Like most retailers, we, a small lifestyle retailer selling premium home decor products, also rely on shopping centers. Being small, we lack bargain power. A few of our stores are buried in those big shopping centers and customers complaining it hard to find us. We have some marketing initiatives to increase store traffic, but center management won’t support saying they have a center to look after not just one particular store. Being small again, we have a tight budget. What suggestions would give us to bring more people to our shops.

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Jay’s Answer: Co-market with your fellow hidden mall gems. Instead of approaching the center management individually, approach them as a team with your smaller gems. The goal is to get people to see the mall as containing more than the "usual" offerings.

If you don’t have a budget, then consider some guerrilla techniques in the mall itself. For example, get some friends to dress to get noticed carrying bags around (or their entourage) that has your store name clearly printed LARGE on the bags with gift wrapped items.

Create in-store seminars for how to dress or find gifts for the holiday season (etc) and send out free press releases.

Just because you don’t have a big budget doesn’t mean you can’t achieve big things. It just takes a bit more creativity.