How to Grow Your Pawn Shop’s Online Presence.

Nowadays, having a strong online presence can significantly contribute to a successful business – whatever that business may be. Pawn shops are no different. While you may have an idea of what a pawn shop is, chances are those are outdated notions.

Modern pawn shops even have social media accounts to reach out and be visible from multiple online platforms. If you are an owner of a pawn shop, here are some ways to grow your business’ online presence when you start a pawn shop.

Have a Functional Website

An important aspect of a business in today’s digital age is the official store website. These websites should have all the information a person needs to know about the store. However, having a website is not enough. It is important to have a functional website.

A functional website means that it can provide service to a potential customer as it is. For example, any website can have contact information for a store. However, a step above simply providing contact information would be the website having a portal for sending messages to the owner.

Pawn Shop

For a pawnshop, an interesting feature for a functional website can be an updated inventory of the items available for sale. With this, people can browse through the inventory from the comforts of their home. If you couple that inventory with a simple search engine, then it will be even easier for people to find something that they might have been looking for.

Use Data Analytics

Having your own website means that you can track your visitors and their activities within your website. This may be a bit more technical and may require some training, but the rewards of utilizing data will surely be worth it.

For example, you are able to see which items in your inventory get the most traffic. If you can see that most people are looking through the jewelry in the inventory, then you can use that information to leverage your online presence and cater more to those looking for jewelry. Having access to these kinds of data is basically giving you an idea what those people are thinking about.

Be Present In Multiple Social Media Platforms

Social media is the modern day’s avenue for most online interactions. These are platforms that people use to communicate, interact, and explore the world. If you ask someone where they get their news from, chances are they get their news from social media as well. Because of this, it is highly recommended for shops such as pawn shops to have social media accounts.

However, some businesses feel it is enough to have just one social media account, usually Facebook. Having one social media account in the day and age with multiple platforms available means that you are not maximizing the opportunities that social media can offer.

Furthermore, it has to be understood that different social media platforms typically have different demographics. For example, Twitter and Instagram might have younger users than people on Facebook. This means that by simply being present in multiple social media platforms, you are making yourself visible across a wider demographic.

Be Active In Those Social Media Platforms

While being available in social media platforms is important, one thing to note is that creating social media accounts is just the first step. A successful social media account is one that generates leads and can provide a venue for interaction with people online. This means that the social media accounts have to be active. This is why corporations would actually have a dedicated social media manager to handle these aspects because they know that active social media accounts are able to connect with the modern crowd.

What does it mean to have an active social media account? It means being able to post regularly. When a potential user goes over to a pawn shop’s social media account and sees that it is inactive, or its last post was years ago, this gives the impression that the business doesn’t care. It even won’t be surprised if that person would think that the pawn shop has already closed. Posting regularly tells people that the pawn shop is active and that is a step towards the right direction.

One tip when posting pictures is that it is imperative that high-quality pictures are used. In social media, people are just endlessly scrolling from content to content. It becomes a competition whether a piece of content is worth looking at for a few extra seconds than the others.

To be able to compete, having a high-quality image is imperative. A high quality image does not simply mean that an image is technically high quality (i.e., an image with a significant amount of pixels), but a high quality image for social media standards means that it has to be artfully done.

Aside from posting, interacting with people is also a good strategy. For example, a pawn shop social media account can post an interesting item for sale. This can catch someone’s interest, prompting them to interact with the post and maybe ask a question (e.g., Is this still available? What year was this from? How much is this?).

You can directly answer them privately which is an available option in most social media platforms, but it is recommended to answer them publicly. Answering their question publicly gives information to other people who may have had the same question. Furthermore, answering their question publicly lets people see that your pawn shop social media account is active and willing to interact with other people.

Conclusion

It surely is a lot of work but having a stronger online presence will surely be a factor to the success of your pawn shop. While some of the ways require technical expertise and even the service of a specialist (e.g., website development), some can be done right from your phone (e.g., social media engagement).



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