Here are 8 Ways to Increase Retail Sales........and put some more money in your pocket!If you want to increase retail sales - that means getting your customers to buy more from you so that you have more income - then sales promotion is the answer. When times are tough, you need to be taking some action to get those sales, not hoping and praying that your customers will spend more with you just 'cos they like you! There are lots of creative ways to increase retail sales but here's a list of my top eight (and you can as creative as you like with them): 1. Hold a prize draw (but not a free prize draw because your customers are making a purchase): Every time a customer buys from you, their name goes into a hat. The more times they buy, the more entries into the draw they have. Dependent on the number of customers you have, 3 prizes ( a 1st, 2nd and 3rd) works well. From your point of view, make sure you tell them when the draw will be taking place and when the winners will be notified. Make sure you do the draw properly (ie print all their names out and put them into a 'hat', and get some independent people to draw the winners out (my children and husband do mine, but the cat's not quite so keen). Decide first that the first name out will be the 1st prize winner and so on - you must NOT allow any preferential treatment to anyone, it has to be fair. Don't forget to take a photo of you giving the winning prize to the lucky recipient - it makes a great local news story, and is good PR for you. When I held a prize draw last autumn with my customers, my retail sales increased by 50% immediately, and stayed at that level for the duration of the promotion (about 6 weeks). This resulted in an extra £300 cash in hand for me (woo hoo!). A great promotional technique to increase those retail sales. 2. Incentivise customers if they spend over a certain amount (you decide). If you keep a track of what your customers spend (which you should!), then you'll know their average spend. Say that's £10 each order. If you want to increase their average spend to £15, then that's your level to incentivise at. OR if you know what your average customer order is (let's say £24), and you want to increase that to £30, then that's the level you incentivise. You can use money off vouchers or products to incentivise. For instance, "All orders over £30 will receive a £5 off their next order" (which will bring them back a 2nd time), or "Spend over £15 and get a free mystery gift worth £x" or "Spend over £30 and get a free 'widget'". If you're using a product incentive, make it a cheap one to you...and it's a great way to use up any excess stock that you've bought or acquired in the past. I've used this promotion very regularly to increase my retail sales, and can normally expect anything from a 20% to 50% uplift in sales. (My very first job in marketing was running promotions like this for Texaco on their oil! Such a glamorous life I've led...) 3. BOGOF - a classic in supermarkets, but you can use it too. It means "Buy One Get One Free"...but it doesn't have to be the same product, it could be a complementary product, eg buy the self tanning lotion and get the scrub for free. Or, if you do have a stack of excess stock around, you can do a very simple "buy one, get one free" (how to clear out your garage or spare room in one easy swoop). Customers love free stuff and it's a great way to increase sales very quickly. 4. Joint ventures - is there a local organisation that complements yours? For instance, if you're running a health or beauty network marketing business, you could joint venture with the local spa. You need to approach them and ask whether you can offer your customers a money off voucher (or any other special voucher that the spa offers)...this way, your customers get some great value ("Spend over £20 and get a free spa treatment") - but the spa gets some new customers. So - double whammy: increasing retail sales for both you AND your joint venture partner! Position it to the spa as a benefit to them (ie more customers...who doesn't need them right now?), and make sure your target markets are a match. I suggest you code the vouchers (or the spa does) and catch up with the establishment at a later date to see how many of your customers who got the voucher actually took up their free treatment. This means you have some figures for when you approach the next establishment at a future date! This can work across any industry by the way, just make sure they're complementary (and work for your target market) 5. Mother's Day and Easter are coming up...time to promote and highlight particular gift items and offer gift wrapping services. And you might just be able to squeeze something in for Valentine's Day of you're quick! If you look at what the supermarkets and shops do, you'll see that they use seasonal activities to increase the retail sales in thier organisations. All the promotional messages are geared up to whatever is happening at the time, and they move from one to the next very quickly: no sooner Christmas is over, then Valentine's Day stuff is in the shops. As soon as Valentine's Day is over, then Mother's Day hits (in the UK)...then Easter...then May Bank Holiday...then the school holidays...and so on. Take a leaf out of their book and you can plan your promotional activities for the year ahead and guarantee that your retail sales are always kept at an optimun level. 6. Give your customers reasons to buy your product. Remind them of the benefits...and make the benefits relevant to this time of year. Make a list "Ten Reasons Why You Should be Buying our Juice now"...... "Five ways that I can help you save even more money before Spring". Sometimes customers need reminding about you and why your product is so good. They have busy lives and other things vying for their attention: you need to be in front of them, reminding them about you! And increasing sales can be as simple as just reminding your customers about your existence! 7. Refer a Friend - and reward your customer. This is a powerful promotional technique to increase retail sales and is not to be sniffed at: "Recommend a friend and when s/he buys you BOTH get a free gift on me". Used very widely to increase retail sales (and is not quite the same as the network marketing model, whatever they may tell you!). 8. Tell your customers that you're running a promotion. Watch the retailers: they shout their promotions from the rooftops! There are big posters, TV ads, radio ads, in store signage, and you practically trip over the boxes of promotional products when you enter the store. They don't spend all this marketing money for nothing: sales promotion works to increase sales, but you have to tell your customers, and keep reminding them that it's happening. A couple of final pointers: Sales promotion works to increase sales (it's a massive industry in its own right) but it will cost you a bit of money, so you have to decide how much you want to spend and plan your budget first so that you won't get carried away! Money off vouchers, in my experience, are the cheapest to produce (30 minutes on your pc should do it) and have the highest perceived value with your customers. And even if they don't redeem the voucher...well, you've got the sale now, haven't you? ;o) NB If you produce vouchers, make sure you put on the vouchers: "cash redemption value 0.001p" (or cents), "no cash alternative" and put a "redeem by date" on it. A Few Regulations to Adhere To....If you like the idea of adding sales promotion into your marketing mix (and who wouldn't considering its capacity to increase sales!), then I would strongly suggest you have a read of and adhere to the British Codes of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing.They are there to guide marketers in how to market and promote their goods and services legally, decently, honestly and truthfully (that's the essence of the code). These are the codes that all professional marketers will refer to before they do anything. Their website can be found at:
British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing
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