Running a store isn’t easy. Here are several suggestions to assist you in facing the challenge.
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How can you increase your store’s sales and maximize your bottom line? To answer this question, we’re turning to the valuable advice of 10 industry experts: professional solutions you can implement every day to ensure your business’s success!
1- Give consumers valid reasons to choose your store
According to IdealSpot founder and CMO Bryan Eisenberg, anyone who wants to best set up a store’s marketing must first be able to give shoppers valid reasons to choose their store.
These good reasons can translate into the organization of exclusive events, rather than the creation of limited offers or coupons that can be purchased online and used in the store: specific solutions designed to engage public interest and participation.
However, it’s not enough to limit yourself to these activities; it’s necessary to establish a more comprehensive marketing strategy for your store, one that allows you to acquire and retain customers without relying solely on discounts or other promotional activities.
To do so, you must:
- Understand who potential customers are and what their needs are,
- Study the competition and what it offers,
- Carefully choose the products and services to sell,
- Leverage strengths and prevent or correct any weaknesses,
- Retain acquired customers.
2- Focus on how to sell the products
According to Doug Stephens, founder of Retail Prophet and author of The Retail Revival, to increase sales, you must first focus on how to market your business’s products. Let’s start from a twofold but unequivocal premise:
- No one needs what they buy, because in the last 25 years, we have moved from an economy based on the scarcity of goods and services to an economy focused on abundance.
- Everything can also be purchased through the competition.
Combining these two perspectives, it becomes clear that the only way to thrive within your market is to differentiate the shopping experience offered to customers, offering them that extra something capable of drawing them towards your business.
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3- Take care of even the smallest details
According to brand-building
expert, speaker, and author of What Great Brands Do, Denise Lee Yohn, anyone who wants to understand how to increase a store’s sales must do everything possible to take care of even the smallest details. Every single activity must be managed with obsessive attention, making customers perceive the undeniable excellence conveyed by the brand.
4- Keep doing research
According to Nicole Leinbach, founder and editor of Retail Minded, a business’s success is greatly influenced by the owner’s readiness to continually research areas that require enhancement
his entrepreneurial vision and the business he manages.
Such research can address any area: from sales to inventory, including competitors, existing and new customers, employees to hire, or marketing techniques to leverage. Staying up-to-date and aiming higher every day through knowledge is essential to maximizing your chances of success.
5- Push customers to take a specific action
Since we’re talking about marketing for a successful store, we can’t forget the valuable advice provided by Melissa Gonzales, founder of The Lion’esque Group and author of The Pop-Up Paradigm, who invites merchants to push customers towards completing a specific action in a certain period.
When shoppers are short on time (the scarcity principle ), they’re pressured by the sense of urgency, and are therefore more likely to spend. This is because they’re (subconsciously) encouraged to think that that moment might offer an opportunity they can’t find at other times. In practice, you need to provide a good reason to act immediately.
6- Increase local awareness
According to James Bickers, Senior Editor of Retail Customer Experience, to increase sales for a business, it is necessary to make yourself known at a local level.
The successful retailer is, in fact, the one who, among other things, also has a certain familiarity with the surrounding community: he is familiar with the people who populate it, knows what the person desires and understands the buying patterns of rivals.
7- Organize events
Founders and speakers of Keizer & Bender, Rich Keizer and Georganne Bender, state that to boost a store’s sales, one must consistently provide fresh offerings and arrange events
that enable customers to sustain a strong level of engagement with the commercial products targeted at them.
These events might be more extensive but held 1-2 times annually or smaller yet recurring (for instance, once a week or once every four weeks).
8- Don’t hide behind the fact that you run a small shop
For the founder of Global Purchasing Companies, Mercedes Gonzales, a business owner who aims for growth, must never, under any circumstances, hide behind the fact that he runs a small shop.
To achieve success, this same owner must give customers a reason to buy from his business over and over again, without ever tiring of doing so. This can be achieved, for example, when the offering made available to those who spend is useful, unique, and limited.
9- Have an offline and online presence
As RetailGeek founder and Razorfish GVP of Commerce Strategy Jason Goldberg explains, a store’s success depends both on the products and services it offers to the public and on the image the business itself projects online. This depends primarily on the fact that today:
- Over half of consumers utilize digital pre-shopping resources.
- But the vast majority of these buyers still prefer to make purchases in the actual store.
We could discuss the relationship between online and offline sales at length. We’ll limit ourselves to highlighting the findings of the latest reports on the topic: offline commerce remains important, even after the meteoric rise of e-commerce, fueled by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The physical store is an integral part of the increasingly widespread multi-channel shopping experience: on the one hand, it is the “stage” where users can see the products firsthand and purchase them later in the online store, on the other, it becomes the point of reference for collecting orders fulfilled online.
10- Tell your story through the visual sphere
The Retail Doctor speaker and consultant Bob Phibbs teaches that the success of a store depends largely on how it presents itself to the public: since the window of your business represents a sort of invitation for potential customers, be sure to design it to stimulate the curiosity of passers-by.
Here’s some valuable advice on how to increase your store’s sales, from 10 leading industry experts: targeted suggestions to follow to the letter to ensure the success of your business.
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