HOW TO INCREASE RETAIL SALES: MARKETING & SALES TIPS

To help consistently increase retail sales for your dollar or convenience store, we've created our “Sales & Marketing Tips” Blog series that brings you specialized knowledge from the dollar and convenience store industry. Specifically, this article talks about four strategies to improve your stores' sales figures.

Feel free to post a comment on the article below and don't hesitate to give feedback on the article in the comments section below, to make suggestions on topics you'd like us to write about, and to ask us any questions!

Increase Retail Sales with Promotions & Markdowns 

One way to increase retail sales for your dollar or convenience store is through well-planned promotional offers which can help bring in new customers and retain current ones. When done right, you can significantly boost sales with the right offer at the right time. Also, don't think that offers and promotions are only for holidays. You can create your own store/brand-specific promotional event that appeal to your particular customers and their situations.

 

Choosing your event

The first crucial step is deciding on a promotion that appeals to your particular customers. What attracts them? What goes through their minds while they're shopping in your store? What are their general interests? Many customers simply want to save as much money as possible. In this case, sales or markdown events would work well. If mothers make up a good portion of your customers, then think about creating a special promotion just for them (e.g. Discount on all household cleaning products – discount on all baby products for new moms, etc.) The key is choosing an event that appeals to your customers.

 

Planning your promotional events

Creating a promotional calendar is definitely worth the effort, and you should also make sure you mix and match holiday events with your own particular customer-based promotions (don't let holidays run your schedule!). It's also important to space out your promotions since too many events close together would minimize their effectiveness. Nonetheless, planning your events a few months in advance will certainly make your life easier and make your promotions more effective.

 

Promoting your promotions!

After you create your promotional calendar, you can then focus on promoting each event as it approaches. This is where good marketing comes in. Make sure you have the appropriate in-store signage informing your customers of the event before it happens. Also, let all your customers know through your social media, email marketing, and website channels. Make sure that all creatives like posters, signs, and digital banners are effectively designed. And, finally, make sure to record your results so you can learn about what works and what you can improve upon!

 

Increase Retail Sales with Good Store Signage 

Communicating with your customers through effective in-store signage will have a notable effect on increasing retail sales for your store.

 

Tips for your store signage

- Keep your signs specific. Any vague descriptions may force you to sell items for much lower than anticipated!

- Keep your signs clean & well-maintained. Dirty signs will ruin brand perception among your customers.

- Keep your signs short & sweet. Simplicity is key!

- Make your signs “pop out” using bold colors and clear color contrasts.

 

Getting your signs

Even though some stores print or write their signs by hand, it's better to use a professional printer or graphic design/printing store. This makes your signs look more professional and minimize potential mistakes.

Also, many of your vendors/suppliers may already give you countless promotional items so the next time you're offered a promotional display or item, make sure you take it! Even if you don't use it later on, you can use the display for your own particular needs.

 

Types of signage

You can promote your promotions & markdowns with many types of signage. Hanging ceiling signs can draw attention to customers walking through your store. Large window signs can attract customers parking or driving by. Even better, your light poles and fences offer prime real estate for larger, more attention-drawing signs, helping draw the eyes of customers and  potential customers driving or walking by.

 

Increase Retail Sales with Planograms – The Key to Effective Display Advertising 

What is a planogram?

A planogram is not just a visual diagram, but also a unique product mix aimed at offering the optimal set of products & product placement for both customer convenience and maximum sales. Planograms play a vital part in display advertising and can be as simple as an image of a planned section of products (showing each product's place on the shelf), or as comprehensive as shelf carvings showing the exact spot of each product. A planogram would also come with the actual products diagrammed in the planogram itself.

A good planogram makes it as fast and simple as possible for your customers to find what they're looking for (which increases sales).

 

Benefits of a planogram

Besides maximizing sales and offering convenience for your customers (ensuring certain products are found besides each other), here are some other benefits of planograms:

- Making efficient use for every square-foot of your store

- Attracting customers with much-improved visual appeal

- Increasing inventory control and decreasing out-of-stocks

- Simplifying the product replenishment process for your staff

 

Getting planograms

Although you can create your own planograms through a word document, paper & pen, or Excel spreadsheet, your suppliers may already offer planograms in their product lineup to help you display their products and create the optimal product mix for your customers.

As part of our own product offering, here are three hot-selling planograms to help you maximize your sales and make things easier for you and your customers:

-> Clean Home Planogram: Wholesale cleaning products with planogram

-> Home Smart Planogram: Wholesale household products with planogram

-> Smart Value Planogram: Wholesale hardware & other household products with planogram

 

Find Ways to Increase Profit Margins 

Especially for dollar stores, small retail shops, and other convenience-type stores, profit margins can stay really low. Here are some quick tips to maximize your profit margins:

 

Automate as much as possible. The faster your turnaround time (from order to delivery), the lower your cost-of-overhead per unit which leads to better profit margins. Speed up the process as much as possible for your customers. This means fast Point-of-Sales systems. Secondly, try to implement automatic inventory replenishment which can significantly cut costs and save time. Automate anything and everything in your business which will always have a direct impact on your profit margins.

 

Upsell & Cross-sell like crazy. When you do this, profit margin increases in two ways since you'll be reducing turnaround time (which lowers overhead cost-per-unit) and increasing your average sale-per-unit. To do this, you can offer bundled products, larger units of purchase, and cross sell complimentary products or services. You can discover strategies by researching benchmark companies in your industry to find out what they're doing with their own product offerings to up sell and cross-sell.

 

Always be on the lookout to increase your product offering. No matter how long you've been in business, you should always look to offer a more diverse product line for your customers. This will open up new opportunities for your store and prevent your customers from shopping elsewhere to get products they can't find in your shop. If you haven't already done so, create your free account with International Wholesale to browse over 20,000 products within hundreds of product categories.

Our product categories include:

 

- Wholesale Dollar Items

- Wholesale Cleaning Products

- Wholesale Disposable Products

- Wholesale Food Products (Snack & Beverage)

- Wholesale General Merchandise

- Wholesale Hardware Products

- Wholesale Health & Beauty

- Wholesale Kitchen & Housewares

- Wholesale School & Office Supplies

Finally, don't forget to be on the lookout for our monthly specials that we send to your inbox every month. These will give you exclusive & direct access to wholesale specials and closeouts without you having to specifically search for them on our site.

 

Create your free account to subscribe to our blog (we never spam!) and receive our exclusive monthly specials so you can maximize your savings & sales!

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