Make Your Business the First Choice for Your Customers

Imagine that every potential customer at every moment of every occasion is thinking of your business for all their jewelry needs first and foremost. To achieve such an aggressive goal is actually not unrealistic. The question is, do you have the stamina to make this lofty goal realty?

To make your business dreams come true, you need to have the proper product mix, price, location, convenient hours, and absolutely the best customer service from order to fulfillment. Customer service that will provide a memorable buying experience.

It’s ironic and incredbily damaging that during these challenging economic times, businesses seem to be losing focus on customer service when in actuality, they should be strengthening it.

So what makes a customer return? First, how much time are you spending training your employees to develop service strategies that go above and beyond making a customers experience more of an experience they want to return to?

Without changing anything aesthetic about your store, turn your store into a destination. The music, the smells, lighting, displays and selection all have an effect on a customer’s experience. They create a vibe that combined with a positive interaction with your salespeople; their knowledge, how pleasant they are, and attentiveness create the image customers will have of your store. You could have everything going for you, but should the one missing link be customer service, customers will remember and may not return.

So the next time your considering additional investments, make sure that the resources in training are a priority. Customer service training enables companies to create a stronger service culture which in turn will build loyal employee relationships with customers as well as better a work environment.

What is Branding?

What is branding? You hear about it everywhere, but how does branding benefit you?

There’s been a lot of confusion about branding. In fact, it’s often interchanged with the works marketing and the advertising. It appears that people mixed up the three terms often, unfortunately, having an understanding of these concepts is vital to your business – so it’s time to clear up the confusion.

According to brandchannel.com, “Branding is the foundation of marketing and is inseparable from business strategy. It is therefore more than putting a label on a fancy product. As such, a brand is a combination of attributes, communicated through a name, or a symbol, that influences a thought-process in the mind of an audience and creates value. Branding is the blend of art and science that manages associations between a brand and memories in the mind of the brand’s audience. It involves focusing resources on selected tangible and intangible attributes to differentiate the brand in an attractive, meaningful and compelling way for the targeted audience.”

First you create a brand, then you spend money to create awareness with your target audience the brand. You want your potential clients – your targets – to see you as the answer that provides a solution to their problem. Once you’ve established with your potential clients that you have the answer, they will be willing to pay a premium for your brand.

Brand is not a product or service – it’s a personality, a vibe. It’s what your company stands for or what it’s known for. What’s your promise to the world?

When you’re ready to differentiate your brand or promise or vibe from your competitions – then you incorporate marketing. Marketing is strategy – a tool that will implement to create awareness and persuade.

Advertising, is something that you notice around you – such as print (newspaper and magazine ads); outdoor (billboards); online (Web banners); and broadcast (radio and TV).

Customers will pay a premium for a brand and will choose based on price for a commodity. A brand creates an image in the mind of your customers.

Take the time to research and define your brand. If you can’t define your brand, your customers won’t be able to either. Once you’ve determined your brand – build it. Since it’s your promise – it’s a message you want to communicate effectively to your customers.

Public Relations – Media Opportunities

Acquiring media publicity is easier than you may think. In order to garner the media attention you desire, a little work will go a long way. First off, research is key. Know your media audience – the specifics associated with their media outlet and craft press releases and pitches aims specifically at their outlet.

• There are ideas all around you of ways to promote your business that can tie in with current news – when you find an opportunity, take note and do something about it. Watch the news or read the paper with pen in hand. Make it a habit.

• Maintain a list of topics that you can pitch and be sure to follow up each effort with a call. A simple call increases your chances considerably. Set yourself up to be a local media “diamond expert” that can be contacted for stories pertaining to the jewelry industry.
• Need ideas for a story to pitch? Listen to questions your clients ask you and formulate a response for the media. If customers continue asking, maybe something is unclear and could make a good story to educate your community.
• By reading trade publications to spot industry trends, you might pitch to your local news station that you can comment on what’s hot in jewelry trends for a regular segment.
• Everyday you may have an idea for PR ideas, write them down – keep a notebook handy.

If you can save work for the media by putting the story together – maintaining objectivity, the media may be more likely to use it.

Finding Retail Success

Many times retailers wishing to find success overlook a few key elements one might find in successful stores. Don’t underestimate the importance of the following elements.

Customer Satisfaction

We know that satisfied customers are loyal customers, but what are you doing in terms of developing strategies on a regular basis to build relationships that result in repeat customers making additional purchases? How are you tracking and using the information you’ve collected to help grow your campaign?

Ability to Acquire the Right Products

There are plenty if places for customers to go to get what they want. Do you have what they want? How you decide may have lasting consequences. If you’re buying on a hunch, or because you like something, is much different than if you (or better yet your inventory management system) track your sales and identifies what items are selling fast so you can identify trends and re-order smart. You’ll be happy with your bottom line and your customers with your inventory. It will look fresh and appealing.
Visual / Product Presentation

Have a fun with merchandising. Seasonal decorating can generate interest with customers, don’t overlook an opportunity to connect with customers.
Build Traffic While Cultivating Existing Customers

Promotional methods, such as advertising, builds customer interest, however, do not venture into promotions to new clients if you have not attempted to cultivate existing customers first. Build loyalty and gain referrals to build traffic.
Atmosphere

Shopping is more than walking around – pulling out a wallet and like a robot buying. Your store’s layout and atmosphere should create an experience that is attractive to customers. Lighting, sound, smells are all part of the experience. Even online atmosphere can be translated into navigation and layout. Some online stores are not designed in a way that responds to customer needs and thus will face greater challenges in appealing to customers.
Location

High visibility and easy access locations can command a higher value – like wise less expensive sites will likely get less traffic. Location is a very important decision not to be taken for granted.
Technology

Is your store current with technology? Do you have acess to customer information (CRM software), which products are selling and which are not, point-of-purchase, web technologies and more. If not, this is an essential part of streamlining your business that will pay for itself.

Developing Marketing Strategy

Now that you understand how to segment the markets you serve, you can  work on developing marketing strategies aimed at your target markets. Before you get too excited, I’d like to explain a few different types of strategies that might be useful in understanding.

1. Undifferentiated or Mass Marketing:

If you are looking to appeal to one large market with a single marketing strategy, then this approach is for you. There are, as with everything, pros and cons to this method. This strategy ignores differences within a market and tries to create a solution that appeals to the whole market (widest possible market) and relies on mass distribution and advertising.   An early example was the Model T Ford, which was mass-produced, aimed at a very wide market, and only available in black.

Pros: this approach offers advantages in terms of lowering since only one product is marketed – also less cost in research.

Cons: there are few markets in which all customers seek the same benefits.

2. Differentiated, Segmentation Marketing or Multiple Market Segmentation:

Is a strategy where marketing meets the needs of some consumers (products that are made for say left-handed people). Beyond specialty type products, this strategy is when more than one target market is chosen and separate marketing strategies are created for each market. Each target market is provided with a product that is responds to their needs, based on research and is unique in the industry or provides an advantage that is not fully met by the competitors’ brands (more than just price). Basically, bigger markets are divided into sub-markets. Then different marketing strategies are developed to reach each sub-market targeted.

This approach is used by most large consumer products companies.

3. Concentrated or Niche Marketing:

This strategy combines mass and segmentation marketing. Here’s how it works. A single marketing strategy is developed to appeal to one or more very small markets. This is ideal for smaller businesses, but both big and small use this approach. It helps to maximize the effectiveness of marketing programs and tackle different niches for each product group. Niche marketing can also be extremely cost-effective as it allows you to use a more comprehensive media mix. It also enables you to test markets with little risk before fully investing – to track response.

4. Customized or Micro-Marketing:

This is an approach that works for the “create your own” type of product as this requires tailoring products and marketing strategies even smaller niches.  Micromarketing includes the practice of individual marketing where a marketing message is crafted more personally to a buyer.The Internet has been the catalyst for this target marketing strategy.

More on Consumer Purchasing

Not to beat a topic to death – but I want to touch on a recent topic again – just to add a few additional points.

As I mentioned, there are many types of purchasing decisions a consumers makes. Some are minor, such as re-purchases where the consumer is often loyal to the same brand, (i.e., buy the same product). These are easy purchases and require little effort on the part of both the consumer and sales staff – especially if they are brand loyal consumers as they may know exactly what they want.

More complex decisions, such as buying something like a major new purchase, is much more involved. This purchasing process can take days, weeks, months or longer. It is this type of purchasing that you need to understand. These purchases are the reason, for the most part,  you are in business.

Target marketing. Everyone talks about it. Do you understand it? Do you implement strategies to effectively understand existing and potential target markets for your business? You can’t be something for everyone – jack of all trades/ master of none.

Market segmentation or target marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments. Target marketing can be the key to a small business’s success.

By selecting target markets, you hone in on the who and the what. It may seem easy, but it’s not just selling to whoever wants to buy. It’s important to focus on target audiences or you’re likely to drain resources in the quest to locate those willing to buy. Since market segmentation enables you to maximize your resources to identify customers that seem to be the best candidates to respond to the your message, it makes the promotion and pricing easier and more cost-effective. Target marketing provides you with a way to focus your marketing activities.

Consumers and Buying

So what makes people buy? Wouldn’t it be nice to know the answer?

Knowing this answer is critical for you to market your business as having a strong understanding of buyer behavior helps understand what is important to and what influences the customer and their decision-making process. It goes without saying that if you understand consumer buying behavior, you’ll be able to create marketing programs that will be of interest to customers. Do you know the magic bullet?

Before you get too excited about this, As you might guess, you should be aware that how customers make decisions is extremely complex, but is based in psychology.

Because of this human complexity, there is no one answer, but there are a few points that can help you how someone decides whether or not to make a purchase.

Customers make purchases in order to satisfy needs. Some of these needs are basic  (e.g., food, shelter) while others are not required survival and vary depending on the person: wants or desires.

The purchasing process in the consumer market is not as complex as the business market.  For example, in planning for a jewelry holiday gift for grandma,  the mother may make the initial selection but others in the family may have input on the final choice.

So understanding consumer purchase behavior involves not only understanding how decisions are made but also understanding the dynamics that influence purchases.

Inventory Control and Nordstrom

Inventory reduction, would it surprise you to hear that Nordstorm (according to a Bloomberg report) has made a big effort (beginning in 2000 to reduce its inventory levels). Apparently their efforts have been successful according to the report, Nordstrom cut days of supply to 62 days on average versus competitors such as Macy’s (119 days) and Saks (140 days).

Nordstrom has made an investment to to do more with less, like a hybrid car.

One key strategy that jewelers can adopt is that Nordstrom is holding onto merchandise that’s not selling at department store rates, instead they utilize Nordstrom Rack discount outlets as a means to move their inventory. This in turn keeps their department stores looking fresh and current.

This an impressive strategy that while it serves to save inventory costs during ecomonic challenges, should be adopted industry-wide. It’s wise buying. Managing down inventory levels is logical approach to use inventory control as a driving force for profit and  growth.  There are inventory carrying costs and restrictive credit agreements that can infringe on your profits, by managing your inventory, you control the adverse affects these costs can have on your business thus enabling your company to earn greater profits wih lower risk.

It’s time to focus your resources to manage inventory effectively.  You don’t want to add to the mountain of unsellable merchandise sitting on the shelf as such overstock is one of the reasons businesses have succumbed bankruptcies and liquidation.

Inventory and Control

Did you know that the U. S. Department of Commerce reports that small businesses are 35 times more likely to become targets of criminal activity than businesses with revenues over $5 million. That a message for small business owners to keep in mind.

For new businesses, only about one-half that survive the first year will remain in business after five years. (Small Business Association).

I’ve talked about the need for planning and the importance of developing programs to protect your number one asset – your inventory – but choosing to avoid effective and proven management of your inventory – particularly in today’s economy will have devastating effects on your business.

You should also never underestimate the threat of crimes against your business, from employee theft to robberies or should there be an emergency or disaster of any kind an inventory will provide you with a basis to work from for any insurance or other claims.

Having a comprehensive understanding of your inventory enables you to see an up-close view of your store operations. From the dollars you’ve invested to identify product successes and failures as well as potential trends. Unfortunately, many stores do not take inventory outside of receiving inventory so their awareness of the knowledge gained and impact on profit is limited.

Having an a clear understanding of your merchandise leads to better decision making – informed choices about what to buy in the future. It also provides insight to past buying and the financial commitment invested in your store.

Once you make the commitment to run your store with an eye on profitability and success, getting on the inventory bandwagon and staying on it will make a huge impact. It’s hard work to plan and develop programs to protect your inventory, but the payoff is worth the effort in the end.

Getting Ready for the Busy Season

From USAToday

Strategies: Nine tips for small business holiday success

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? If you run a business, you should be. The holidays can be an important time of year for all small companies, and you want to make the most of this busy and stressful time.

If you’re in retail, a good portion of your entire annual sales may depend on how you do the next few weeks. But in every industry, the holidays present unique challenges and opportunities. Click here for more…

From JCK

Study: Small retailers less hopeful about economy

October 12, 2009

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New York–Although retail sales rose in September for the first time in 13 months–fueling hope among some observers that the worst is behind big retailers as they head into the holiday season–small retailers are much less hopeful, according to a new study of small businesses released by American Express OPEN.

Retail owner respondents were the least optimistic about the current business environment among all small-business owner respondents, as well as other industry sectors, according to the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor. Click here for more on this story…