Five Things To Do In Retail Marketing

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.

Next Time we will look at the five don't do's for Retail Marketing. Until then.

Good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.

The Need for Digital Integration During Uncertain Economic Times

The Business landscape in Europe remains somewhat clouded with a residual lack of business confidence that continues despite recent proactive measures by the European Central Bank that would be normally expected to energise local financial markets.

Recently E.C.B President Mario Draghi announced the extension of unprecedented easing of monetary policy where the European Central Bank has pledged to maintain its’ existing 60 Billion Euro a month program to buy bonds for at least another six months up until March 2017.  Significant is the fact that the prime interest rate has been cut by an additional 10 basis points to a new historical low of -0.3%.

Despite these measures the market reacted to the announcement with a selloff in both bond and equity markets, underlying concerns about both the size of the change and by implication, the medium to longer term economic outlook for Europe.

Against this backdrop of sluggish growth and marginal economic growth in domestic demand along with all the usual challenges faced by business such as rising operating costs, diminished levels of customer loyalty, decreased levels of differentiation and ultimately greater pressures to minimise selling prices, businesses are again having to search for ways to secure their growth for 2016 and beyond. To add to this Malta’s consumption levels have been 21% below the EU average over the last two years and continue to fall as a possible barometer of lower consumer confidence.

 One possible area of support emerges from the global analysis that continue to confirm the increased preference consumers have for digital media and in particular social media marketing and by inference the potential this offers Maltese businesses to better position, differentiate and commercialise their businesses against larger and more resource rich rivals regardless of whether they are local or off shore.

Recently released data from a new survey conducted by Eurostat highlighted the importance of e-commerce in particular to Maltese business by revealing that over half the Maltese collective market (i.e. 53%) made at least one e-purchase during 2015. This figure is only marginally behind that of the EU average of 53% and by comparison dwarfs neighboring nations such as Italy with a modest 26% e-commerce usage during 2015.

Although it is not a universal truth, social media usage in certain industries has fallen behind that of other markets both for Europe and global rates and especially in the case of small to medium enterprises (SME’s), businesses can now with little or no real investment begin to compete effectively in this influential market arena against their key rivals. The last ten years has seen a gradual implication of social media strategy.


 Figure 1: The Spiteri Social Media Model For Demand Generation.


Based on the elegant and ultra-simple model by noted marketer Sharon Spiteri, the model demonstrates how the business website remains the central hub of the firms marketing efforts whilst the various social media outposts it utilises such as Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube, act as platforms for customer engagement as a first step to selectively driving qualified leads to the website where the monetarisation (sales) process occurs via e-commerce.

This is driven through the use of inbound links to the website, where buyer interest can be actioned in a private, secure and effective way.  As well traffic can also be driven from one social media site to another to continue the process of customer engagement and provide additional information in different forms until the point that the prospect is ready to buy.

In this setting each outpost has a related but different strategic function. For example YouTube videos help to demonstrate a key product or operation, Pinterest is ideal for highlighting the look of a product line, blogs are the world’s leading platforms for providing my detailed information by way of daily or weekly posts and review sites such as Trip Advisor and Urban Spoon provide sought after product reviews for validation.

Research has universally highlighted the fact that the market has a higher level of trust and confidence with discussion on social media rather than on parent sites. This approach not only provides businesses with qualified leads with customers that are motivated to buy but also has the added benefit of driving the businesses organic ranking in key search engines such as Google and Bing by the use of the inbound links that are known to be a key component of search engine algorithms.

With this evolving reliance on digital media and its already established dynamic in place, 2016 will be the time for many businesses that have not already done so, to take the first measured steps into social media marketing and avail themselves of the benefits that appear to be independent of and outside the reach of prevailing economic conditions and consolidate their positioning, branding and ongoing relationships with their respective target markets.

If you'd like more information on additional marketing and social media training for your business simply click on:  http://www.roadscholarstraining.com/services/accredited-courses.html
for a full list of nationally accredited business courses.

 So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,
Daniele.