, the audience should be able to interact with it at the pop-up event. The way you decorate your pop-up shop would highlight to the customers how they can interact and participate in the event.
For example, if you sell home decor or furniture, stage your pop-up shop like a real house, so that the audience can picture the setup and items in their own homes.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
If you are in the wedding industry, you can set up pop-up shops like a wedding function where drinks, desserts and guest books are served.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Set up countertops and islands that look like a kitchen for food or kitchenware, or set up an actual kitchen.
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
3. Put Up a Sidewalk Sign
If you start a pop-up shop on a bustling street, which is good because there will be many people passing by, draw in those people by putting up clever sidewalk signs. You can even use memes on these signs to make them entertaining and humorous. A good way to create these signs is to put up your brand logo and slogan on one side and explain your store concept and opening hours on the other side.
If you have allocated more budget for your pop-up shop marketing, you can hire a professional artist to make chalk calligraphy to entice those passing by. Some youngsters might take a picture of your sidewalk signs and post them on their social media if they find them attractive. Sidewalk signs would drive more people into your pop-up shop.
4. Serve Drinks and Snacks
If you run a fancy boutique, you can rent a classy venue for your pop-up shop and serve champagne to the audience. Serving drinks and snacks will give the event an added touch of elegance. If you run a smaller shop, you can give out mini bottles of water.
Serving desserts is also a good idea. Get cookies and cupcakes, and customize them with your logo. Small-sized desserts like cupcakes are perfect for handing out to people on such occasions.
5. Invite Special Guests
If any artists, celebrities, social media influencers, or designers are involved with your brand, invite them over to your pop-up shop. They will attract a larger crowd than you otherwise could and enhance the audience’s interest in the activities. Make the event memorable by organizing art galleries, life-sketching demonstrations, and fun games with celebrities.
A pop-up shop conducted in this way can be great for your social media endorsement. Along with building your brand awareness, you might see this as an opportunity to become a social media influencer yourself.
6. Promote On Your Website
Lastly, don’t forget to upload pictures and details of your pop-up shop on your brand website. If your website is built on Strikingly, it is super easy to edit it, update it, or create new pages on it to highlight your pop-up event. You can consider including one in your next marketing campaign now that you know how to start a pop-up shop.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly offers tons of features to build a beautiful website to showcase your products and services. You can create lots of marketing content through your Strikingly account, such as newsletters, pop-ups, banners, and coupons, which you can use to promote your pop-up shop.
Our customer support system is available 24/7 through our live chat that’s accessible on our website. If you don’t have a website on Strikingly yet, you can create one in just a few hours for free by signing up for an account with us first. We promise we will make marketing more manageable for you and guide you to manage your website like a pro!
