15 Tips To Improve Your Retail Business

If you're a retailer, chances are we've played in your pool over the last 50 years. Because retail clients have been a mainstay of Yaffe's client base since the very beginning. And I'd like to share some of that long history of retail experience with you, so I asked Yaffe team members to give me their best tips to help retailers get ahead in today's highly competitive market. Here's some choice examples; I hope they help you and your business!

1. Make sure you don’t get “sold out”. You spend so much to get people into your store, make sure your salespeople are trained to represent the culture of your store. – Fred Yaffe, CEO

2. Communicate your marketing efforts to your sales staff. If the frontline sales person is unaware of a promotion run by your social media/digital team it makes for a poor customer experience. – Billy, Digital Marketing

3. Direct marketing efforts should focus first on existing customers. – Michael, EVP Yaffe Direct

4. Focus on collecting the right data. If one of the obstacles your organization faces when it decides to embrace data-driven marketing is that you don’t know where to begin, ask yourself – what are the 20% of data that will give you the 80% impact? For example, before you spend money on circulars and direct mail marketing, determine how far each customer lives from your store and then only contact potential customers who live within the radius of most customers.  You may just save enough money to create another marketing campaign. – Bonnie, Database Management

5. Never let your desire for data trump customer service, or user experience. – Jen, Account Supervisor

6. Make your checkout process efficient. As a consumer, I'm still amazed at retailers who don't get how busy working moms are and how precious our time is. When I have to wait a long time to pay for something, it's infuriating. I often make choices on retailers based on the efficiency of their checkout process. – Diane, Working Mom

7. The value of good customer service cannot be overemphasized. We regularly see people post to one of our furniture retail client’s Facebook page and show pictures of their newly delivered furniture. They often cite the great service they received from the salesperson or delivery person. In the rare occasion when a customer mentions an issue they encountered, which is unavoidable in the retail world, the most important thing is how the retailer chooses to handle that customer. If the store jumps in and makes it right, as this particular client is very good at, chances are the customer will remember the positive experience, continue to shop at the store and share the experience with friends. But if you handle the situation poorly, you likely lost a customer for life, who will also share their experience with friends. – Heather, Account Executive

8. Don't ignore social review sites like Google+ and Yelp. They often appear just beneath or next to your company in search results.  Develop a process for addressing negative reviews and no, that doesn't mean just deleting them. Think of it as an extension of your customer service department. Find a way to route the discussion offline. – Billy, Social Media

9. Connect your e-Commerce to Google Analytics. If you have a Google Analytics account and you sell items on your website and have not added the Google Analytics tracking code for e-Commerce – DO IT! It will show you the value of every web site page in the visitor’s path to buying from you on your web site. – Bonny, Google Analytics

10. Understand that aside from the product or service you sell, your logo is one of the most important aspects of your business. Logos visually represents your business across a multitude of mediums and for some potential customers it's the first impression they get of you. So make sure you have a good one, even if it means you need to redesign it now. – Kyle, Sr. Art Director

11. Make sure your image and store experience are aligned. When retailers try to improve their image, but the store experience doesn't match that image, there's a gap. Companies should take a hard look at their core values and vision first and make sure there is alignment throughout the organization. Then everyone will be singing from the same songbook and the consumer experience will be more genuine. Nothing's worse than a brand without a soul. – Diane, Creative Director

12. Appeal to your customer on an emotional basis. There was a seed company that had the same product and designed 2 different packages, one called " Grass Seed" the other was "Lawn Seed" The Lawn Seed outsold the Grass Seed 3 to 1. – Susie, Executive Producer

13. Brand integrity and social responsibility are important. Customers have more options to choose from than in the past. So, it’s important that a retailer stand out and gain the trust of stakeholders by demonstrating that they are socially responsible and invested in their community. From a PR standpoint, we consider that built-up trust extremely important. If your company faces tough times, you’ve gained a solid reputation, and are likely to survive the obstacles that lie ahead. – Heather, Account Executive

14. Establish a strong flow of communication between you and your media planning team. Having them understand all your markets and what has worked best in the past will lead to a plan that provides the best sales results.  You don’t need your media team to live down the street; they just need to have a close relationship with you and an intimate understanding of your business.  You need to have weekly conversations with them about the previous week’s sales and they should visit all markets annually. Additionally, your media team should make any necessary trips to “sick” store locations for better understanding of the situation.  Arming them with all this information will make sure you’re maximizing your media effectiveness and are able to head off problems before they arise. – Buffy, Media Director

15. Know your target market. Who do we want to reach? How do we reach them? What will catch their attention? The most successful ad campaigns reveal this simple fact – your message went directly to those you want to give it to. The ad got through to the people who you want to talk to and when you do it right; you’re more likely to get the results you’re expecting or projected; be it creating a buzz in media space; driving traffic; increasing sales, etc. – May, Media Planner

There you go, 15 tips from our team to help you get ahead of your competition, capture customers and hang on to them. We'll expand on some of these tips in upcoming weeks. What other tips would you add to this list?

Mike McClure, Exec Creative Director/Social Media Guy

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