How Retailers Get Loving Feeling This Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day... one of the most romantic holidays of the year, how can SME’s maximize the opportunity to claim their share of profits? Valentine's Day isn't an exclusive affair restricted to retailer of any kind of business, such as florists and chocolatiers.

Timing is everything

The secret to an effectively building connectivity with Valentines and your brand is to start early. Typically, women are shown to start their shopping earlier than men so starting your campaign early will target these customers. Many retailers will start as early as the last week in January to start building hype around the year's first business event. Create a sense of event through music, decorations and balloons.

Getting people over the threshold is half of the battle. Creating an engaging with window display will entice people in, allowing them to make purchases. Window dressing is a powerful tool when drawing foot traffic, giving you the chance to tell a story, make your products the point and build your brand. There's no limit to how out there you can go, get people talking, tweeting and sharing! Obviously, if you are less creatively inclined, keeping it simple can be an equally effective way to elegantly showcasing your products.

The same principle applies to your online store. Update your site to integrate a valentines theme, discounts and promotions. Include a countdown clock to add a sense of urgency to promotions and discounts. The Royal Mail conducted a survey which showed one in every ten online customers abandon their baskets before making a purchase.

Social media is a great free advertising tool allowing you to build relations with your customers. Twitter is a great platform for sharing snippets of stock with your current and potential customer base. Consider creating a teaser campaign on the development to Valentines to generate interest in any promotions you plan on running. Sharing pictures, cryptic messages or competitions can go far in creating interest. Encouraging your customers to share content of your products, for example, pictures and testimonials adds to your social impression. A small themed gesture, for example, heart shaped baked good's, or complimentary discounts on specific products will boost your customers to upload content to your social media platforms.

This is also a prime time to build your email lists, standing you in a good stead for the coming years customer events. Encourage people to sign up for newsletters and site updates. You could have a signup sheet by the till or note the site and social media details on the receipt. Customers will for the most part be more inclined to do this if they feel they're receiving something in return. Exclusive offers for email subscribers, for example, discounts and promotions are certain to see a boost in engagement.

Convenience is Key

Historically men are more inclined to leave their Valentine's shopping to the last minute but they also ready to part with more money, making them a retailer's closest friend. Financial site, Evolution money, reports men spend a normal of £40 on Valentine's gifts whereas women will spend simply over a half of that. The key to targeting this demographic is convenience.

Many men will often succumb to the mounting pressure, holding up until the last hour to get their gift. This means they want quick and simple purchase decisions and are happy to pay an extra premium for the convenience. There are many ways to do this, on both your online and offline stores.

Creating a gift guide for your online store assist overwhelmed customers valuable purchase options. Suggesting complementary products and including customer reviews will help turn browsers into purchasers. Again, tapping into the psychological of the customer and offering discounts or promotions will drive purchases. People are more inclined to buy if they believe they are getting a good deal.

Novelty budget friendly gifts should be close to the counter. These are the type of products people don't seek out but will buy on impulse if they grab their attention. Committing an area of your shop to Valentine's display can highlight key things making it easier customers find inspiration. This will be more successful in pushing bigger or more expensive products.

Conclusion

The commercial value of valentines runs into the millions and the traditional retailers we partner with the day are probably going to come out tops. In any case, this is a ripe opportunity jump on the bandwagon with the shamelessly market your business. Customers are primed to spend, so getting your brand noticed, both on the street and on digital platforms can secure long term custom.

How EPOS Software Help To Identify Product Lines and Categories That Are Killing Your Profits

The best ways to increase profits in your retail business is to analyse the profitability of your product lines and categories using actual sales statistics with the help of epos software.

Make sure that each retailer has at least a couple of product lines and categories that are killing their profits. By simply switching or dropping a few items that are not pulling their fair share, you can easily increase your profits by 2% or more.

In case if you do 1 million in yearly sales and increase profit margins by 2% - that is an extra £20,000 in your pocket every year!

For example, suppose you open your EPOS software and pull up a report that compares your overall profit margins for each of your categories.

If you sell sporting goods, you may see your "gym equipment" category has a truly low profit margin compared with everything else. This raises up a question... should it be advisable for you to be really carrying this category? In case if you replaced it with something that had a higher profit margin, would you get a boost in profits?

You can do a similar type of thing with your product lines. Suppose you sell lawn mowers and you built up a great deal of product lines over the years. So you pull up a sales report to compare the overall profit for each line.

What will happen if you drop those profit lines? There's a good chance you'd have less headaches trying to order and manage stock from all of those resources and you'll most likely wind up selling another brand of lawn mower which has a higher profit margin.

This results in less work for you and more money in your account.

If you analyse your profit margins, I'm sure you'll be stunned at what you see. Some of the product lines that you thought were making you a lot of money could be killing your profits.

What I really love about this process is that it depends on actual numbers - not hypothesis or guessing. Also, it works for a wide range of retail businesses.

What's more, the good thing about using your EPOS software to see profit margins is that you will save time, reduce calculation and you can easily slice and dice up the data. I'm not saying you to drop all your categories with the lowest profit margins. In any case, I'm strongly urging you to analyse those items and decide what's best for your business.

You should never assume anything.

In case if you don't have the idea about your profit margins and you're operating blind, start getting that data now! Running a business without this data is a sure fire way to bankrupt.

Now remember that not every EPOS system will give you the exact reports that you need. So in case you're looking for another POS system, you need to write down all the features that are essential to you and create a "wish list".