Most internet retailers know the importance of social media marketing as a direct channel to their consumers. And they’ve duly implemented the easy stuff to compliment standard retail marketing efforts: Facebook pages, Like buttons for products and Twitter accounts. But these services aren’t the only methods that can help increase consumer engagement and yield real rewards for retailers. What about all those bricks-and-mortar retail stores, for one thing?

In the fast-moving world of social media, there are a whole host of social and digital innovations that can help boost retailer efforts in the social sphere.

Here are our top 5 tips to supercharge your retail marketing.

In today’s economy, coupons and offers have never been more popular with consumers. Group deals (sometimes known as social deals) are often touted as the best new social media marketing services to generate traffic and sales, and has propelled the leading providers in this space, Groupon and LivingSocial, to ever increasing heights of popularity.

But how do you make social deals an effective social media marketing tool? How do you get ROI, not just marketing kudos? While these deals — which typically only go into effect once a certain mass of customers is achieved and thus rely on friends pestering one another — can drive more traffic to a retailer, they need to be thought out carefully. Some retailers who’ve run a social deal on sites such as Groupon have complained that it was not effective in customer acquisition, only bringing in the bargain hunters who flit away to the next deal, whereas others have actually lost money.

The key, of course, is planning. So what do retailers need to know before taking the plunge?

The notion that mobile phones could replace cash and wallets has been bandied about in the mobile industry for years now. And Near field communications payments, otherwise known as NFC or contactless payments, has been one of the mobile payment methods that has long captured the imagination.

After all, what could be easier for consumers and retailers than paying for goods with a mere wave of an NFC enabled phone?

It appears, however, that Near Field Communications mobile payments faces a number of adoption hurdles and will have a very limited uptake for the next few years. One of the major challenges is education—for both retailers and the consumer.