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Whether you're a small business retailer or planning your first pop-up store, your window display is one of the most powerful weapons in your arsenal of tools to stand out from the competition and draw in foot traffic. Not only are you going head to head with other small businesses, but those pesky big box retailers and chain stores as well. Luckily for you, most small businesses pay little to no attention to creating effective window displays due to limited resources, while all the big guys are too busy being too uniform and boring for anyone to really look twice. 

Meaning this is your chance to use window displays as a way to not only highlight your unique personality, but turn the heads of those passing by and engage them enough to stop, look back, and walk-in to your store where your floor staff or products can sweep them off their feet and get them to make a purchase.

Sounds pretty enticing right? 

Okay, but maybe you're thinking, "I'm not a designer," or "I don't have a creative bone in my body," and all those other excuses we're taught to make any time we're confronted with something that requires us to tap our artistic sides. This post will hopefully you put all those fears aside, especially if you don't have the budget to hire a professional visual merchandiser, and get you rolling up your sleeve and getting ready to master the art of putting together unforgettable window displays for your store.

Let's get started.

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We recently shared the most effective ways to use Youtube marketing to increase sales.

Today we want to feature the stores that are doing Youtube marketing right. These are the online stores and small businesses that mastered these tactics to build a real following around their products.

They’ve built their audience in one of two ways. In this post, we feature stores with amazing channels and great videos, and also discuss their video strategies.

These are not the slick ads you saw during this year’s Super Bowl (though there’s one exception!). And these are not from the major retailers you’ve known all your life. Instead, these videos are from small businesses just like yours.

They are the stores that have created consistently great video content around their products without spending fortunes on production. You too can match the quality of most of these videos using a good camera and a steady tripod, or with a single videographer.

If you have a good video marketing strategy, it’s possible that you too can build a seven-figure business based on Youtube marketing. For the stores we feature below, a branded channel consistently filled with new content is already a given. Each of them excel in other ways.

We present them as organized along two tracks: the stores that create amazing tutorials to their products; and the stores that are outstanding at story-telling with their positioning videos.

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Pop-up shops are about creating an experience, allowing you to connect with customers in a physical space that communicates your brand message. As one of the fastest growing segments in retail, experiential commerce is really all about telling a story. In my last post, we looked at how to determine the purpose of a pop-up shop and find the perfect location. Now it's time to ensure that the actual physical space tells a story that will make a lasting impression on your customers and the media.

Due to the short-term nature of pop-up events, there isn't the luxury of being able to establish your brand through repetition, as with most stores. Limited customer exposure means that your visitors need to be immersed in your brand messaging in order to get your message across, surrounding them with the lifestyle that your brand represents. Of course, just like any other physical retail space, telling your story starts long before anyone sets foot in your space.

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When exploring new opportunities, marketers tend to land on sweepstakes, giveaways, or contests as tactics to quickly help grow their audience. In doing so, many set their expectations too high assuming that giving something away for free will generate amazing results for their company.

This isn’t always the case though. Many businesses run sweepstakes and contests with high hopes, but their promotions end up falling short of the expected outcome. In turn, this leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth and they avoid running them again.

Here are 11 ways your marketing campaign may fail, and what you can do to increase your chances of running a successful promotion.

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When it comes to making buying decisions online, customer reviews and testimonials can be the the deciding factor that make or break a sale.

Displaying positive feedback from your customers on your website demonstrates that you have existing sales and provides social proof for potential customers who are thinking about buying from you.

In fact, word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchases, while 63 percent of online customers say they are more likely to buy on sites with positive reviews.

So, what are the ingredients of a killer testimonial, and what's the secret to generating them on a regular basis?

Read on.

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Let’s say you’re running a successful store. You’ve figured out inventory, you’ve got a healthy amount of traffic, and your customers are raving about your products. Have you covered all your bases?

Not necessarily. You could still be experiencing a huge number of lost sales.

How? Through shopping cart abandonment.

We shared an astonishing fact a little while ago that comes from a roundup of studies: 67.45% of online shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes a sale. That implies that your sales numbers may only be one third of what they could potentially be.

Now it may not be possible to persuade all cart-abandoners to go through checkout and triple your sales. Some customers may have never had the intention to purchase in the first place. But it’s worth putting in the effort to resolve as many lingering hesitations as you can, because a significant percentage of them are persuadable.

You can find on that previous post our discussion of the typical reasons cited for cart abandonment, as well as how to prevent it before it happens.

Today we want to zoom in on one of the most effective ways to recover lost customers after they abandon their carts: the Email Recovery Campaign. Then we’ll share the tools you need to set one up for yourself.

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Google “How to Open A Pop-Up Shop,” and you’ll find articles covering everything from Kanye West to Toys ‘R’ Us. Most of these posts offer valuable insights, but a deeper dive is necessary if you want create a pop-up shop experience that builds buzz and boosts sales for your brand.

When it comes to pop-ups, it’s all about the small nuances that help extend your brand DNA to your shopper, and help you present your product at its best. Breaking down what to look for in a retail space by exterior and interior amenities is a great way to compartmentalize what you’re truly looking for in a space, and to prioritize what you deem as most important.

Here are ten criterion to consider when scouting pop-up locations.

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Have you heard of Marie Forleo?  

She's the creator of the award-winning show MarieTV and has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Forbes.com, and The New York Times among others. Marie was recently interviewed by Tony Robbins as well as Oprah as one of the world’s leading online marketing experts and thought leaders for the next generation. 

She also happens to run a multimillion dollar online media business.

Through her own brand of wisecracking advice, Marie inspires tens of thousands of entrepreneurs to take charge of their success and happiness by boosting their business skills, shedding excuses and injecting massive amounts of fun into each day. 

Recently Marie opened up enrolment to B-School, her flagship online training program for entrepreneurs that helps them achieve success by building unique and profitable businesses - something we're also very passionate about.

That's why we're pleased to announce that we're giving away two spots to B-School to two lucky entrepreneurs. 

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For nearly a decade now, A/B testing has been the not-so-well-kept secret of the web world only known to the pros, the initiated and the curious. It’s the method of choice for startups and growth hackers when it's comes to improving online conversions and achieving growth.

But more and more ecommerce merchants are making the leap and starting to use A/B testing to improve sales and get the most out of their hard earned traffic.

You can use it to test anything from landing pages and web copy to emails and search ads. The advantages are substantial, and more than enough to compensate for the time it takes to run an experiment on your site.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, most people aren’t as aware of this measurement tool as they should be. What this article hopes to do is walk you through the processes and advantages of using A/B testing in your business.

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You might be convinced that selling offline is too risky and expensive for your brand. You've heard the horror stories about retail and dealing with customers in person, and the terror might feel worse than the last scary movie you saw. But what if I told you that you were missing out on a major opportunity, one that comes with little to no commitments and minimal costs? But how major exactly? According to Storefront, temporary retail, more popularly known as pop-ups, are expected to generate $80 billion on an annual basis.

Luckily, not only is there an abundance in the type of locations you might try out when getting started, you can also accomplish and check off a number of goals, while still keeping in mind that you're in mighty good company in the process.  

But even if you’re stubborn as a horse or just plain hesitant about jumping on the bandwagon, here’s 8 (really good) reasons why you should do it anyway. 

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