Keeping up with current trends takes more than simply offering the latest products and fashions, and businesses looking to boost sales may want to consider altering their approach to retail marketing. Using social media to interact with customers and forge relationships with your audience can be made more useful if you're connecting with them on a more intimate level. 

Entrepreneur recommended befriending customers by posting content similar to what they themselves might be posting and would want to see in their social news feeds. Funny photos and posts about trending topics may be more effective than solely focusing on your brand and products. News stories relevant to your products can also be engaging. For instance, fashion retailers may want to keep an eye on celebrity gossip, highlighting stories in which stars are wearing clothing or accessories that customers could find in your online store.

A recent eMarketer study revealed that 88 percent of marketers will be using social media to reach consumers by the end of 2014. By taking a unique approach to these marketing channels, retailers can stand out from the crowd and better engage their audience. A good marketing strategy, in combination with effective ecommerce software can help improve the brand experience, which will aid in the growth of your retail business.

The right approach to online merchandising can help drive up sales, but with so many retail marketing strategies to choose from it can be difficult to discern the best options for your brand. When you are gearing up to improve your merchandising tactics, the first step is to define your target audience. Once you have a better idea of the type of shoppers browsing your online store, you will be able to choose the ideal venues to market merchandise on your site.

Smart Insights suggested looking into your retail customer intelligence to get to know your customer base better. The right retail management software can track data such as the devices people are using to browse your site, the way they arrived at your online store and their location. You might also want to find out how shoppers are arriving at your site. Did they search for a particular product or follow a link from one of your social media channels? This information can help you form a big picture of your average customer and help you tailor the online shopping experience to fit that demographic.

The way you present your products on your site can influence sales as well. For example, listing related items on a product page may inspire shoppers to purchase complementary goods, according to Practical Ecommerce.

To reach customers and make sales, retailers need to ensure their marketing strategies are effective and visible to their audience, and mobile technology may hold the key to a successful campaign. A recent study from Yes Lifecycle Marketing revealed that mobile retail marketing is quickly becoming the main focus for many merchants. 

In the last quarter of 2013, 100 retail executives responded to the survey, and many placed more emphasis on mobile marketing for 2014 than they did in 2013. Specifically, 13 percent said they planned to invest the majority of their marketing budgets into mobile in 2014, whereas only 3 percent allocated the most funds to mobile last year.

"The future emphasis on mobile, web and social demonstrates the consumer need for marketers to seamlessly integrate online and offline shopping experiences," Yes Lifecycle Marketing president Michael Fisher explained. "This move underscores retailers' commitment to marketing across all channels."

Social media is seeing more interest as well. The study found that 46 percent of retailers are planning to convert their social channels into point of sale options for their customers by 2018.

Tech-savvy shoppers these days expect high-quality experiences when they visit retailers, whether online or at brick-and-mortar locations. CIO pointed to trends such as showrooming and the rise in ecommerce spending as reasons retailers will need to look more closely at the services they provide customers and how applications can be streamlined into an omnichannel platform for more efficient use.

"Starting in 2014 and continuing over the next two to three years, retail will reinvent itself as omnichannel leaders reach for customer relationship, relevancy and reciprocity," said Robert Parker, vice president and general manager of IDC retail, Energy and Manufacturing Group.

Ecommerce software that provides secure point of sale options across devices, for example, may prove especially useful as more shoppers turn to their smartphones and tablets to visit retail sites. Marketing will play a major role in coming years as well. This sector of retail, along with advertising technology, is expected to grow 50 percent by 2017, according to CIO.

One way retailers can embrace omnichannel strategies is to create a custom, personalized experience for every shopper. Apparel reported that combining personalization with product transparency can provide real-time feedback for customers.

Small ecommerce businesses can reach a global audience when they leverage social media, which can help them garner attention for a wider customer base and drive sales. Marketing a brand through social media channels can prove effective at bringing in new customers, and using social ecommerce sites may be useful as well. 

Social ecommerce sites, such as Etsy and Zulily, give small businesses a unique outlet to sell their wares with setups that rival popular social sites like Pinterest and Instagram, according to Business 2 Community. Online retailers can take advantage of the social discovery aspect of sites like these to reach new consumers around the world. Ideally, retailers will want to bring these customers to their own sites, which means it will be key to have an intuitive point of sale that improves the shopping experience. Good POS software can help convert site visitors to completed sales.

When it comes to using social media in other ways, The Huffington Post suggested that engaging the audience involves more than posting relevant content. Responding to consumers and starting conversations about products and services can help bolster a brand's online presence. It's also important for retailers to do more than advertise their products, and adopt the 80/20 rule, the source pointed out. Roughly 80 percent of the content being posted should revolve around the overall interests of the target audience, while only 20 percent should focus on the brand itself, helping turn a business into a leader in its niche.

Engaging consumers online to drive up sales is nothing new, but the latest retail customer intelligence revealed that the social media sector of retail marketing is growing and changing. Experian Marketing Services recently released a report that highlighted the growing importance of social media when it came to marketing, and Pinterest appeared to be growing more prominent.

"While search still dominates, social media is becoming a significant source of traffic across the Internet as consumers increasingly use sites like Facebook, Pinterest or YouTube more as discovery platforms," Bill Tancer, Experian Marketing Services' general manager of global research, explained. "… For retailers, all eyes are on Pinterest."

Overall, consumer traffic to ecommerce stores via social media sites jumped from 6.59 percent in March 2013 to 7.72 percent in March 2014. The main driver of this increase is Pinterest, a site where retailers and consumers can post, share and save photos of merchandise. The report found that 64 percent of retailers include Pinterest in their marketing emails, making it the social media site with the largest year-over-year increase in use by retailers.

Pinterest has been operating for about four years, but it is still relatively new compared to sites like Facebook and Twitter which have been around for 10 and eight years respectively. Retailers can use the site to advertise new products, highlight trends and encourage brand loyalty.

Shopping cart abandonment is an issue that plagues online retailers, but adapting marketing and sales strategies can help reduce the rate of shoppers abandoning their purchases at the point of sale. The Baymard Institute compiled cart abandonment rates from 27 separate studies and found the average rate between 2006 and 2014 to be 67.91 percent. With more than half of consumers deciding against buying items from online retailers after browsing, there is great potential for merchants to make improvements to POS software and marketing techniques to convert abandoned sales to fulfilled orders.

A recent eMarketer study examining this issue revealed that while shopping cart abandonment may be troubling for retailers, it can actually help them tailor their marketing strategies. When online shoppers add items to their virtual shopping carts, retailers are able to see what they were planning to buy even if they don't go through with the purchase.

This information can be used to appeal to these customers in cart abandonment emails. Sending an email to a consumer who abandoned a cart can help complete a sale. SeeWhy reported that 41 percent of abandonment was due to customers not being ready to make purchases, so sending reminder emails can help bring them back to complete the transaction. This can help drive sales up, as returning customers are nine times more likely to buy something than those visiting a site for the first time.

Marketing through email used to be a relatively straightforward process, but now that ecommerce software has become more popular and consumers check their messages on a slew of devices, the process has grown more complex. The key to a successful retail marketing email campaign is to appeal to all platforms so messages are displayed correctly and coherently whether recipients are reading them on the small screen of a smartphone or at home on their desktop computer.

Recent data indicated that about 48 percent of emails are read on smartphones and tablets, according to Litmus, an analytics firm that focuses on email data. This means that if a marketing email is designed to be read on a computer, mobile users might not be able to see the message properly. This has the potential to significantly reduce the return on investment of the marketing campaign if half of the recipients aren't even able to see the call to action.

Practical Ecommerce pointed out that when crafting marketing emails, retailers can use responsive designs that are coded to adapt to the device on which the email is viewed. It is important to consider the layout of the email, as one with many columns of information may not appear correctly on a mobile device. The size of fonts, images and clickable buttons and links need to be considered as well, as they can change drastically when viewed on a computer versus a smartphone.

The latest retail business intelligence indicates that the ecommerce industry is quickly becoming an international affair, leading U.S.-based online merchants to prepare for global customers and sales. Multichannel Merchant recently released its MCM Outlook 2014 Survey, which revealed that only 27 percent of online merchants in the U.S. are ready for global ecommerce. Yet, retailers surveyed for the report indicated that, on average, 8.75 percent of their online sales came from other countries.

"Whether you sell B2B or B2C, U.S.-based merchants need to have a global game plan," said Tim Parry, MCM's managing editor. "There are several emerging economies with a hunger for goods they can only get from the United States, and several ways those U.S.-based merchants can reach those customers."

Perhaps most importantly, you will want to ensure your point of sale is internationally friendly. According to the report, one-third of merchants have created international versions of their online stores that may incorporate POS systems that can provide international payment options. They have also worked with international marketing companies to help gain visibility in other countries. Retailers just testing the waters may want to investigate international marketplaces like Alibaba and Amazon, as 40.5 percent of survey respondents have already begun doing.

The retail industry in Brazil has been doing well – better than expected, in fact. According to Forbes, January's sales increased 0.4 percent over December's numbers in the South American marketplace, and annual growth is even more impressive at 6.2 percent. However, experts are wary of getting too excited about this growth following a rough year for Brazilian retail.

"We remain cautious about activity in this first quarter of the year," Marcelo Salomon, Barclays' chief Brazilian economist, told Forbes.

In December, sales dropped 0.2 percent, adding to the weak economic growth of 4.3 percent for this industry. Reuters reported that this was the worst year for the retail industry since 2003, due in part to slow job growth, weakening currency and tighter lending. In January, the growth was strewn across a few different sectors – fuel, furniture, supermarket, medicine and office supplies all saw gains, and all but supermarket sales had recovered from losses in December, Forbes indicated.

Retailers in the Brazilian market may want to revisit their retail marketing strategies to take advantage of the slight growth and draw in more customers. Something as straightforward as upgrading POS software can make a merchant more appealing to consumers.