Keeping your small business running is not just about staying afloat but also flourishing and growing as fast as you can. Even the smallest of businesses need to find ways to grow their sales while keeping costs low. Fortunately, there are plenty of easy ways you can increase your sales without spending a dime. If you’re struggling to grow your sales, these tips will help you get back on track and start seeing more customers coming through the door (and hopefully leaving with a bag in hand).
These best practices for increasing sales are simple, quick and won’t cost you much if anything at all. Let’s take a look at how you can get started today!
Put Together a Marketing Calendar
The first step towards increasing your sales is putting together a marketing calendar. This will help you organize your efforts around specific dates and events that could bring in more customers. For example, if your store is located near a university, you could organize a student discount to target campus students and their parents. Some of the dates that you should put on your calendar include: You may also want to look at holidays that are important in your country or state.
For example, if you’re in the gift basket business and you’re in the U.S., you could organize a special Christmas gift basket promotion around the winter holidays.
Run Constant Promotions
There is no better way to bring in new customers than with discounts and promotions. You should always strive to keep some kind of promotion running. Even if it’s a small discount, having something to offer customers will bring them in the door. Use your marketing calendar to plan out specific promotions and when they should run.
You can also use a calendar to plan out social media content. Every social media channel has its own best times and days to post. For example, you can post on Facebook on Mondays and Thursdays and Instagram on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. You can also use a social media calendar to plan out your website content. When you post on your website, you want to attract the right audience at the right time.
For example, if you want parents to visit your website on a Saturday morning, you’ll want to post articles that are relevant to parents and their children on that day.
Show Off Your Best Product(s)
It’s impossible to sell everything you have in your store all the time. However, you can showcase your best and most popular product(s) to help increase sales. Make sure you choose the right products to highlight and give them plenty of room to shine. This could be one product on the front page of your website, a certain product displayed on a table/shelf in your store or a product featured in your advertisements.
These are the products you want to highlight.
Hold Events for Customer Engagement
While sales and promotions are great, you also want to keep your customers engaged with your brand. This can be done through different events such as:
This will help you build a community around your brand and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. It can also help you find new customers and bring back old ones.
Many customers will return for future purchases after attending one of these events.
Conclusion
These best practices for increasing sales are simple, quick and won’t cost you much if anything at all. Now that you’ve read through these tips, it’s time to implement them and get your sales growing. Remember that these tips work best when they are used together. Put together a plan, start implementing and watch your sales grow!