How to Increase Sales
Once your business is established, your goal should be to increase profits. There are two ways to do this. The first is to increase prices and reduce costs, and the other is to simple make more sales at your current levels of price and expense. Many find that combining the two strategies is the most effective way of making more money, but increasing sales is often the trickier of the two tactics.
Increase Advertising
If you’ve been getting by on drop-ins and word of mouth, you need to boost your advertising and attract new customers. Fliers, leaflets, articles, signs, new display systems and signage are all simple ways to make your presence more noticeable in your local area, and if you’re working on a website optimizing that website for search engine traffic or using other online advertisements will help to generate business as well.
Smarter Marketing
If you’ve been advertising, are you wasting money on markets that aren’t converting to sales? For example, if you’re including a flier in a mail out that goes to all area homes, is the flier bringing in new business. Mail outs such as these are terrific ways to bring in customers for retail establishments or services geared to families or individuals, but if you’re targeting students or small businesses, your fliers are likely a waste of time and money.
Rather than putting your flier in the mail, if you want to attack students to your business, pay a student to place the fliers on windshields and on bulletin boards on a local college campus. Advertise in publications these students read and offer free items or services these students might enjoy. College students love free items, and drawing them in with a freebie is an age old method of marketing. Narrow your marketing focus to ensure your dollars are being spent on advertising that reaches the right people.
Increase Each Buy
You don’t need to increase customers if you can simply entice your current customers to buy more. Well designed point of sale displays will offer customers more options at checkout or as they browse. Grocery stores and clothing stores have this down to a science. As you wait in line at the grocery store, you grab a pack of gum and a magazine you want to finish. In your establishment, you might put ink cartridges or other small items that people tend to forget they need directly by the register. Have cashiers offer the items to customers as they ring up the total.
Another way to increase individual sales is to put related items near each other. While it might make more sense to keep all the pens together on one aisle and paper on another, setting up a small display of pens next to the paper and notebooks will often remind customers that they are running low on pens and encourage a few items into the basket.
You can increase buys online as well by offering related items as items are added to a shopping cart and offering a “special” offer during check-out.
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Posted in Business & Finance, General Business
