Simple Tips to Improve Retail Marketing
If you’re someone in retail, you need to have a broad toolkit of marketing skills to keep customers coming in. Sales will inevitably slump, and you need to know what to do to get things back on track. Here are some simple tips to improve your retail marketing efforts.
Bt KEVIN DEVOTO
Know What You Offer
The first thing that every marketer needs to know is what they are offering. You have to understand your offer and how it benefits customers. Figuring out what value your retail outfit provides to customers will help you create a strategy for acquiring them. The key to knowing your offer is to perform an extensive inventory of all the products you sell and how you are different from your competition. For example, if you were offering construction management software, you would emphasize how much more manageable it would make your construction projects in the future.
Train Your Sales Associates Better
After you have understood what you offer, the next step is training. If you’re the only person involved in marketing your retail outfit, you need to improve your sales skills. Train your sales associates regularly to keep them sharp and effective. Focus on using time tracking software to make sure they are putting in the time needed to improve their skills. By consistently training your staff, they will eventually start reaping the rewards. The training will enable your team to hit critical KPIs.
Track KPIs More Effectively
Using time tracking software (TMetric) is crucial in all your retail marketing efforts. It is the same thing as using construction management software when building. Using this software will help you analyze how your marketing efforts are going. You can glance at the numbers to see what can be improved. For example, you can see that a particular sales associate isn’t doing a good enough job. This data will allow you to know who needs more training, and who can be tasked with a more prominent role. You can also use these numbers to see what else can be changed. For example, you could see that the number of people visiting is getting less, so you need to find ways of advertising to a broader audience. However, it is almost impossible to see these things if you are not tracking them consistently.
Become a Better Manager
Improving yourself as a manager will help your employees be more effective as well. This improvement can come in the form of developing better interpersonal skills to talk and relate to the people who work under you. You can also find ways of organizing your store to be more enticing to potential shoppers.
Improve Service to Create Buzz
The easiest customer to sell to is one that has already bought from you. The simplest way to improve the reach of your marketing efforts is to target the people who have already bought from you. Provide them with an amazing service that they can brag about, and they will come back for more time and time again. When you give them great service, they will tell their friends. This type of marketing is the easiest to do, but not many companies take advantage of doing it. It is a lot easier to have your customers do the selling and marketing for you. Their friends are more likely to trust what they say about your retail outfit.
Use the Internet to Make Retail Marketing Better
In the age of the Internet, even companies that have an offline presence need to be online. Online retail marketing should be implemented for brands to grow fast. This marketing should include sending periodic coupons and information about discounts to customers. You can capture customer emails when they shop at your store. You can use their phone number and other personal information to follow up with them. You can market on social media websites and create a presence for your brand there as well. Building an online brand that is fun and engaging can have a massive effect on your retail marketing efforts. Ultimately, proper retail marketing should include offline and online methods to maximize results and improve customer satisfaction.
