The Only 2 ways to make more money in Retail: Part 1

Get more customers

At the Poplar HARCA Pop Up Business School we looked at how we attract more customers to our ‘stores’. We saw stores as either a physical location or a virtual location.

1.       Produce related content – videos about how to use your product, articles, guides and information that would be useful for your customers

2.       Keywords – SEO – what words do you want to show up under.  Then use these words as tags for your YouTube videos, Twitter, Facebook, Meta-Tags on your website and in everything you do!

3.       Talk to groups – get out there and talk to groups.  The best place to start on this one is Toastmasters

4.       Competitions - RT/Like to enter – Run a competition for people to enter that if they like your page, give you there details or use a specific hash tag!  Get people involved

5.       Promotions – run a promotion for a special event, for a big deal, for something about your business

6.       Local media – think about what the local media readers or listeners would be interested in and then speak to the local media about writing articles for them.

If you are selling photography equipment then build a community of enthusiastic photographers and bring them together adding value to their lives

Doesn't matter if your store is a physical retail store or an online shop

 7.     Events / New business start-up event – The Poplar HARCA Pop-Up Business School start-ups are planning a big event where all 25+ of them will display their businesses!

8.        Interview experts – Find someone famous within your industry or area and then ask them if you can interview them for your blog, for your website or at your shop

9.       Twitter / Direct tweets – write directly to people and talk to them

10.      Loss leaders – retail shops will sometimes offer something at cost or below cost to attract people into their store

11.      Give-aways/offer free advice – run a come into the store on this day to get……………… free massage, free tasters, how to cook class. 

12.      Build a community – Look to build a community of people.  If you are selling cameras build a community of amateur photographers and create value for them.  If you run a comic book store then build a community of people that love to read them and run events for them.  Build a community of the people you want to work with

The key thing is that you have to bring people to your store.  They won't just happen upon you anymore!  Work to bring people to your store using these 12 ways

Big thank you to the Poplar HARCA Pop-up business school participants and Tony Pass of the Retail Operation for helping us to come up with this list!  Loving working with you.  For more tips on Retail then visit Tony's Blog at The Retail Operation