Time flies! Here, it’s time to welcome New Year with full zest.
The beginning of the holiday season brings a unique opportunity for brands to capture seasonal sales and set up strategies to boost their retail sales.
Each new year comes with the latest trends and customer expectations. So, learned business leaders will set well-established insights and new strategies to meet current and prospective customers where they are and where they will be in the coming year!
To grab the opportunity and seek attention in the marketplace, it is essential to timely outreach the customers’ interests and needs at the very start of the year.
New and improved methods may help leverage the realities of the 2023 marketplace.
Tips to Increase Retail Sales
Here, we’ve come up with the 11 most effective strategies that any retailer can use to boost their sales at the beginning of the year and beyond.
1. Lead with an inspiring purpose
It is seen when a company operates purposefully in such a highly competitive market. It can either be a differentiator or a driver of brand consideration.
The clients and candidates that brands prospect, clients evaluate our attributes and offerings against other brands and find meaning in a commitment that can solve their endemic issues.
Leading with an inspiring purpose serves as a way to create meaningful connections and will serve the purpose.
2. Focus on Online Marketing
At the beginning of the year, for businesses looking to grow and make their existence in the marketplace and increase their retail sales, it is very crucial to sharpen up your online presence that can give a clear message to their customers and perform well in the market.
So, one needs to commit more time and effort to make content, that better relates to and speaks to your audience. To improve the relevance and quality of your online presence, you can deploy online marketing techniques like SEO, SEM, Social Media, etc.
An effective combination of online and offline marketing can significantly increase your business’s growth.
3. Explore new mediums
Your customers drive your business; that’s why it is important for you to interact with them in diverse situations. Hence, it becomes quite essential to explore new mediums that you might have overlooked.
Analyze what did not perform before and allocate some budgets to test something different.
For example: During the pandemic, most people started working from home, and direct mail marketing performed better than ever. You can find the top influencers in your industry and partner with them to promote your brand.
4. Start the new year offers for a limited time
A limited-time offer is any kind of discount, deal, special gift, or reward a buyer can get if they purchase the product from that particular brand or avail of the services for a certain time period.
It is vital to analyze the right time as “Timing is everything”. Create buzz during peak travel dates leading up to the new year while people focus more on post-holiday sales and offer discount codes and limited-time offers to expedite purchases.
Retailers use limited-time offer ads all the time that attracts people, and they visit the store to make a purchase.
Even the fact that there are few sets available makes the buyer feel like part of an exclusive club. It also adds a sense of urgency. If you want that, you better act before it runs out.
Also, the urge can be to target new customers, but it is equally important to remember the value of an existing customer by offering them something to sweeten the deal.
5. Use the holidays to engage customers
Holidays are a great time to engage with your customers and partners in conversation beyond sales. This, in turn, helps in establishing a trusted relationship.
Marketing campaigns and customer engagement around the holidays can be more than just promoting your product and service in hopes of a gift purchase.
Holidays often carry with them an emotional connotation, and connecting the brand with positive connotations can be just as valuable. The new year is an excellent time to launch the new initiatives and re-align to a longer-term set of goals.
It must be pondered, “How to bring customers and partners along”.
6. Include a cause or purpose in Value Propositions
A value proposition is basically a promise made by a company to its customer or in the marketplace.
The proposition is an easy-to-understand reason behind why a customer should buy your product or service. In simpler terms, value propositions should clearly explain how you are going to fulfil the needs of your customers.
Communicate with them about its benefit and tell them the reason why your product/service is better than other product that exists in the market. It helps your customers in making clear decisions.
And don’t just limit yourself to the emotional and functional needs of your customer.
Other than that, more and more customers are demanding social and environmental commitments from their favourite brands. You can think of some ideas around that also.
Making and ensuring value propositions that include a cause and purpose will not only respond to your customer’s demand, but it will also increase the well-being of others. If communicated properly, it will turn into a competitive advantage.
7. Demonstrate the positive impact of your solution
First of all, it is important to know your customer! Show your customers, how your solution will leave a positive impact on your prospective customers on personal, purpose-driven & trust-building levels.
Showcase your customer’s stories in videos, blogs, podcasts, and infographics that may help boost your sales.
You can also grow your business and brand by crafting your messaging and improving your offer. To build a customer pipeline, you must maintain a share of voice.
8. Grow with existing Clients and Customers
Customer retention plays a vital role in boosting retail sales. As you know, acquiring a new customer is a bit more difficult and expensive than targeting a repeat customer.
In many cases, businesses are happy to get a sale from a customer, but it should not stop there. The best thing to do after the sale is to stay connected and upsell or cross-sell them with additional products or services that relate to what your customers purchased.
This can be easily done with the help of automation tools.
It is also important to focus on your existing customers’ needs and interests.
It’s wrong to assume that new business needs to be unique. Current customers may serve well to help companies to boost their retail sales with some intelligent effort.
9. Leverage Public Relations to boost your reputation.
Public Relations can be a key driver to boost retail sales and even can be a solid ally to sales and marketing. PR can be a real asset for your brand when used effectively.
Public relation is a crucial concept, as it defines how an organization communicates with its audience & builds its reputation. But now, how brands use PR has changed significantly.
Now, the new digital PR channels like blogs, podcasts and social media overshadow the traditional PR channels of radio, newspaper and television.
In fact, social media and public relations work together seamlessly. It can improve reputation, serve as a means of getting through a crisis, or help to highlight what your brand is doing well. Ideally, brands should always be clear and consistent.
To run in the long run and establish a trusted relationship between partners, one needs to have a good reputation in the market.
10. Increase Retail Sales by Sharing Educational and Value-Added Content
It is good to have a foundation of marketing as educational content. Instead of constantly promoting sales and markdowns, you can keep your customers engaged by providing interesting, informative content and giving them reasons to purchase and increase lifetime value.
So, what kind of content should you put?
Content that emphasizes your brand’s vision and what differentiates you from your competitors, as well as what your customers desire from you. They need to know about the products and services offered.
An apparel retailer, for example, might show the newest styles directly from the runway. Nearly any retailer could share specific tips and how and what related to their products or narrate their brand story that would sound interesting.
The opportunities to share these types of content are more diverse and curating than emails, social media, your website and mobile app, videos, podcasts, your influencer’s blogs, educational workshops and classes, event hosting and so on.
11. Leverage Your Loyalty Program to boost Retail Sales
Creating a customer loyalty program can be a great and creative way to boost retail sales without offering discounts. Loyalty marketing is about how much you value your customers.
It is about appreciating each and every customer for their support and acknowledging them as people that you value greatly.
It is necessary to look for exclusive benefits you can provide to your members that will spread awareness and boost your retail sales performance. And definitely, these types of perks are quantified.
Thus, it helps to attract new customers and, in return, increases retail sales.
Conclusion: Boosting Retail Sales
This year will be memorable for everyone, whether it be retailers or consumers. The fear of COVID-19 has vanished, and more consumers want to shop in-store.
In-store foot traffic is likely to increase in 2023. It is important to ensure consumers receive a top-tier shopping experience, and retailers must ensure faster and more convenient processes.
So, follow the above-mentioned tips and get ready to see a boost in your retail sales.
And if you are a brand that wants to build highly engaging retail stores for your customers, Contact Us or mail us at hello@91sqft.com.
