What 7 Goals You Need for Your Retail Biz in 2024

Retail is no easy feat in 2024, so ensuring that you are implementing the proper strategy is essential to stay on top of the curve. Here are the 7 goals you need for you retail biz in 2024 to break through the noise. Get intentional with your goal-setting, here is where you need to start focusing to retain and grow your customer base.

The one strategy you really need to make your goals happen this year is to create a strategic plan for your business. All too often we like to think that sales is all about net profit, however there are many ways to get to your numbers. It is all about what you do to maintain and increase that Net Profit.

Strategic Planning

Your first step is to focus on the why before the what.

When you get really clear on your why and what drives you to take action in your business.

For example, maybe you want to expand this year to more locations, are you trying to hold on to the family business, do you want to develop some passive income, do you want to change the nature of your business due to a change in consumer trends?

Take time to brainstorm your why, and when you are solid on your reason, then carve out a day or two to for your business's strategic planning process.

What is Strategic Planning

A strategic plan is a tool that plays a critical role in planning for the growth of company. It helps to optimize your vision and create a road map of your retail goals on how to get there, maximizing your potential for growth.

This is different than a business plan. A business plan is used to set short-term goals, create the foundation for your business and can be used to get funding from the bank or investors.

Here's how to create a strategy that works:

1. Where you want to go (vision)
2. What your starting point is (internal / external factors and in accordance to your vision)
3. How your going to get there (create milestones and tactics and schedule these in)
4. What is going to get in your way (disruptors)

Click here to learn how to create a strategic roadmap for your business.

What is Net Profit?

NET PROFIT SHOULD BE YOUR HIGHEST PRIORITY and boils down to three things:

• Sales
• Margin (gross margin)
• Costs

Sales

Sales = Revenue

It is the amount of money you make from selling products or services.

Typical strategies to increase sales include increasing customer traffic, increasing AOV or average order value of each sale, and converting browsing customers to purchasing customers.

In order to do this effectively you will need to have analytics to understand trends and create a process in store for your employees to increase conversion.

Margin

Margin = difference between selling price and cost of the product.

Typical Strategies to improve your margin include managing markdowns and sales, resisting discounting in selling, managing shrinkage, improving relationship with suppliers, improving product mix and visual merchandising.

Costs.

Costs = Expenses through operations.

Typical strategies to reduce cost include analyzing your wages, outsourcing tasks, automation and reduction in shipping expenses.

7 Retail Goals that Need to Be on Your List this Year!

1. Build Community

One of the easiest ways to stand out from the crowd is to create a community-focused mindset. This can mean two different things:

• Build relationships with your surrounding community (localized strategy)
• Build a community surrounding your store (brand loyalty)

Ways to create a localized strategy are to carry specific products of community interest and developing personal relationships with each customer. You can also get involved with local organizations and create parties or special events for your local customers.

A huge win is to employ brand loyalty strategies for those in your tribe through reinforcing their repeat business.

Creating a loyalty program or incentives for those that are repeat customers can not only assist with retention, it can also increase units per sale if you work your strategy right.

"Approximately 27% of people who make an initial purchase show the potential to buy again. Loyal customers are a captive group to market to- they buy more often and open up their wallets more."

Primaseller.com

Pro Tip: Cater your marketing toward promoting brand referrals from current customers and offer preferred treatment through rewards. When you make it easy for your customers to refer and share your offerings you will be pleasantly surprised how they respond.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

If you wanna stand out from the crowd then you have to make an effort to be in front of your target customer on a consistent basis.

It takes anywhere between 5 to 7 impressions for a brand to get recognized or be remembered.

Primaseller.com

Funnel Goals:

Awareness = When someone is aware of your brand

Interest = When someone becomes interest in your offerings

Desire = When someone wants to acquire your brand product or services

Conversion = When someone turns from a potential customer into a purchasing customer

How to turn Brand Awareness into Sales

Consistency

Consistency wins when it comes to any marketing strategy. Your objective is to be ever present in their mind when they are ready to purchase and you can do so both through organic and paid marketing.

Be available in Multiple Formats

Be where your customer is…A.K.A be online, be mobile, be social, be open via brick and mortar.

• The key here is understanding your customer and making data -driven decisions as to how to spend your time marketing your brand.

Retarget

Leveraging a recent marketing campaign to retarget individuals who have visited your website is a great next step in converting awareness to a sale.

• The type of retargeting that applies the most to this instance is pixel-based retargeting. This is when an user visits your website, leaving it before making a purchase. Click here to find out more on how to do this.

3. Build an Omni-Channel Presence

If you haven’t taken the step toward becoming an omni channel retail, the time is now. Convenience is more important than ever before and plays a huge role in establishing repeat customers.

Omni Channel Retailing is the ability for the customer to shop across multiple selling channels including online and mobile as well as brick and mortar per jacada.com, basically it is retailers with with both a physical and digital presence.

Ensuring that you are present where the customer is (online) is so important in 2021 and this new selling channel will most certainly boost your sales this year and the years to come.

79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months

Going Omni is not a decision to just jump into, rather it requires the proper planning when deciding on vendors and systems to ensure that all operations run smoothly and efficiently from the start.

Benefits of Building an Omnichannel Presence

• Improves the customer experience; the customer is able to interact and purchase from your brand where they please, which leads to greater sales.
• Higher margins given the ability to sell nationally without discounting.
• Helps with retention of current customers
• Improvement in customers’ perception and satisfaction
• Better Customer Data Collection given increased visibility to purchases and browsing behavior
• Increased productivity for staff as well as a 360-degree view of purchases and inventory for the store.

Steps to Creating an Omnichannel Presence

1. Create a seamless mobile shopping experience
   1. This means that you need to create a website that is mobile friendly / optimized for mobile shopping.
      • Ensure that it is mobile friendly, large visuals that and simple navigation to help customers quickly and easily find what they are looking for on your site.
2. Ensure that you have a multi-channel POS & Inventory system.
   1. Visibility of inventory online and in store is crucial to delighting the customer as well as informing your sales staff.
      • The additional benefit is that you will have data visibility of the customer in one space as well. Your goal should be to consolidate and track inventory movement across all of your sales channels
3. Focus on the Customer Experience
   1. Taking a strong look at the customer journey to ensure that you are pleasing them at every touch point. Creating a friction-less journey is crucial to conversion, retention and brand loyalty.
      • Personalize every step of their journey as much as possible and build their customer profile whenever you are able. Collect birth dates, verify email addresses and build any data you can using social media login’s on your site if able.

Here are some recommendations on systems for smaller boutiques looking to upgrade their technology in this day and age (Merchantmaverick.com) :

-Vend (Integrates with Shopify & Woo Commerce/WordPress)

-Shopify (Has a online website and POS)

-ShopKeep (Integrates with Big Commerce & Shopify)

-Square (Integrates with Wix, Woo Commerce, Big Commerce & More)

My final thoughts on this matter is that that you haven’t converted your strategy to omni you are missing out and leaving money on the table.

4. Better Customer Engagement & Experience

If it were all about the product, the competition would swallow us all up. Luckily, in retail, we have an opportunity to create a holistic experience for the customer.

By creating a shopping environment that is memorable and enjoyable in more ways than one, the customer is more likely to engage more often.

By investing in customer engagement, you create opportunities for your customers to further engage with your brand, products, core values and so much more.

The key is not only creating these opportunities, but measuring them so that you are able to understand what is working and where there are greater opportunities.

Some of the ways you can increase and solidify more customer engagement are through:

• Do a customer journey audit
  • Ensure that there are surprise and delight moments along the way (and NO technical difficulties)
• Create disruptors across channels such as events, product engagement, reviews, giveaways etc.
• Establish a strong and active social media presence
  • Create a social media content calendar for your business
• Create an influencer program for your business
  • Identify a program that provides incentives for your loyal customers to start promoting your products for you.
• Create a loyalty program for your business that encourages more units per sale and more purchases per year.
• Create a customer engagement strategy for customer service and build relationships
  • Work to understand their wants and needs, take the time to get to know them.

“By developing relationships with customers, the small-store owner can takes steps to improve the shopping experience for both the customer and the community”

Smallbusiness.chron.com

• Incentivize your customers for shopping in store. Most likely, the reason that your customer is there is to have the experience of touching or trying on an item before purchase. Work with the reason they are there and give them a reason to come back.

"The ability to touch or try on an item before purchase is the #1 reason U.S. consumers shop at brick-and-mortar stores across all generations. However, nearly 2X more Baby Boomers cite this as a reason in comparison to Gen Z."

Bigcommerce.com

5. Social Media Marketing

We’ve already discussed how social media can play an extremely large role in customer engagement, influencers and experience, but what about the platform as a sales channel itself.

The Instagram shop feature has been available for some time and it has proven to provide many retailers with not just a boost in sales, but a platform for their business.

Some smaller retailers are using Instagram as their dedicated store and the power this platform has for artisans and makers alike can be monumental.

Here are some of the ways retailers can create a compelling brand presence, leverage their marketing efforts and use Instagram to increase sales:

• Customer Engagement
• Leveraging the Shop Feature on Instagram
• Create Influencers for your brand
• Increased Brand Recognition
• New product alerts
• Referral Marketing
• Promote your products and services
• Design personalized deals and offers to your audience depending on their online behavior
• Engage your consumers through contests and quizzes
• Gather client feedback

6. Data Driven Decisions

When you make data-driven decisions you are more likely to succeed in your efforts.

Plain and Simple.

Ensuring that your business has the right tools to collect data and segment customers is pivotal in enhancing the customer experience and gaining conversion with your customers.

Sometimes market research and the collection of data can feel like the boring, analytical part of business. This is especially true for a creative retailer.

However, once a business owner has seen the power that customer data has to create a successful marketing campaign and to personalize toward customer needs, most would change their minds.

The collection of data provides multiple benefits including:

• Greater ability to personalize and segment marketing and promotional offers to the customers preferences
• Better understanding of your customer base
• View of behavior on your website and ability to impact greater conversion.
• A better understanding of purchase behavior and opportunities by customer and across your brand.

Quote:

“79% of customers want retailers to send them personalized offers based on purchase history.”

Salesforce Connected Shopper Report

Collecting data on your customers is vital and here are a few ways it can be done across channels and mediums:

• Purchase Transactions
  • As a retailer you MUST, no exception, have a Point of Sale (POS) system that collects and easily reports on customer data. You will want to ensure that you are capturing fields upon purchase, at a minimum a full name if not email and address.
    • With even a name and a contact you will be able to identify spend level, units per transaction, shopping trips per year, brand / product preferences and many other things.
• Loyalty Reward Programs
  • Reward programs are a great way to retain and engage with your customers. Whether you create a program based on spend, points, visits etc, Loyalty programs give you the ability to gather more data points such as birthdays anniversary’s etc. so you can personalize and cater to the customer to an even greater degree.
  • When searching for the right program for your business, ensure that your program will automatically integrate with your POS for maximum efficiency and ease.
• Web Analytics
  • Leveraging an analytics software such as Google Analytics, will allow your company to report on where customers are coming from, their behavior, pageviews, time spent on your website, bounce rate as well as so much more.
• Surveys
  • Asking your customers their opinions on product, marketing, promotions and sales will quickly provide you with data from your most loyal audience to then turn into better decision-making.
• Social Media Polls
  • Leveraging the polling features on social media can provide you with immediate feedback form some of your most engaged customers.
  • You can ask questions if your pondering a direction you should take for product, ideas on what they like better and asking questions about what they would rather have, giving you just-in-time feedback.

Data and Customer Loyalty

I am a huge fan of using analytics and insight to drive business performance and optimize the results from digital marketing and here is just one of the many reasons why,

"Intensive users of customer analytics are 23 times more likely to clearly outperform their competitors in terms of new customer acquisition than non-intensive users, and nine times more likely to surpass them in customer loyalty."

Mckinsey.com

One thing is for sure, if you have an audience you do not miss out on the opportunity to consistently engage with and gather feedback from them.

Once you have the data you were looking for, how do you use it consistently?

1: Get to KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER

Make it your priority to learn from your customers and give them what they want. When you do, they will do business and buy from you.

As you collect more and more information you will be able to make better decisions on product, inventory, as well as the wants and needs of your customer across the board from a promotional and marketing perspective.

Remember, it is all about what interests your customer, not just what interests you.

2. Marketing Segmentation

Now that you have more information about your customer you can cater promotions based on their preferences.

Segmenting is a marketing process that allows you to divide out your marketing efforts and promotions based on the customer data.

For example, as a shoe retailer I may want to segment my tennis shoe marketing to the audience that has previously purchased tennis shoes in the past and is a current customer (made a purchase in the last year).

Some of the Benefits of Segmenting Your Marketing Efforts include:

• A more personalized promotion for the customer
• Less spend on irrelevant promotions for particular customers
• Event and seasonal based promotion

Of course, any time that you are looking to segment promotions you need to have the customer in mind first and look at the customer’s journey.

7. Automation

Automation sounds like a robotic word that is meant for larger companies, but, TRUTH BOMB….there are sooooo many ways to automate your workflow as a small ecommerce business.

2024 is the year to simplify your business and get your time back for focus on the big picture strategies to grow your business.

Honestly, you want efficiency and to free up some time in your BIZ… then read on and choose a few key areas of your business to automate.

Ways to Automate Your Small Retail Business:

Marketing

• Create email funnels from retargeting abandon cart customers to ensuring there is an email drip campaign for those that join your email list, there are plenty of ideas to spruce up your workflow and make life a bit easier this year.
• If you do not already have a Customer Relationship Management Tool, I HIGHLY recommend getting one. I use Convert kit and seriously saves my life and helps me convert customers without me lifting a finger.
  • Convert Kit is an email service provider that is sooooo MUCH MORE than just that! They automate your processes in a way that allows you to be more independent.
  • Their functions such as landing pages and customized forms allow you to be versatile in your marketing strategies as you can easily embed on your website. They have automation recommendations and functionality that allows you to segment your customer by rules and tags so that you can market your message directly to them.

• Inventory Management
  • If you are selling online and in store as we mentioned before, getting a POS and Inventory management system that are synced is a no brainer to save time and keep your customers happy.
• Social Media
  • If you are on Pinterest then you must give tailwind a try for your eCommerce business. It automates your pinning and gives you exponential visibility!
  • It’s no secret that keeping up with Instagram is also a full time job, so I highly recommend that you batch your work and use a free service such as buffer to schedule your postings. That way your postings will go out when you want them to, and you don’t have to get caught up in the distraction of social media daily.
• Customer Service
  • Stop the churn and talk to your customer on their time. Now with the capability of hiring a chat bot service it is easier than ever to allow customers to initiate a conversation, help with any issues and initiate returns without paying crazy sums of money.

Final Thoughts

Yes there are a million things you could implement in your business, but remember that in order to win you need to focus.

Create a Strategic Plan with the customer in mind and not just your pocket book. If you want to win the long game then you will need to slowly and steadily implement changes in your business to combat the Amazon’s of the world.

I’ve already said my piece, but I will reiterate the 7 Goals that Need to be on Your List This year:

1. Build Community
2. Create Brand Awareness
3. Build an Omni Channel Presence
4. Better Customer Engagement & Experience
5. Social Media Marketing
6. Data Driven Decisions
7. Automate

Again, in order to stay in business in 2024 you will need to play in the omni-channel game, no questions asked. Your marketing needs to take it to the next level integrating your strategy with a mix of social media, segmented marketing and a key focus on customer engagement.

BE sure to ALWAYS be gathering data across platforms and using it to understand your customer. The customer is KING and they are the one who will keep you in business, so ensure that their experience and customer journey with your brand is a pleasing one so that they turn into a brand loyal customer.

If you want help choosing which direction to focus on in your brand and are looking for an expert to help you make informed decisions to grow your business this year, I would love to chat with you. Schedule your Free 30-minute consult and let me help you get rid of your overwhelm and turn it into proactive profit.