High Street High (and Lows): 8 Questions to Ask to Take your Business Back-to-School
Only someone living in the Big Brother house would have missed the intense focus on the retail sector here in the UK over the past few weeks.
With large chains collapsing, value foods from certain supermarket chains finally being dissected and revealing exactly why they are ‘value’ labelled, and overall spending on the high street shifting dramatically online, there’s bound to be a crisis of confidence when it comes to physical bricks and mortar businesses.
It’s not a unique problem to the UK, nor is it one of a lengthy recession. Just look at the statistics from the USA; according to IBM, nearly half of all 2012 holiday online purchases resulted from “showrooming,” where customers visit stores, browse the products and ultimately make the purchase online. And for 75% of those showroomers, the reasons they made their purchases online were price and convenience.
There are some extremely strong lessons to be learned and now is exactly the right time to focus on them. There’s also no lack of punditry and advice out there.
By no means is there a lack of desire by people to find new shops, services and products. After all, why would Facebook invest over a year of expertise and development in creating a recommendation engine based on friends recommendations of local businesses and services if they didn’t think there was money to be made or the opportunity to ‘own’ a service that’s potentially (arguably) lacking and therefore unique if they can get it right?
The opportunity for small businesses to learn from the mistakes of less agile, less adaptable giants of retail is of huge benefit. So here are some questions that you might like to ask if you’re not getting the business that you’d like currently:
1) Are you selling a commodity? If so, why would people come to you to buy it? With access to the internet reaching all but a few million people here in the UK, the increasing competition for commoditized goods and services which offer free delivery, combined with the huge growth in discount sites, budget apps and couponing, means that there’s no such thing as an uninformed customer these days. Take a look at what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and whether you can continue to afford to do it.
2) Do you offer a unique product or service? If so, that’s great. You then need to ask yourself “Why aren’t people buying it?” How and where are you marketing it? Distributing it? Pricing it? Is it slightly or extremely unique (does another product or service do something similar which is more competitive or desirable when compared to yours)? Sit down and take a long look at its strengths, weaknesses, the opportunities and potential threats.
3) Can people get the product or service you offer or a similar one cheaper online if they group together or wait? Group purchasing sites seem to be in vogue at the moment (although who knows how long this will continue), enabling group discounts for overstocked products to be gained. Whilst this may not appeal to a vast audience, it might be a factor.
4) What emphasis do you place on service? What makes shopping at your place unique? Let’s face it, what did for HMV and Comet was the degradation of the shopping experience as much as competition online. Apple is incredibly successful with its retail experience, taking a huge amount of money in its real world stores. However, of course it sells products through multiple different suppliers and outlets. Their store acts a browsing experience, a place of worship, knowledge (the Genius Bars), where products can be taken to get mended (or replaced). The stores are a retail-based realization of what made Apple products ‘innovative’ and ‘cool’. How can you take those learnings into your retail store and differentiate your service ethic and experience?
5) Do you actually need your own shop? Is it better to sell through another retail outlet? Could you cut your overheads down by clubbing together with a similar provider or two, or a complementary group of products and services and share a space together? Is your product better at selling seasonally? If so, why not consider only opening a pop-up focused on your product or service for a couple of months supported by an online presence available all the year round? Can you take your product or service to your customer?
6) If you can’t beat them, join them? Consider selling on Amazon, EBay, Etsy, Fancy, etc to supplement the downturn in physical footfall. Utilize their marketing strengths; use their platforms to reach people. Don’t waste money building your own e-commerce site; the world has moved on and there are plenty of services out there that can save you significant investment with a small transaction fee.
7) What are you doing to minimize the costs and maximise the amount of publicity? Take a look at our recent infographic – did you know how much you can actually do with a smart phone? You can pretty much run everything from it from sales inventory through to point of sale commerce taking credit card transations. Experiment and invest in new affordable technologies that change people’s perspective of your products and services or surprise them in different places. You can now sell anywhere.
8) Are you being seeing where people are looking? How do you look? Take a long hard look at how your brand is seen and found online. Be discoverable, in as many places as you can afford and especially through mobile devices. Highlight positive services such as Call and Collect, which costs you nothing and which are working well for companies such as John Lewis and Argos. Remember, customers are walking around with powerful research devices in their pockets.
As a small business, you have a huge opportunity now to reassess how you’re delivering your retail experience. These are just some of our thoughts – let us know what you think and if you’ve got any recommendations or lessons for others?
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