As a retailer, it’s important to understand what is retail strategy and the different factors you need to consider. So, what is retail strategy? This blog post will give you an overview of retail strategy and 5 key factors to keep in mind.

I remember when I first started my eCommerce business, I had no clue what retail strategy was or how important it was. I quickly learned that having a strong retail strategy was essential to competing online. After doing some research, I came up with a plan and focused on five key areas: product selection, pricing, promotions, marketing, and customer service.

By focusing on these areas, I was able to create a successful online business. 

What is Retail Strategy?

A holistic marketing strategy for a product involves influencing the consumer and reaching them at the point of sale.

This marketing strategy includes everything about how a product will be sold, including what stores it will be available at, what price it will be sold at, and what incentives will be given.

A retail strategy must be developed in order to distribute a product through retail outlets. Many factors can affect the sale of a product when it is sold in this way, so the strategy must be well thought out.

Factors to Consider When Developing Retail Strategy

Some of the factors that determine the success of retail sales:

1. The pricing
2. Discounting of the product or service
3. Incentives offered
4. Promotion ideas
5. Placement of the Product
6. Incentives for the Retailers
7. Consumers’ overall behavior

There are many factors to consider when developing retail strategies, including the overall consumer behavior. By understanding how consumers behave and what influences their purchase decisions, retailers can create a strategy that will appeal to their target markets and encourage them to buy their products.

The controllable factors of a retail strategy are things that a business can change or affect in order to improve their sales performance. This can include their prices, marketing, and the products they offer.

A retail business must take into account many external factors, such as seasonal changes, legal issues, and the economy.

The strategy must be effective for it to work.

A three-step approach for your retail strategy: stand out and win more retail sales in 2021

The 2019 global recession has forced many retail stores to close their doors. To stay afloat, you need a sound business strategy that takes into account both short-term and long-term profits.

It is getting harder and harder to win over customers as spending decreases.

Digital marketing is a necessary skill for any marketer looking to improve their customer’s online shopping experience. By using the right tools and techniques, you can optimize your strategy to cut through the noise and convert more customers.

The rise of online shopping has influenced the way consumers shop. Amazon, in particular, has single-handedly changed the way we think about the shopping experience.

With customers increasingly preferring to shop online, and retailers having increased marketing capabilities, online sales have grown considerably, as can be seen in the chart above.

Instead of focusing on how to compete directly with online retailers like Amazon.com, you should instead concentrate on how to provide a better overall shopping experience. This can be accomplished by focusing on three areas: being unique, selling more, and offering better customer support.

Stand out and make a difference.

Retailers who sell a wide range of products all under the same roof are finding it increasingly difficult to stand out and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Instead, they should focus on being special to their target customers, rather than being something for the masses.

Retail success today is all about adding value in ways your competitors can’t. If you want to attract prospective customers, you have to offer something unique that they can’t find at any other store. This could be a great customer experience, exclusive products, or competitive prices.

Step 1: Focus on your hygienes

First, take a look at your basics, and make sure you’re doing them well. Only then can you think about implementing something different from the competition.

The 2015 world cup winning All Blacks team is one of the most successful teams of all time.

But it’s widely accepted that the secret to the Kiwi rugby team is their focus on their basics such as being clean, tidy, and well-presented.

As a business, it’s important to meet consumer expectations. Will Lockie provides a few guidelines to keep in mind when choosing the right answering service for your business.

Customers today demand a high level of service from businesses. Businesses need to provide flexible payment solutions, detailed information about their products, fast delivery, and a unique shopping experience across various platforms.

If you don’t keep a clean database, you’ll be at a huge disadvantage, while success in keeping clean data will give you a platform for adding additional functionality. Will Lockie provides some useful guidelines to keep in mind when making decisions about your data:

If you want to succeed, you need to ensure that your basic elements are in order.

Will Lockie provides 5 principles that you can follow to evaluate your options:

• Always focus on what works for your brand.
• Convenience and simplicity will always win over anything else.
• Eliminate any obstacles that make it difficult for your customers to buy from you.
• Solve your customer’s problem.
• Be unique.

Step 2: Cultivate a retail strategy to outpace the competition

In order to stand out from larger retailers, you need to have a strong, consistent story.

McCann believes that creating meaningful retail relationships is key to successful retail research.

Your brand purpose is what sets you apart from the competition and drives customers to your store. By creating a clear brand purpose, you can remind customers why they shop with you and attract new ones. Your brand space is what makes you unique- use it to your advantage!

Despite being seen as a dull, tired retailer, WHSmith is a major high street success story in the UK.

The growth of online book retailers like Amazon has severely impacted the profits of physical bookstores, such as WH Smith.

Smith’s brand has successfully expanded into the travel and tourism sector. They are so prevalent at train stations and airport lounges that it’s almost impossible not to see them.

To compete with the likes of Walmart and Amazon, Will suggests asking “what can’t they do?”

Will Lockie, a retail expert, recommends asking the question “what can’t Amazon do?” when trying to compete with the major retailers. He suggests adding value without discounting, including additional content about products and/or services, weaving storytelling into the customer experience, leveraging unique customer insight or data, and providing utility to customers as ways to be genuinely useful as a brand.

Brands like M&S and Starbucks serve their core purpose of being useful to their customers by going beyond ‘just selling’.

What can you do to be helpful to your clients in an unusual or unexpected way?

What are your audience’s demographics?

Part of our digital customer experience toolkit

Learn how adding psychological profiles to buyer personas can help you better target your website visitors and digital campaigns.

Step 3: Achieve customer-first alignment

It’s not easy to always put your customers first, but it’s important to try. It can be difficult to maintain this perspective, but it’s worth it for the sake of your customers.

When creating a customer-centric business, it’s important to get the basics of customer service down. You need to find a USP, listen to customers, and work to create a point of differentiation. By doing all of these things, you can establish a company people love.

Will Lockie, CEO of CallerSmart, sums up this well: “Your customers don’t buy your product or service based on what you’ve told them, but based on how they’ve experienced it”.

This means that it is important to understand customer satisfaction, listen to customer feedback, and build these principles into your systems and technology.

Conclusion

Now you know what is retail strategy.  Remember to develop a good retail strategy, you need to focus on five key areas: product selection, pricing, promotions, marketing, and customer service. By keeping these factors in mind, you can develop a winning retail strategy for your business.