Marketing for Pop-Up and Promotional Spaces in Shopping Centers OR Why Many Shopping Centers Leave Money on the Table

If you're looking for a (better) way to market your pop-up and promotional space, you're at the right spot. In a few minutes, you'll see how our new, innovative platform will not only increase the occupancy of your mall spaces by at least 20% but also effectively decrease your administration efforts by up to 70%.

When you're managing and leasing a shopping center, there are many things to consider. While rental income from in-line shops is important, so are the occupancy base, the tenant mix and the footfall.

One important way to optimise revenue, occupancy base, tenant mix and footfall is to rent out short-term spaces to upcoming and exciting brands. It gives your shopping center a competitive advantage and influences all your most important KPIs very positively.

In this article, we'll take a look at a few concrete examples, discuss why the new way of managing pop-up and promotional spaces will put your business at the forefront in the long-term, and offer a modern solution.

Why the Traditional Way of Advertising Promotional Spaces in Shopping Centers Doesn't Work Well (Anymore)

For many years, shopping center operators have not placed significant importance on promotional spaces. Therefore, it is not surprising that these spaces have been marketed poorly, in many cases the occupancy is a mere 30% or lower. With the digital era in full force, many shopping centers are not using modern marketing tools when it comes to marketing their promotional and pop-up spaces. Let's take a look at some examples.

How Shopping Malls in Central Europe Market Their Promotional Spaces - especially Switzerland and Germany?

While most shopping centers have promotional and pop-up spaces for rent, some don't allow external tenants to use it therefore limiting the number of new, fresh and exciting concepts! Those shopping malls that do allow external tenants usually simply post a PDF price list on their website, summarizing the available promotional or pop-up spaces for lease within the center. Others only publish a phone number or a contact form. But shopping center spaces have traditionally been marketed without photos, giving little insight into the possibilities of the space. Rarely these spaces are advertised through online ads, newsletters to previous tenants, or even online platforms. Very often there is no information when a space is available which forces brands to inquire creating unnecessary hurdles.

While the minimal efforts described above bring some results, they are far from being the most effective way to properly market promotional and pop-up spaces in a shopping center. Promotional and pop-up spaces have the potential to drive additional footfall and revenue, but many shopping centers haven't made full use of this powerful tool. Occupancy of such spaces often lingers around only 30%.

Inquiries and rental requests are typically handled via multiple emails or several telephone calls. This often takes a lot of time and effort for shopping center managers, and tenants. Time and effort they could be spending on growing their business and building partnerships rather than constant emails and phone calls just to cover the basics such as availability and price.

Shopping Centers in Asia and the U.S have Specialty Leasing Teams

In the U.S., China, and other parts of Asia, shopping center managers have taken the marketing and management process a step further; they don't just rely on PDFs or online contact forms; they have designated teams that focus solely on marketing and managing pop-up and promotional spaces, a category known as "Specialty Leasing". 

Nevertheless the spaces are not promoted through all online channels providing clear and transparent information about pricing and availability. Major shopping center operators with dozens of shopping centers only provide an online or PDF form for tenants to get in touch with them. 

Specialty Leasing teams review applications of tenants, reach out to brands, draft individual proposals, and handle dozens of emails from potential tenants on a daily basis. In this way, these teams can improve the revenue of promotional spaces and the whole shopping center, but this approach is not really efficient; it is very manual and time consuming and therefore often very expensive.

So, how can one reduce this administrative overhead?

Current Struggles and Challenges

The manual processes create many obstacles for the shopping center managers, landlords, and tenants when it comes to promotional and pop-up spaces.

Challenges for Shopping Center Managers

Shopping center managers usually have to address the following problems: * Marketing promotional spaces through media and reaching out to selected brands - often only with floor plans (for some reason photos are rarely used in marketing shopping center space) * Managing the relationship with a potential tenant * Checking the availability and price of a space * Making sure a tenant's concept is in line with the guidelines and not in the negative list; for special cases - getting approval from the management * Preparing contracts, invoices, and other internal documents (e.g. briefings for facility managers).

Struggles for Landlords

Landlords often deal with: * Optimizing the revenue of their tenants and indirectly the rent revenue of their shopping center * Choosing the right concept and positioning for a shopping center * Driving more footfall to the shopping center.

Struggles for Tenants

Tenants face the following issues when looking for a promo space: * Only floor plans, no photos of the promotional space; sometimes additional information on footfall * Finding the appropriate space for their needs; * No or limited information in regards to pricing and availability - only upon request; * Back-and-forth messages with the center managers -- emails, phone calls, text messages -- that might hinder, rather than facilitate, the booking process.

Enter POP UP SHOPS

As you can see, shopping center managers, landlords, and tenants are facing several issues when marketing and renting pop-up and promotional space. They create a lot more manual work than necessary and therefore lead to center managers neglecting this space category.

With POP UP SHOPS, we have built a platform to address the need and create a more efficient way to market, manage, and rent pop-up and promotional space.

Benefits of the POP UP SHOPS' Platform for Shopping Mall Managers vs Traditional Marketing Channels

There are many benefits related to using our platform instead of traditional marketing channels. 

• On POP UP SHOPS, you can offer your spaces to thousands of brands. The website helps you handle everything from receiving booking requests and messages with prospects to pricing and availability. All this is accessible within a single click.

• By far the best benefit of the POP UP SHOPS platform for shopping center managers is the ability to handle special pricing - traditionally existing tenants get individual discounts. Our system allows you to elegantly manage all the different prices in one place dynamically.

• Short-term leases, in particular. Usually, the process requires having to deal with tedious lease documentation.

• One of the handiest benefits is having everything in one place. In other words, there's no need to leave the platform, exchange emails or phone numbers, or have any other form of external communication elsewhere. What's even better -- all the messages between the parties are saved on a secure cloud server and are accessible at any point of time.

• POP UP SHOPS is a great solution for shopping centers that want to rent out their pop-up and promotional spaces in an efficient way, giving them more time to actively market the spaces and use their full potential. Innovative brands are constantly looking for and booking spaces to test new ideas, get first-hand customer feedback, create a unique brand experience, launch a new product, or simply increase their sales capacity. So, if you want to get them as a client, there's no better way than our platform.

Say goodbye to the traditional marketing methods that don't work anymore. Get in touch with us to get your mall spaces on POP UP SHOPS and bookings your way.

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