Retail Industry

Retail advertising: reach your audience

For businesses in the retail industry, omni-channel marketing plans are vital to keep ahead of the competition. Learn the ins and outs of retail marketing and discover how advertising with Spotify can provide the edge your business needs to succeed.

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Retail marketing: overview & industry trends

If you’re reading this, you might already be familiar with retail marketing. But at Spotify, we’re all about breaking it down—so let’s start with the basics. Retail marketing is the process of using marketing and promotional strategies to drive brand awareness, loyalty, and purchase intent of a store’s product inventory—be it online, in store, or anything in between.

Developing a cohesive marketing strategy relies upon properly identifying your target audiences and tailoring your tactics to those consumers. And—in an industry where change is the only constant—it’s important to stay in the know about new trends occurring within the retail sector. Keep on scrolling to learn more.

Industry insights:

  • 32%

    Spotify mobile listeners are 32% more likely to have spent over $5,000 shopping on the internet in the last six months.¹

  • 53%

    Spotify saw a 53% growth in user-generated shopping playlists year over year.²

Reaching your retail audience

Marketing strategies for retailers might include sales and product promotions, digital advertising, and social media presence aimed at prime prospective buyers. Finding innovative ways to reach your target audience can be challenging within the retail space—but when armed with the proper tools, it can become a seamless part of your marketing process. That’s where Spotify Advertising comes in.

Our simple, data-driven targeting technology helps your business find its target customers and then reach them across their devices and daily activities—anytime they’re tuning into Spotify.

Learn more about audience targeting.

Customer spotlight: Uber Eats

Hear directly from UberEats leadership on how they reached their target audiences at scale with audio advertising.
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Creating digital retail ads

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Standing out from the vast crowd of retailers has become even more challenging in the digital age. Ensuring that you create advertising content that directly appeals to your target audience is one of the best ways to maximize your brand’s reach. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most desirable qualities of a compelling retail ad.

  • Actionable: Retail marketing typically aims to inspire purchase interest in product lines, and your ad strategy should be no different. Always include specific and purposeful calls-to-action in your messaging.
  • Relatable: Create ads that are relevant to your target audience using language and details that will be familiar to them. Allowing customers to visualize themselves using your merchandise offerings can be an effective way to drive sales.
  • Memorable: Ensure that your ad’s message will stick with the audience long after they first hear or watch it. Use catchy music, clever word play, and interactivity to help you do this.
  1. Comscore Plan Metrix. Spotify Mobile (Web + App), includes Free+Premium. Nov 2022, US. Base 18+
  2. Spotify internal data, playlists that include keyword “shopping”, April 2021 vs. April 2022, US Only.

Retail Marketing FAQs

Marketing strategies for retailers require a seamless market registration with the end consumer across all relevant touchpoints—regardless of their intent to buy in store or online. Aside from an impactful digital audio advertising strategy, retail marketing might also include display ads on related websites, demographically targeted social media campaigns, and other promotional activities.

The main types of retailers include department stores, supplier brands, specialty stores, grocery and drug stores, category-specific stores, and eCommerce only. Although there are many other niche types under the umbrella of retail, these are the most commonly referenced.

Yes! Creating ads on Spotify is easy. You can produce, manage, and measure your self-serve ad campaigns with Spotify Ad Studio. We provide your business with help identifying your target audience and providing voice-acting talent, to make creating your first retail ad as simple as possible.

Further reading

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