Mall and retail stores-hopping is what my family and I do for fun in our free time, and seeing all the SALE signs popping everywhere left me nothing but wonder – Why are we still looming in the recession?
Of course, on the bright side, it’s a happy day to be able to buy my kids’ clothes at 70% off on any given days (discounts are no longer seasonal these days…)
With the economic gloom and doom today, people are becoming frugal and cautious in spending their money. For those who thought 50 cents are not much of a worth, they now count every single penny they have, trying to put it to better use.
My ‘entrepreneurial mind’ shouts “There’s gotta be a way to kick retail sales back up” – Unfortunately, I can’t figure a good answer, even today.
One thing I’m sure of: Discounts won’t work as effective as before.
Even a 70% OFF won’t make much of a different these days… (90% OFF would work wonder, maybe…)
What should we do? I have written an article on this, but here are some other ideas that jumped from my mind and from the best practices I have learned so far, although not really world-changing ones:
Cross-sell and bundle offers
This is probably the better way to get sales up.
Monetary discounts are no longer that appealing – However, bundling offers have more benefits: Customers are (still) attracted to deals that have more value, even if they have to pay a bit more for them.
Of course, the more value you add, the more effective this sales strategy, particularly today. The key is, you need to come up with smart cross-selling that in subtlety leave customers with no other option than buy your bundled products.
Do midnight sales
This seems to be a trend in where I live lately – The idea is to offer significant monetary discount, only for shoppers who come and visit the retail stores at midnight time.
The midnight sales campaigns have proved to be very effective to retailers that are not regularly place their products on sale (another reason why monetary discounts as your regular marketing tactics should be avoided at all cost – Again, bundle offers are better than large discounts.)
Of course, this won’t work as effective in other regions or countries with different rules and regulations about commercial opening hours.
The ‘change agents’ of midnight sale are uniqueness and buzz – Shopping at midnight seems like a novel idea to many,and this in itself creates the much-needed buzz.
Let’s hope things go well more sooner than latter for the retail industry.
Ivan Widjaya
Retail marketing strategy
Image by whoohoo120.