Five Must Do's For Retail Marketing

As the retail sector becomes increasingly competitive and even major retail chains are known to be struggling to meet financial objectives, it becomes even more important to focus on the key strategies known to drive performance.

Here are five that you may want to consider and apply to your retail business.

1. Observe your market carefully to capture opportunities and trends early.
Businesses need to be able to look at the key factors such as technological changes, in social attitudes, changes in government and legal regulations, which can profoundly affect their business.
This is to both take advantage of possible opportunities for growth and also to help avoid threats that may harm their business. Usually the business will have no control over these market factors but still needs to react quickly to their presence.
For example: Many successful retailer selling fur coats suffered greatly reduced demand and sales because attitudes towards killing animals for fur changed drastically in the eighties and made fur coats virtually redundant.
Another example is that one third of all photo printing stores that operated in Australia ten years ago have now shut down. This is because the technology changed from traditional film processing to digital photography. This meant new equipment, more training for staff, the need for more capital, etc., with the result being that those who were not well prepared or able to afford the change went out of business.
From a positive perspective of following positive trends early, renowned cellular skin specialist has positioned herself as the ‘celebrity skin guru’ by regularly updating her expertise abroad by studying with the recognized authorities in cellular regeneration in Switzerland and the United States.


2. Be aware of your businesses relative strengths and weaknesses.
Any retailer (especially an SME) must be very objective about it's relative strengths and weaknesses if it's to survive and grow. Unlike external opportunities and threats that the market offers you which you can not control, internal strengths and weaknesses can be controlled and changed by the retailer. For example: leading Melbourne based, creative design firm Fine Design realising that only one staff member had expertise operating a newly available printing software CAD program, quickly arranged for additional training to raise the skill level of the other employees to protect itself if this one employee were unable to use the program. As well by having a complete inventory of your strengths you will be in a better position to take advantage of any opportunities that may be around.

3. Look for groups of customers with similar unmet needs you can meet.
In most markets, you will find smaller groups of customers that exist within the overall market that have similar needs and can be grouped into market segments or niches.
If the retailer can provide a product or service that can meet this common need, then it will do well by targeting that market niche.
For example: Retailer: Easy Tone Studio in Melbourne offers an exercise studio that offers exercise equipment with a difference. Rather than the standard gym equipment, it offers assisted exercise where the machine exercises that area of the body passively. This can be used for: older people, people recovering from illness, injured athletes, etc.
Although these are all different groups, they have a similar need for assisted exercise. Suffice to say, Easy Tone has differentiated itself from other gyms, and is highly successful as a result.

4. Know exactly who your customer is and what you need to deliver to keep them satisfied.
Most small businesses retailers make the mistake of mass marketing. In other words they try to sell their product or service to everyone in the market. Simply put, different people need different things.
Therefore it is critical to look at your market and make a decision about exactly what part of the market you want to target for your business and what their specific needs will be.
For example, The Athletes Foot sells only running shoes for athletes and runners. They are known to have the best range of brands, shoe sizes, fitting equipment and general expertise in fitting to ensure the correct size and shoe for any foot. In short they have an area of proven excellence. They know who their customers are and they deliver a personalised product for each. This is the true essence of marketing.

5. Acknowledge and reward those people who contribute to your success.
In most businesses, your staff will be a combination of high performers, average contributors and occasionally low performers.
Suffice to say, it is imperative that you identify your top performers so that you can acknowledge their efforts and reward them accordingly.
Traditionally larger firms lead the way by having incentive packages that not only reward individuals for the period just gone, but also involve rolling incentives over 2 or 3 years, to act as an effective retention tool for key staff over a longer period.

What are some other key's you think we should add to this list. Please let us know.

Next time to balance the ledger, we'll look at the 5 don't s for retail marketing.
But until then, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.