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How To Attract Customers And Boost Retail Sales

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Running a business is never easy, but ensuring you make a profit each month is something that business owners can easily lose sleep over. After all, having a business is all about making money, so if you’re in a sales slump and profits are down, your stress levels are definitely going to begin to rise. Even if you haven’t experienced a slump in sales yet, you likely will one day, and probably sooner rather than later, so it is important that you are prepared for when this happens. Luckily, there are many options out there for attracting new customers and boosting sales, so keep reading for some great tips and ideas.

1. Create A Loyalty Programme

Any type of customer is a good type of customer, but, ideally, you want customers that are loyal to you and keep coming back again and again. Obviously, this ensures that you continue to make a profit from the individual customer, which is great, but a loyal customer will also recommend you to family and friends, which means that your business will continue to make bigger profits, and so will continue to grow. In order to gain this loyalty, lots of businesses use loyalty programmes like punch cards to keep customers coming back. Whether it’s a discount or free product, your customer will want the reward that they receive when they fill their punch card, so will keep coming back again and again.

2. Hand Out Coupons

No one ever wants to pay full price for something, so make it so that your customers don’t have to. When you’re trying to attract new customers, hand out coupons to those that look most likely to visit your store. This is a brilliant way to let people know that your business exists, and will also make it that much more probable that you’ll receive a few extra customers looking for a bargain. You could also print a coupon in your local newspaper, or post some through letterboxes near your business. Another great idea that lots of businesses use is sending their customers coupons for their birthday.

3. Clean Up Your Act

You could have the most world-changing product on the face of the earth, but if your store looks uninviting, then no one is going to come in and have a look. To make it look a little better, get outside and clean up any rubbish. You could even look at the earthmoving information here and consider hiring a road sweeper. Also, make sure that all of the windows are sparkling, the paint isn’t chipped or flaky, and you have a great display in the window. The inside of your store should also look clean and tidy, as well as well-lit and easy to navigate.

4. Compete With Competitors

Unfortunately, business is a dog eat dog world, and you will need to be better than and earn more than all of your competitors if you want to continue to grow and be successful for the foreseeable future. Because of this, it’s important to do all you can to neutralise any sort of promotion that your competitors pull out the bag. To do this, when your competitors announce a sale, you should announce one too, just with bigger reductions (only if you can afford it!). This makes it much more likely that your customers will visit your store and spend money, than your competitors.

5. Use Social Media

We are living in a time that is dominated by technology, so, if you aren’t using social media to promote your business, you are seriously missing out. You can use your social media accounts to announce new products, sales, giveaways, and loyalty programmes like the one mentioned above much quicker than you would do any other way. Just be sure that your content is steady, rather than having quiet periods and then announcing a sale, otherwise, your customers will know that you’re only online because you need some extra cash. You can also use your social media to connect with your customers, deal with their queries, and get any feedback they have to offer to improve your service and products.

6. Invest In Advertisement

Any business owner that believes that advertising and marketing are a waste of money isn’t going to be business owners for very long. If you are not obtaining as much as you usually do, and are considering reducing the amount of money you are putting into marketing and advertisement, just stop. Now is the tie that you should be investing more money in advertising, not making cutbacks. Of course, you might not have the cash available to be making television advertisements or anything else that expensive, but newspaper and radio ads, and even billboards can be fairly cost-effective and can bring in a lot of customers.

7. Hold An Event

If you want to boost your sales in a huge way, then a great way to do this is to host some sort of event. You could partner with a local charity and offer a discount for anyone that donates to the worthy cause. This will show that your business has good morals and that you are incredibly community minded, which should increase your sales for long after the event has ended. Depending on what you sell, you could hand out free samples in the days leading up to your event, to generate interest with the locals, and could even send a press release to the media to attract those from further afield.  Of course, you should also use your social media as much as you can during this time, as a means of free advertisement.

A drop in sales is every business owner’s worst nightmare, but it is one that you can wake up from if you take action. The tips above are only some of the great ideas that you could use to boost your sales, so don’t despair if none of them works for you. Every business is different, so you just need to figure out what is right for yours.

Why Automating Your Digital Marketing is The Way Forward

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Digital marketing is vital to your business, but do you ever find yourself living your life in reaction to social media notifications or emails?

The digitally connected world we live in, can be incredibly harmful to living a balanced and successful life; particularly in terms of our emotional wellbeing and social lives.  One of the best ways to ensure a more balanced life, is to automate your digital marketing by creating a network of automated process, systems, and apps to automatically take care of marketing tasks such as following up on emails, posting to facebook, and so on.

This will not only free up physical time, it will give you peace of mind, and a sense of certainty that things are being taken care of.  Essentially, it will allow you the time you need to be calm, focused, and responsive rather than reactive; contributing to a more stress free working environment.

Tim Ferris in his New York Times Bestselling Book, The Four Hour Workweek talks about the importance of automation in our work lives so that we can focus on managing our business in the sense of working ‘on’ the business rather than working ‘in’ the business.  Whilst Tim, along with several other millennial productivity experts urge us to go one step further and outsource our tasks to a virtual assistant; ideally someone living in India or Asia on the basis of cost – this article looks at automation as it relates to technological systems.

In this article we’re going to look at automating a number of the most time consuming digital tasks the majority of business owners contend with; things such as being inundated by emails, following up on sales leads, keeping our files organised, and managing our social media presence.

1. EMAIL MARKETING

There are plenty of time-starved business owners frantically sending out an email to a customer thanking them for their order and letting them know when it will be shipped.  The key point with automation is that it frees your time to be working ‘on’ the business at a strategic level rather than ‘in’ the business where you are wasting your time doing the same job as a low-level employee.  You could use something like mailchimp in order to start automating your emails at very low cost.

2.  FILE TRANSFER

If you’ve ever accidentally spilled a glass of water on your laptop, lost your phone, or had the despair of hard drive failure you’ll have most likely heard the words “did you back-up your files” and if you didn’t, this is the point where you begin to feel overwhelmed by a sense of frustration and kicking yourself.  That said, keeping on track of backing up your files can be time consuming, which is why automating your file transfer can make your life a lot easier and offer a sense of security and certainty that allows you to relax.

3. MARKETING FUNNELS

Your marketing funnel is made up of several stages through which browsers (who will hopefully go on to become customers) move from first awareness of your brand or website through to making a purchase.  A marketing funnel is essentially the process of converting a visitor or browser into a paying customer, and sites such as Clickfunnels can automate this process in a very efficient and visually engaging way.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Managing your social media marketing campaigns can be extremely time consuming.  Many business owners consider hiring a virtual assistant in order to manage this time consuming task though there there are several free apps such as hootsuite and buffer that can help you automate this task.

How To Start Your Own Website

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Over the past few years, Internet technological innovations have made it much easier for anyone to create their own website. But as easy as the process has become, most people still do not understand the correct way to get a website started. There are plenty of templates and website builders you can use to create a professional looking website, but those initial steps in starting the site can be confusing for new website owners.

Make A List Of Domain Names

The first step in starting your website is to figure out a concise title that best represents your business, and you do that with old fashioned pen and paper. If your company is called the ABC Corporation, then an address such as ABCCorporation.com would obviously be appropriate. But what if that address is taken? Would your business be better represented by something other than a .com website? You need to make a list of 10 or more website addresses that would fit your business and be easy for your customers to find.

Find A Web Hosting Company

A web hosting company will sell you your domain name and host your website as well. It is easier to get your domain name and hosting through the same company because then you would only need to go to one source for support. There is a wide variety of hosting companies to choose from, so take your time and find the company that you feel most comfortable with. You can even call the support phone number for the companies you are considering to determine which company offers the kind of support that you feel you will need.

Find The Domain Name That Is Available

Once you have chosen your web hosting company, it is time to get out your list of potential domain names and check available domain names. The best way to get the right domain name is to prioritize the list you have created and buy the first name that is available. Your web host may recommend that you buy more than just the .com extension to protect your domain name, and that is not a bad idea. When your company becomes successful as a .com, your competition could buy the .net address and cause problems for your business. To protect yourself, you should buy as many of the popular extensions as possible.

Buy Your Domain

Once you have decided which domain names you want to buy, it is time to make the purchase. It may take a day or two for your website to show up on the Internet, but it is worth the wait. Once your site is active, it is time to establish your online presence and grow your business.

It is easy for marketing experts to tell you to buy a domain and start your website, but most people who are new to owning a website are not sure what it means to choose a domain. With some practical advice, any business owner can take the necessary steps to choose the perfect domain name and get their business online quickly.

How to Make Your Business Stand Out in a Competitive Market

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Every business owner wants to stand out from the crowd and outshine their competitors. But, business is booming, and with so many people out there offering similar products and services, how do you show your customers that you deserve their business?

Your business wants to shine; you just need the spotlight. Here are a few tips to stand out from the competition in a competitive market.

1. Creativity

Though it might seem obvious, many businesses fail to fully capitalize on their most creative and unique elements, especially when it comes to marketing themselves.

To stand out among the masses, you need to show your customers that there is something unique about your business that deserves their time and attention.

It may seem risky to adopt marketing strategies that stray from the industry norms, but as a business owner, you probably understand that risk comes with the territory. Playing it safe and sticking to messaging and branding that conforms to everybody else just places your business and your reputation right in line with the rest.

Instead, exercise your creativity through your marketing. After all, the quality of your products or services speaks for themselves. You just need to get customers in the door to show them what you have to offer.

2. Strategy

No amount of marketing will be effective if you don’t implement it with a well-researched and well thought out strategy. Even a multimillion-dollar marketing budget, if poorly executed, won’t help you stand out from your competition.

You need to conduct thorough research, know your target audience, and create campaigns that make maximum use of every marketing dollar.

In the digital age, visibility is critical to success. With virtually everyone turning to a screen to research products and services and ultimately deciding who to do business with, ensuring that you have a strategy to maximize your visibility on search engines is essential to growth and success. By making use of DC SEO, you can get that spotlight your business deserves and shine brighter than the competition.

3. Quality

No amount of visibility and consumer engagement will repair a bad business. Even if every one of your target customers knows your name, it amounts nothing if you are unable to serve their needs adequately.

Consumers today are conducting more product research than ever before, and with the prevalence of social media and online reviews, they have the information at their disposal to make well-informed purchase decisions.

This problem is compounded in a competitive market. People are aware that they have many options, and have the privilege to be selective about where they spend their hard-earned money.

If you take pride in your business and have a product or service that you can stand behind, then you have the foundation to grow your business into an industry leader. All you need to do is market yourself creatively, and get your name out there. The rest will follow.

What Can E-commerce Stores Learn from Amazon?

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There are quite a few different things that just about all e-commerce stores can learn from Amazon. If you own an online store and want to increase its profitability, you will need to take a close look at all of the things that this internet retailer giant does right. It can be difficult making it in this world unless you really know what you are doing.

In this article, you’ll get some insight into how you can improve your internet-based business by following some simple but effective tips. Amazon has set the standard for e-commerce, and there are numerous reasons for that.

A Customized Experience

One of the revolutionary things that Amazon did as an online retailer is to personalize each customer’s shopping experience. You can clearly see this when you look at the “Related to Item’s You’ve Viewed” section and others. When you create a more custom shopping experience for each person who visits your website, they are far more likely to keep coming back.

On-Site Reviews

Another great way to increase the likelihood of people buying from your online store is to include a section for customers to post reviews of the products they have purchased. This is something that really helped Amazon a lot, and it will really help the people who visit your site decide which products to buy. These days most people read customer reviews before purchasing an item online, so you will want to seriously consider doing this.

Stay Current with Business News

As successful as Amazon is, they are still always trying to figure out how to become better as a company. It is important that you stay current with business news on a daily basis so that you can make the right decisions for your business. There are many different websites to visit for business news, including Apex Beats.

Learn the Art of Promotion

Amazon is really good about promoting themselves and, more specifically, the deals they offer customers. Almost everyone knows about Amazon Prime and it’s because they generate a ton of buzz for it. If there are certain things that you can offer your customers to save them money, you will need to make sure they know about it.

Make Searching for Products Easier

It should be the goal of any online merchant to make searching for products as easy as possible for those who visit their site. The last thing you want is for your customers to have difficulty locating what they want because they’ll likely get frustrated and go somewhere else. Amazon makes doing this incredibly simple and easy, so you will want to follow suit and do the same.

While it may seem like it’s nearly impossible to succeed as an online merchant sometimes, there are quite a few things that you can do to increase your chances of making it. Every single e-commerce business owner should take a close look at Amazon to see what they are doing right because there are a lot of them.