Customers are now more than ever choosing to shop the way they want i.e. whether in person, online, via socials, deliveries, click and collect and so on. The question is ‘how do you do these incremental steps as a small business with only so many hours in a day’? You plan it. You plan it in an easy way, not a complicated high-tech way.
Retail Expert Debra Templar shares a list of 30 things you can start to work on in drawing up your growth plan and increasing your sales.
1. Make customers feel safe in your store.
2. Ensure your store shows up in online searches—make sure you’ve claimed your business name on Google and regularly update your google profile with information and photos of new stock. Why? Everyone asks Google—particularly on their mobile phones. Start treating your Google business profile as another form of social contact. Update it fortnightly wherever you can.
3. Display your local inventory on your Google business listing.
4. Implement click and collect—perhaps you’d prefer to call it Pay Online, Pick Up In Store. You need to be open to everything. Selling in your store, from your website, from your social profiles, pay online and pick up in store, pay online and deliver, afterpay, zip pay … customers now expect everything from everyone.
5. Hire and develop staff who can provide exceptional customer experiences.
6. Set up a sandwich board—abide by your council guidelines but recognise your sandwich board is a marketing tool, so it needs to reflect your store. It needs to be more than white chalk on a blackboard. Use colour, use decals, use balloons (they grab people’s attention). The first step of any sale is to grab people’s attention. Sandwich boards do this.
7. Have strong in-store visuals—utilise colour to tell your stories. Group products together so they tell a story and enable a customer to visualise them in their home, office or garden. It’s also a great way to jump your average sale.
Want to read more? Check out the full article in our winter digital magazine, which is out now!
Don’t miss Debra Templar’s Shop Talk sessions at the upcoming Gift & Lifestyle fair in Brisbane from 9 to 11 July 2022.
