You’ve invested and perfected your marketing, you’ve crafted clever commercials, priced your products competitively and worked hard to get those customers in the door. Now what? Time to focus on the experience inside your store. Including what they hear inside. Selecting the right voiceover actor for your in-store Announcements is a great way to build your brand and reap undeniable results by driving customer engagement and dialogue.
Voice Over Helps Brick and Mortar Businesses Direct Your Customers to Product Offerings
The way we shop is changing. Online shopping is ubiquitous and brick and mortar sales are down, so once a customer does come to your store you have two points of engagement: your front-line staff and your in-store displays and in-store radio – or overhead announcements. And here’s where creativity and content can help direct your customers to your product offerings and hiring a professional voice over talent can help.
You can plan the best promotions, but if people don’t know about them, they won’t take advantage of them. With in-store announcements played on in-store radio, you can help customers find all the great deals you’re offering. You can tell your customers about items they might not have put on their shopping list, but can’t resist. You can drive traffic to certain aisles where you might have a loss leader of 50% off bread today right next to the first influx of Christmas cake you’ve displayed enticingly.
What you need from your front-line staff is evolving as well – shifting from employees being a “salesperson” to being an expert, consultant, or even trusted friend. This service-oriented conversation should also be evident in the copy and delivery of your in-store announcements. A voice over pro can talk to your customers as if they were with them on their shopping excursion rather than just listing off sales items or pushing product.
Retailtainment Dials In-Store Shopping Experience “Up to 11”
Retailtainment, as the name suggests, is the fusion of retail and entertainment — an effort on the part of retailers to provide customers with fun, unique experiences that can elevate in-store shopping above anything it’s previously been. You might even say it “dials it up to 11”.
What kind of retailtainment should you offer? That depends on your store and customers. Ask yourself — or even better, ask your customers — what would make shoppers come into your stores? Do you need to offer omnichannel services? Should you work on community building? Would varying the gender of the voice over in your in-store announcements and on in-store radio appeal to various demographics you’re trying to reach? The only way to find out is to get to know your customers and try new things. Last year, for example, Walmart stores in Little Rock Arkansas brought in professional bullfighters to sign autographs in-store. The stunt not only attracted a ton of foot traffic, but it got Walmart plenty of coverage from the local press.
Research from Barclaycard has given brick-and-mortar stores hope by revealing that hosting in-store events and creating an immersive in-store daily audio experience can help them surpass the competition. After surveying 250+ senior decision makers in retail, and over 2,000 customers, researchers found that hosting events and providing entertainment in physical stores boost annual turnover by 14% on average.
Key Takeaways For Providing A Superior In-Store Audio Experience
- Hire a professional voiceover announcer. Many people think they have good speaking voices, but talking live is not the same as doing it for a recording. A professional will be able to speak clearly and slowly enough to be well-understood – and do so without sounding like a robot.
- Watch the volume level. This is especially important in stores, where the normal sounds of business reach surprising levels. An announcement that seems unobtrusively soft will be drowned out by background store noise during peak hours. Still, it’s important not to overcompensate and make it overly loud.
- Don’t break into the music too often. This is especially important for overhead announcements that play double duty and Kare used while people are waiting on the phone. Time seems to go faster for people who have a chance to get into the music, so refrain from cutting in every 10 seconds. It’s also important for restaurants and other retail locations. If there’s music to be heard, people want to hear it – not a voice cutting in all the time.
- Vary your messages. Hearing the same message over and over again quickly becomes annoying and obtrusive. It’s even worse if it’s combined with the problem of cutting in too often. These mistakes are all too common in phone systems, but sometimes afflict physical locations as well.
Not only will the announcements get your shoppers’ attention, but background music will hold their attention and grow your business by resonating with your client base. Music changes the way people feel: it can keep them in your store longer and invite them to return. Furthermore, the careful use of voice interspersed with music creates advertising and selling opportunities that directly impact the bottom line. Create the atmosphere you want and enhance your brand.