Retail businesses are having a very rough time in the age of the internet and Ecommerce companies. These business can offer unlimited products at lower prices and can scale to international businesses very quickly. But retail also has some advantages over online and smart retailers use these advantages to compete and sometimes gain even more customers. Here are a few tips that the best retailers use to remain relevant.
Market Heavily at Your Retail Locations
You should first make sure that your retail establishment is set up to heavily market to customers at each location. Remember that customers are attracted to retailers who always present new merchandise and offer sales on attractive goods often. Utilize static clings on glass doors, mirrors, and windows to call attention to your brand, any sales you are having and to get customers to focus on special products or services you want highlighted. Use bold colors and make your retail location one that people want to visit.
Market More Directly to Customers
One of the smartest thing to do is to market directly to your customers. One wonderful way to do this by sending mailers to them. You can create custom communications focused on each of your customers. One inexpensive way to do this is with custom stickers that you can attach to a mailer. You can buy these stickers to say precisely what you want and decide which of your customers to send which sticker. Perhaps one set of customers buy sweaters from you all the time and you want to highlight that the new sweater collection is on sale. Affixing a custom sticker to a correspondence will look elegant and stand out. Get creative knowing that you can purchase custom vinyl stickers in any color and any amount and direct them right at your customers.
Use the Power of the Internet to Your Advantage
Set up an e-commerce version of your entail shop and stock it with every item you sell and perhaps even more than you offer at your retail shop. Use the marketing Internet to augment or supplement your retail efforts. Put up pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and start a Youtube channel if it is relevant. When you do these things remember to update them regularly because old sites make your company seem unresponsive. You also want to make sure that you are aware when questions are asked about your products or services and that you respond to those questions promptly. Also utilize SEO strategies, and build a robust website with a blog where you write or aggregate pertinent articles. Collectively you want to give you retail business a healthy online presence and seek to create positive word of mouth. You can use this to actually send business to your retail shop and to tie in and build your brand.
Specialize in Customer Service
There has been a very large change in the way businesses have to treat customers today. Consumers have so many choices form local businesses and those half way around the world and each is fighting for their hard earned dollars. Customers expect to be catered to and even pampered by retailers and your business had better be prepared to make this happen. This means giving discounts to loyal customers over what you offer everyone else and giving them more rewards in the form of special merchandise and constantly letting them know that you appreciate their businesses. This should manifest itself in many other ways including you sending out customer surveys, a newsletter that helps them with issues that are important to them and relevant to your business and fast and comprehensive feedback and responses when they have questions and problems.
Focusing on the customer in this way will go a long way as they get bombarded by companies that have the same or similar products as you, and who can offer even lower prices than you. Remember customers want more than to save a little money, they want to know that you care about them. Use this fact to make your retail business a special place to come and shop.
