Resource Nation Small Business Articles & Advice

Marketing Fun Friday: Diversifying Your Content For Greater Reach

Megan Webb-Morgan — Fri, 17 May 2013 12:00:36 +0000

Although search engines have only recently come to understand the importance of quality content in terms of website value, marketers have always known that finding different ways to reach customers is good strategy.

In a post-Panda internet, you need to utilize a variety of channels to reach your customers – social media, websites, mobile advertising, apps, and more.

The more channels you use to reach a customer, the more valuable that customer will be: 20-60% more valuable for two channels, and 60-125% more valuable for three channels (DMA). (Tweet this stat!)

You also need to diversify the types of content that you use: not only textual content, but visual, video, and interactive content as well. The most successful online brands use a variety of methods and content types to draw in high volumes of quality customers.

Written Content

The type of content that your business is probably most used to producing is written content – from press releases, to marketing copy, to the information posted on your company website. There are a number of ways that you can utilize your writing skills to create varying kinds of content.

Blogs: If your company doesn’t already run a blog, start one. 93 percent of marketers are planning to allocate more resources to building out their websites and blog content this year. (Tweet this stat!)
Whitepapers and Ebooks: Higher-end content like whitepapers provide customers with valuable resources and information. Producing this content gives your company greater authority and helps build trust with the customer.

Visual Content

The internet is becoming more and more visual. In response to the news that 50% of all content posted on Facebook is visual, the social network is changing its news feed to place a greater emphasis on images. Be sure to populate your social networks with:

Photos: Whether they’re of your products, your employees, or your business, be sure to post interesting and engaging photos on a regular basis.
Infographics: The wild popularity of infographics is based on their ability to condense data into an easy to read and understand format. Produce your own infographics and repost industry-related imagery to add value to your online presence.

Interactive Content

Don’t forget to expand into more complex types of content that can produce high levels of viewer engagement, such as:

Video: According to Facebook, photos and videos can produce up to 120% more engagement than text posts. (Tweet this stat!)
Utilize social networks and YouTube to distribute videos that brand your business and engage customers. 46% of people are more likely to seek out information about a product or service after seeing it in an online video (Eloqua).
Podcasts: Record an audio file – an interview, discussion, etc – that customers can stream online or download to their music player to listen to on the go.
Webinars: Webinars help your business to provide quality content at varying levels, of which webinars and other educational types of content inhabit the higher end – producing high value for business-to-business marketers especially. For example, niche social network Slideshare gets more than 60 million visits and 120 million page views per month. 23% of B2B marketers use the site, and C-level executives use it 40% more than they use Linkedin (Content Marketing Institute).

Expanding your reach online is a strategy composed of two tactics: utilizing diverse platforms to reach customers, and producing diverse content. Be sure to take advantage of the many opportunities afforded by social networks, the mobile web, online marketing, YouTube, and various other tools in order to distribute branded content that is valuable to your potential customers. This content should exist in multiple formats and appeal to a variety of visitors.

Your Call Center: Which Real-Time Metrics Matter Most?

Megan Webb-Morgan — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:00:52 +0000

Your call center generates an enormous amount of data that can be analyzed in a variety of ways. Understanding which real-time data metrics are the most important can help your call center maximize efficiency, streamline processes, and improve customer service.

According to Luke McKeever, CEO of Portrait Software: “As markets continue to become more competitive, it will be those organizations that use intelligent, company-wide data to fully understand the needs of their customers and to make relevant and timely offers, that will ultimately succeed.”

Base your company’s strategy on the following metrics in order to help your company’s call center stand out:

First Call Resolution Rate

Your first call resolution rate (FCR) is derived from the number of calls resolved upon first contact divided by the total number of calls received. It shows how many times your average customer has to call you before their situation is resolved; preferably, customers want to call only one time.

FCR is an effective way to measure your call center’s efficiency and success. Analyzing how many calls it takes in order to create a “happy customer” can help you to identify where better resolution paths exist.
Increasing your FCR enables your call center representatives to spend less time on each customer, enabling them to serve more customers in the same amount of time and reducing operating costs for your company.
Good FCR rates gives your reps opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell to satisfied customers.

Workforce Management

The plethora of data created by your call center can help you predict what kind of call volume you’ll have hour by hour, and what types of skills your reps will need in order to handle the volume.

Your call center metrics can help you to appropriately size your workforce for any given day, hour, or skill needed, depending on peak traffic, special events, and any internal or external influences (seasonality, wage laws, etc).
These metrics help you direct your workforce where it’s needed in order to maximize both efficiency and customer service. It prevents you from having too many agents on the clock during a slow period, resulting in wasted money, as well as from having insufficient agents available to handle peak traffic, resulting in less effective customer service.

Cost per Call

Cost per call – the number of calls an agent handles in an hour divided by their hourly pay rate – can vary in importance depending on the needs of your company. Many businesses base their assessment of call center agents on their cost per call rates, and direct their overall cost-cutting strategy towards minimizing the length of each call.

Cost per call rates do not take into account external factors like call volume or upsell opportunities, and can result in a decrease in customer service and satisfaction.
According to Kimberly Collins, managing VP at Gartner CRM, “If your organization wants to lower customer support costs minimizing the length of a call with the contact center might be a target. But if the objective is to upsell or cross-sell to each customer, then identifying what sequence of events leads to a ‘conversion’ or sale would be more appropriate.”

The importance of certain real-time call center metrics can depend on what the goals are for your call center. Increasing opportunities for upsells or cross-sells can be the main goal of one company, whereas another company might get the best benefit from a low cost-per-call rate. No matter what strategy your call center follows, your first call resolution rate and workforce management analytics are integral to maximizing your call center’s effectiveness.

Infographic: The Benefits of New-to-You Office Furniture

Guest Author — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:00:44 +0000

“New” is a very relative term. Getting something brand new is always exciting and at the top of people’s wish list. But new isn’t always the best fit; sometimes it just needs to be new to you.

Many business owners and managers do not know that they can get refurbished and as-is commercial office furniture from office design and space planning companies. This may be an optimal choice for many businesses looking to be responsible both financially and environmentally.

Here are 4 benefits of buying refurbished or as-is commercial office furniture.

It’s Greener

Choosing refurbished commercial office furniture is a green choice and will assist in LEED certifications for office spaces – as well as providing a potential tax break. It also keeps about 1,000 tons of waste out of landfills. Businesses are switching many of their systems and processes to be more and more green. Paper, among other items, is becoming obsolete as business owners and CEOs realize that green not only helps their reputations, but also their bottom lines.

Edward E. Lawler, a professor of business at University of Southern California, wrote in Forbes that the businesses that will win out in the long run are the ones that choose to serve society best.
Looking into the option of refurbished furniture is one way businesses can serve society, save money and raise their reputation.

It’s Cheaper

The bottom line of refurbished furniture is that it is less expensive. New office furniture can cost approximately $3,000-$5,000 dollars per employee or about $15-$30 per square foot. Refurbished office furniture is going to come in way under budget – and you can still get a lifetime warranty on the product from certain office furniture designers and suppliers.

It’s Faster

Growth is often unpredictable. There can be a day when it is realized that more office furniture needed to be ordered yesterday. Refurbished furniture typically has a 3 week lead time, enabling companies to get their hands on furniture much quicker. New furniture can take months to arrive. So, if you are on a time crunch, going the refurbished or as-is office furniture route might just be the answer you were looking for.

It’s Customizable

You are not going to reduce the customizable options or design choices available to you if you decide to go with refurbished office furniture. There are still a great many styles and options to choose from in the as-is world.

Business owners and managers will be able to match or complement the business’ existing furniture and still have access to dozens of fabrics and colors.

New is nice, but often going refurbished or as-is can help support the bottom line or assist in meeting a budget. From modern office cubicles with low glass walls, to collaborative bench desk workspaces, to the traditional and formal office space, the options in office design and space planning are endless. Refurbished or as-is furniture can be a great option and an asset to many businesses.

Bio: Stephanie Drescher is a professional blogger for Facilitec, the company that has been providing product, project management and design since 1983; giving their clients workspace solutions for their environments.

Startup Tuesday: Want to Start a Business? Don’t Move to New York

Guest Author — Tue, 14 May 2013 12:00:41 +0000

New York—they say if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. While this may be true, traditionally entrepreneurial cities like New York aren’t as conducive to business development as entrepreneurs might think.

In a recent report, Biz2Credit, an online platform that connects entrepreneurs with credit solutions, assessed the fastest growing cities for small business in America. The results showed that operating in big tech cities might be more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to small business entrepreneurship.

Annual revenue is highest in cities like New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, but profits are lower due to prohibitive taxes and insurance and operation costs. Excess overhead can cripple small businesses, which means that despite all the networking opportunities they might offer, traditional tech cities may not be ideal for small businesses. By contrast, other cities feature much lower costs of living, which means that they could be strong contenders to host American entrepreneurial ventures. As Biz2Credit Rohit Arora notes, “Technology levels the playing field.”

So before you book your ticket to New York, consider the advantages that other entrepreneurial locales may offer to your business. Traditional tech cities may be home to older, more established companies, but Biz2Credit’s study shows that cities like Houston, Denver, and Seattle are showing potential as sites for small business growth and development. Would-be entrepreneurs would be wise to consider a few factors before choosing a site for their new business:

Know your city’s tax structure. In New York, taxes are notoriously high, rendering the city unaffordable for many startup businesses. States like Texas, however, have neither corporate nor individual income tax, meaning it has one of the lowest tax burdens in the country.

Beware of high costs of living. This ties in with tax structures, but living in a city where the average cup of joe is $2 and the average cocktail is $12 can really take a toll on your wallet when you’re looking to network over drinks. Living in an expensive city may help connect your business with some powerful people, but it’ll come at a cost.
Look for support. Focus on cities with established professional groups and Chambers of Commerce. Big tech cities offer a wealth of entrepreneurial networking opportunities, but don’t count out the little guys. Nearly every American metro area is home to some sort of business association, and the US Small Business Administration (SBA) has offices in every state across the country.

While some cities in America are more small business friendly than others, you’re not guaranteed success in one and failure in another. But location does matter more than most of us think. Be sure to do your homework and do what you love!

Bio: Liz Jacob is a writer and editor living in New York. She is a writer for Biz2Credit Business Loans, the #1 online credit resource for small business loans, business loans for women, equipment financing, working capital and other funding options. Biz2Credit has secured $800 million in funding for small business owners in the U.S. since 2007. Visit www.biz2credit.com and follow @biz2credit on Twitter for company and industry updates.

4 Lessons Small Businesses Can Learn from Warren Buffett

Guest Author — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:00:22 +0000

At one time, Warren Buffett was the wealthiest human being on Earth. If he hadn’t shared his wealth, he’d likely still hold, or vie for that spot in present day.

He deserves to be viewed as a guru when it comes to investments – and the secrets to his success can be applied to the way small business owners run their businesses.

Talk to People

Buffet grew up as a shy person, even into his adulthood. He realized this personality trait and knew it would hinder him when it came to success in his business endeavors. To help with this problem, he enrolled in a public speaking course. From the course, he gained enough confidence that he taught a night class at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

As you run a business and aim for high levels of success, you must be able to sell your products, services and yourself. Attend pitching events to polish your technique. To succeed at sales, you must have the ability to convince people and always remember that honesty in business pays off.

The Market Doesn’t Rule You; You Rule the Market (And Learn From It!)

When it comes to investment principles, Buffett realized its simplicity. Don’t view the market as a guide, but instead think of the market as someone who is happy to sell you a product. Sometimes the person will sell products at a higher price, sometimes at a lower price. This principle led Buffett to make an investment in Goldman Sachs during the height of the banking crisis that affected the world.

As you build your own business, don’t always follow what is doing well at that moment, or offer exactly what people want today. Just like the stock market, people want change. Build a business that will defy the test of time and isn’t too trendy.

Don’t Accrue Loads of Debt

If you have money, you don’t have to hand it out to people. Buffet’s daughter once approached him for a loan when she wanted to make changes to her kitchen, and he refused. Yes, one of the richest men in the world didn’t give his own daughter money on loan. This is a key to his extreme wealth and success: he’s never had debt.

This isn’t always practical or feasible when it comes to running a business. We all know that loans can help jump-start a business. If possible, look into bootstrapping. Growth may be slower, however the moment you begin to earn a profit, it’s yours.

Keep on Moving

As a child, Buffett had a newspaper route, sold used golf balls and eagerly took on any job he could to make the almighty dollar. As a young teenager, he was already making more money than many of his teachers and was a millionaire before he turned thirty years old.

Alongside the previous point, we learn from Buffett that you don’t have to stop the things you currently do to make money when you start and run a business.

Business guru Warren Buffett lives a life of success and wealth that many of us aspire to replicate. The philanthropist and investor is a man who can teach us all ways to run a business and create a successful empire.

What lessons have you learned from running your business?

(Image Source: Official White House Photo)

Bio: Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.

Marketing Fun Friday: Fill Your Sales Pipeline With Help From Branded Content

Guest Author — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:00:40 +0000

It used to be that to sell a product, you only really needed a great idea and a nice way to say it. The relationship was simple: you provided something unique to a customer that they felt they needed. You, the provider of said good or service, were in a position of influence – only you could fulfill that person’s specific need. Now that the internet has opened up a (literal) world of options that have the potential to be cheaper or more accessible than yours, the relationship between buyer and seller has become much more complex.

Simply providing products is no longer enough. People – your current and future customers – are inundated with product marketing messages all day, every day, on every web property they visit. They are deaf to your product in this sea of noise. In order to reach them, you need to take your marketing to the next level by creating engaging, and relevant content that will interest potential customers in your business, provide them with a valuable resource, and help build a relationship.

Why Branded Content Works

What you provide your customers should make sense with your product, and should work hand in hand with your product, but it doesn’t need to be your product. In order to forge a relationship with your customers that provides them with value above and beyond your product, you need to begin developing tools and resources that help your potential and current customers navigate their day-to-day lives.

Producing valuable, branded content for your customers – blog posts, infographics, articles, how-to’s, etc – is the best, most-bang-for-your-buck option to redefine this relationship.
Content that fills in a common knowledge gap or helps solve a common problem for your market is the best way to build a devoted following of people interested in your major brand themes – and who may, in time, turn into actual customers for your business.

Adjust your lead nurturing cycle to deliver relevant content about topics your audience members care about. Begin distributing this content in places where your target market will gather.

These actions will fill the top of your sales pipelines with people hooked on your content, and will be more likely to trust you and your product when they decide to purchase. 61% of customers seek out web content before making a purchase, so if you are a thought leader in your space, those 61% of consumers will be seeing your brand and content the most (Razorfish, 2008). (Tweet this stat!)

How To Use Branded Content For Lead Generation

In order for your content to generate sufficient leads, your content should reflect your product/service, the audience you are pursuing, and the problem your business is trying to solve. By identifying these things, you can make a smart assumption about what these people would be interested in reading and sharing on a day-to-day basis.

For example: if you are a baker, you want people to buy your cookies baskets online.

What is your product? Cookie baskets.
Who is your audience? People interested in eating, baking and gifts.
What is the problem you wish to solve? People who would buy cookie baskets online either don’t know how to make these items or are too busy to create gift baskets themselves.
The content you should test: easy cookie recipes, content about creative gifts, content about ways to easily personalize store bought items, etc.

Give it a shot! You can reach thousands of new, potential leads by creating content that helps with your audience’s day-to-day problems or shared interests. When you have an existing relationship built on trust and a long history of need fulfillment, your customers will feel comfortable choosing you over your competitors. Sure, someone else’s product might be flashier or get more press, but people will come to you to buy because of the relationship you’ve invested in through the production and development of engaging, branded content.

Bio: Clair Byrd is the Director of Content and Community for Scoop.it, the leading topic-centric content curation platform. For thoughts about writing and community follow @theclairbyrd. For great content about the future of media and social tech, follow @scoopit.

Using Big Data to Optimize Your Predictive Marketing

Guest Author — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:00:27 +0000

Are you an actor, or a reactor?

Think about it, honestly, because it’s a crucial question in defining who you are as an entrepreneur or salesman.

More importantly, however, knowing the answer to this question may provide the direction for a step that could take you to a new level of success.

Reactors spend their time dwelling on what happened, and once you’re caught in that cycle it’s incredibly difficult to break out of it. You spend your critical thinking time on the events of yesterday. As a marketer, that means you’re focused on the actions consumers took in the past, but we’re learning more and more every day that we need to be using that evidence to find niche actions that data will predict for the future.

That’s why predictive marketing is vital to your growth as an individual and a business.

What is Predictive Marketing?

Predictive marketing is about looking to the future decisions your customers will make and acting accordingly. It’s what Dan Neely, founder of Networked Insights, calls “pre-informed marketing.”

The day of the marketer moving on hunches is fading away. There’s simply too much data available to us today to market with guesswork. “We’re all big data companies now,” Neely said at a recent presentation at Chicago’s 1871 tech incubator. “We have to try and extract the value from the increment.”

How Do We Do That?

First, you need to understand who your customers are today. Using your POS system, ecommerce software, and other sales tools, you must collect data on who your customers are and what they’re buying, but you have to stay current. In a world where trends come and go faster than ever before, you can’t sit on data and sift through it for months before you act on the knowledge it holds.

Then, we look at predictive analytics. You want to find trends in your customer data to predict what your customers want.

With these two data sets you can begin to draw correlations and understand the “Why” factor. You can begin to see trends that will repeat themselves in the future. Supply chain gurus for instance, rely on this so they can forecast supply correctly.

This is predictive analytics, but how does it apply to marketers or relate to predictive marketing?

Now What?

The difference comes in how you apply the analytics. Predictive marketing is the “now what” of predictive analytics to marketers. With this tool, you are able to analyze, “How long should an article be on the home page? Which customer website actions are most predictive of conversion? What is the forecasted sentiment of a specific Facebook post?”

John Bates of Adobe’s digital marketing blog says predictive marketing “…offers the cure to almost every ill-informed analysis and poorly managed optimization effort by unearthing hidden patterns in large sets of data and providing foresight for future decisions.”

You might call predictive marketing something different – smarter marketing. It doesn’t mean everything is about data. We still need to be creative, we still need to connect, but using data more smartly will point us in the right direction sooner, and not waste that creative energy on the wrong targets.

We have been able to collect data on customers and find patterns for a while now. The future is in using this to look ahead; using data – not hunches – to optimize your marketing schemes.

Bio: Erik Severinghaus is the founder and CEO of SimpleRelevance, a Chicago-based company that creates automated, personalized email marketing. Prior to that he received a patent while in IBM’s IT Optimization organization, and helped co-found iContact—a leading Email Service Provider. Find him on Google+ and follow him on Twitter.

Bad Debt: How to Spot the Early Warning Signs

Guest Author — Wed, 08 May 2013 12:00:55 +0000

As a business owner, cash flow is everything and it is perfectly normal in many cases to use credit to fund the growth of your business.

In fact, many large businesses are constantly in debt and they leverage this debt to maximize their profitability.

But debt isn’t always a good thing and it must be used cautiously. Using debt in the wrong way and not fully understanding your finances can kill off your business before you even know what went wrong. That’s why it is important that you use debt wisely and for the right reasons.

Good Debt vs. Bad Debt

‘Good’ debt is any debt that you leverage to increase your profitability. A typical example might be taking out a business loan to pay for new equipment which will make you more competitive.

In order to grow your business, you may need to purchase more inventory than your cash flow will allow. If your business is profitable and you use your debt to make more money, that is generally a good thing.

‘Bad’ debt is the exact opposite; when you are taking on new debt that you don’t have the means to repay; or when your debt is used to cover internal issues rather than for growth.

It is quite common for struggling businesses to gradually increase their borrowing without realising that there is a problem. It is only when the credit dries up that the directors realise that they are insolvent, by which point they already have a large amount of debt to repay.

How To Spot The Warning Signs

First of all, don’t assume that your business is doing well just because it’s making sales. If you have a fundamentally unprofitable business, good sales figures can spur you on to invest more and more without realising how much debt you’re creating.

Here are a few ways to ensure you don’t fall into this trap:

Know your finances. How much does stock cost? What is your margin? What are your costs? Often, you can spot problems before they arise just by knowing these figures.
Know your balance. The surest sign of profitability is your balance sheet. Check it every month to account for the value of your assets, your cash and your debts. A decreasing balance may indicate a problem. Additionally, a negative balance indicates that your debts are greater than the total value of your assets.
Know where your debt being spent. When you take on new debt, what is it being used for? If you are using it to buy stock or pay suppliers, why can’t your profit from sales cover the bill? Using credit to aid cash flow as you increase your stock levels is one thing, but using debt just to maintain the status quo is quite another.

What To Do About It

If any of these points sound familiar, don’t panic, but do take action. When your business is losing money, taking on new debt is rarely a good idea. Your first step should be to go through the numbers thoroughly and find out just how unprofitable your business is.

Presumably, when you started your business you expected it to be profitable, so your goal should be to figure out where you went wrong. Normally this will be a case of under-estimating your costs or over-estimating your sales.

Whatever the case, once you know where you went wrong, you can start to formulate a plan to turn it around. Downsize if you have to, at this stage you can’t justify any more business debt, so you have to work with what you’ve got. Once you can prove profitability, you may consider taking on new debt to grow the business again.

Bio: Michael Monroe works in the financial sector and is currently working on his first book.

Startup Tuesday: Infographic: Business Financing Options to Fit Your Needs

Guest Author — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:00:27 +0000

It’s no secret that there are many financial challenges present in today’s economy. Small business owners especially have been hit hard by the economic recession.

Although many seem to be optimistic about the future, the fact remains that traditional lenders, like banks and credit unions, are hesitant to approve business loans in what they consider to be high-risk circumstances and industries.

So does this mean that business owners should just sit idly by, waiting for the economy to turn around? Absolutely not! More than 80 percent of small businesses use some sort of financing to grow their business, but 61 percent of small business bank loan applications were rejected last year alone. It’s important for business owners to know that there are alternatives to business loans from the bank that are able to meet their needs.

Alternative Financing Solutions

Regardless of whether a business has been denied a loan from the bank or if they simply need access to working capital faster than a bank would allow, alternative financing solutions are quickly becoming the funding source of choice for many business owners across the country.

At times, small business owners are confronted with time-sensitive opportunities that require a fast decision and quick access to financing. Not only can an alternative lender give a small business access to capital much quicker, they also do not rely heavily on credit scores. While credit history is considered, it is not a deciding factor in approval.

A small business may require working capital for any number of reasons, from remodeling a storefront and purchasing inventory to upgrading equipment and advertising. Regardless of the need, there are business financing options available.

Even in the best of times, it was difficult for a small business to get a bank loan. According to SmallBizTrends.com, even though the rate of decline in small business loans accelerated during the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, the decline had started much earlier than 2007. Many companies have had to resort to any combination of ways to secure financing, including tapping into their personal savings, credit cards and other types of less-traditional lending.

So what are your options for business financing?

The following infographic discusses the differences between two popular financing options, short-term business loans and merchant cash advances, and how to determine which option best fits your business needs.

No matter what your needs are, there may be an alternative financial solution for your business. Through small business loans and merchant cash advances, companies of all types, including restaurants, retail stores, spas, salons and auto repair shops, can have quick access to working capital with a choice of flexible or fixed repayment options. If a small business requires more cash before they have paid off their original amount, they may even qualify for additional funding.

Bio: Christina Memorio is an SEO Specialist at Business Financial Services, Inc. Her content covers a variety of topics relevant to small business owners, from financial advice and alternative funding solutions to social media and content marketing practices for SMBs. In her spare time, Christina loves to cook and is a die-hard fan of the Florida Gators. Check out the BFS blog here. Connect with Christina on Google+!

Maximize Retail Profits by Tracking Consumer Buying Habits

Guest Author — Mon, 06 May 2013 12:00:25 +0000

Do you know why customers purchase impulse items? Understanding your customers’ thought process is vital to product pricing, placement, and overall marketing. The Journal of Management and Marketing Research states that “product placements are associated with increased purchase intent and sales.”

Consider how many television shows use product placement during the actual program. American Idol is sponsored by Coca-Cola. During the show, Coca-Cola cups are always on display at the judges’ table.

Retailers can use consumer buying habits to facilitate their own product placement and retail strategy. From placing common impulse items near the register to displaying complementary products in the same location, your product placement tactics should always be based on your customers’ buying habits.

Increasing Sales with Similar Products

Watching your customers’ buying patterns can help you identify shopping trends and capitalize on those habits. Online stores are also thriving by promoting similar or complementary products to their customers.

When a customer shops for a particular item, you can design your shopping cart to suggest similar purchases before checkout.
You can also have your customers find add-on products when purchasing certain supplies. This is a common practice used by office supply stores.

A news article by Information-Management.com discusses how a particular store started tracking consumer buying behaviors. What they discovered was that beer was the product most often sold with diapers. On top of that, these purchases were made mainly on Friday afternoons by men between the ages of 25 and 35. After learning this, the store placed the diapers near the beer and saw a drastic increase in the sale of both products.

Guide Customers Through Your Store’s Layout

Many customers go to the store in search of just a few items, but they’re often open to buying other ones if they are in the right place at the right time. Placing impulse items near the register can boost sales of those products. In grocery stores, you often find gum, candy, magazines, batteries, and other small items near the register. Business stores, like Staples, often place pens, paper, and company-themed items near the checkout.

You want to make the shopping experience as easy as possible for customers. The practice of putting similar products next to each other is often used in retail stores based on consumer buying habits.

Keep Track of Inventory

Knowing the pulse of your inventory levels is vital in getting return business and maximizing sales. With consumer spending stuck in a rut since 2008, many stores have cut down on the amount of inventory they keep in-house.

Utilize an inventory management system to stay on top of all your inventory levels. Stockouts will seriously hurt your store as potential customers may go elsewhere for the products they need.

An inventory tracking system will allow you to stay on top of trends and consumer buying habits – helping you to understand who buys what, when, and how much. The key is to find suppliers who can meet your ordering needs so you can, in turn, meet customer demand adequately.

Data-mining technology is frequently used to determine internal and external factors related to consumer buying habits. External factors provide details on industry competition and the overall state of the economy. Internal factors relate to the price, product positioning, and employee-customer relationships. Use your POS, sales, or other business software to collect information about your customers, sales, and local economy in order to form a strategy for maximizing your retail profits.

Robert Lockard is a copywriter with Fishbowl. He writes for several blogs about inventory management, manufacturing, QuickBooks and small business.