Two marketing holidays are coming up, Chinese New Year on Friday, 12 February, and Valentine's Day on Sunday, 14 February. 

I hope you have something to offer for each of these holidays.

As you can see, public interest in both in Australia is high based on google searches. So there will be much there.

I am sure that Chinese New Year 2021 will be more important to retailers than in previous years. This is due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.  What people tell me is that Chinese New Year as a marketing holiday is growing longer. Many are reporting Chinese people buying now and expect it to continue after the holiday for a while.

Although many retail experts are not sure about Valentine's Day, as it was big last year but not so big the year before. Still, many are reluctant to go out to restaurants. They are not going on big trips so that they will need product.

What Google Trend shows is that people are looking for ideas.

Please make sure you have something.

Now is not the time to keep a “business as usual” approach. COVID-19 has changed the retail scene. Do not count on your experience. You need to look at the data. 

See what items are driving you the most traffic and profits into your shop. Once you know your money-makers, you can move them to prominent places. The current retail theory states that you should put good products in a few places. This is because, in the age of COVID-19, the stress is on giving more space for your high-demand items versus showing many items.

First, let us find your *MONEY EARNERS*. It will only take a second.

Go to register reports and select the top stock report as marked with the red arrow here.

For this do this by all the shop sales. 

Put in the past 30 days, then select 40. This will give you your top 40. 

Then you will get a report with all the figures.

Now put these items in a noticeable place. The more places, the better.

This method works, try it! 

In 2020, one point shown was nothing works to motivate customers to buy as effectively as VIP points.  So if you want to drum up business, pick a slow time and widely announce a period of double or triple points for customers. 

It is easy and quick to set up with our software. 

To get it running 

Go to the Main Menu> System Maintenance> System Setup 

Once the page is open, select the Loyalty tab.

See the value set for the Redemption value per point option. See circled in red.

When you run your happy hour, set this to a meaningful figure, at the end of the happy hour, put it back. 

Make it easy for people to join your VIP club, the more that join your club, the better for you. We find email addresses for identity works well. 

Correctly done VIP clubs are said to add about 2% value to a shop.

See how you go!

If you are dealing with giftware, you always need to select new products. These products come and go, and also you need to offer your customers new products all the time. Computers can help with the products with a sales history but are of little help here.

So what happened was I was talking to one of our clients about this. He has a gift shop, so we put together a checklist of ideas for selecting gift products. 

Here is what we came up with, and I hope it helps.

1) Good margins, a giftware shop, cannot survive on low margins.

2) The product has to stand out from the other items on the shelves. It needs to have something deserving of your customers' attention. 

3) How hard is it to handle?  For example, anything fragile is a problem, e.g., glass as many insurance policies will not cover it in the shop. 

4) What is the delivery? Last quarter's delivery was a real mess. People had no stock, and customers and the stock was in transit.

5) How easy is it to get more stock?

6) Does it fit into your shop now? Is it the type of product that your customers will buy from you? 

7) Does it live in your price points?

8) Are there any minimum orders required? 

9) Growth, can the product lead to something. A small mobile camera cases buy led one of my clients to introduce a whole new department in his shop.

10) Does it need specialist knowledge? If so, do you have that knowledge? If so, it is a big plus. If not, then will you get that knowledge soon?

11) How many people nearby handle it? This is one advantage of dealing with a supplier far away, as you may have a unique product.

12) Variations can be a problem. A product with five options, four colours blue, green, white, and red, and comes in three designs would be 60 different products.

13) Start small and grow. 

14) Above all, remember it is said, "to sell giftware, one needs a soul." Ask yourself, do you have that soul? If you think YES, then test yourself first on a few small oders.

Giftware is one product where *David can take on Goliath*.

Our new DTI system is a digital, paperless receipt. It is a much smarter, more attractive alternative to paper, PDF, or standard email receipts. This is because 80% of customers look at their digital receipt after purchasing. This gives the retailer a terrific marketing tool, a second chance to sell more. 

This video will give you some ideas on how retailers in the US are using it to connect to their customers.  

Best of all, it's free to you as you are our client!

Retail Express, had an interesting article that is worth looking into on page 12. In our POS Software, it is easy to try.

It is about rearranging products in the fridge into proper categories.  Doing this, they claim you can drive sales up an incredible amount. See the arrow marked in brown.

Click here for more details.

There is no reason why this theory should not work for any department. Try a department, then see what are your top sellers in that department. 

Go to register reports and select the top stock report as marked with the red arrow here.

You get this screen

Now select your department.

Here I used the stationery department. I put in 99 million in red for illustration. That is overkill - put in 100. I also selected a whole year as short periods can have significant fluctuations. We do not want to do this every week.

Now study the report to see your shop's strengths. See what do you sell. 

Now go to a major retailer's website and see how they categorize their department. Some like Amazon and the supermarkets have spent millions on this categorization, so they know something. Also, check out a few other shops. 

You now know the theory and your strengths, so layout your stock in a logical order.

Why not start now, pick a small department and see how you go?

Well, it's time to start planning for 2021, so you can use this list of holidays to help plan your 2021 marketing.

For a full list click here.

If you need an explanation of the holiday, click on the holiday link to get a description.

You can fine-tune it to your situation by using the filters.

Boxing Day is the biggest day on the Australian retail shopping calendar.  

I hope it is busy in your world.

Many of my clients in a typical year expect to do about half their yearly trade in this season. For these, it's a speed test of how fast our system can be under pressure. I am sure most will be impressed with the recent increase in our software's speed in our new software.

Nothing will connect with your customer at the right time better than SMS. 

Current figures are that over 98% of SMS messages are opened, and almost all within the first 3 minutes. Nothing else comes even close to these figures as far as efficiency or speed. What it means is that you can interact with your customer quickly and effectively.

What makes it particularly effective is that the message is delivered directly to your customer. Emails are often now protected by ISP spam and customer's filters. These often block your messages.

There is, of course, the higher cost, but you often get for what you pay.

If you have products that need an instant response, you may need it.

PS Another good idea in some industries is to send a thank you SMS automatically every time they buy.

This Friday it is "Black Friday", officially this is the start of the Christmas shopping season.

Last year's spending on Black Friday shot up 69 percent on the previous year.

Looking at the Google trends, it looks that public interest I about the same this year as last year.

I hope you are doing something.

If you are interested in upgrading your scanners let us know, we have a Black Friday sale too.

Here is a step by step method which works to sell more which is very easy to do with our software.

-Get some signs in red with the notation "Bestseller". Above are some that a pharmacy got. If you cannot get them, print a few signs with your printer. Make sure that it's in red. 

-In your POS Software go to 

Go to Register reports.

Now pick "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period."

Now in the form put in the last 30 days

A report comes out that looks like this with your top sellers listed.

- Now go through these items and select as many as possible and put these signs pointing at these items.

- You will find that people will buy these items more.

- Do this process weekly.

You could use an image like this in your POS Software, Staff would appreciate when searching for a stock item an image. 

However you need to promote your business. The fact is that the cheapest (it's free), most effective, quickest, and the best way today is online on Social Media. 

What about a picture of something interesting in your shop? Look at large companies. If you look at their Facebook pages, you will see much of it in pictures. 

Why?

Well, they know that they have a few seconds to grab a person's attention. Visually you can captivate someone very quickly. A picture can help that person to visualise the product and/or service offered immediately. If they like what they see, they may read the offer. What they want is an exciting image that will grab your attention. 

Social media today is an inherently visual medium.

So, where is this headed? You need to be active on social media to promote your business too!  Ideally, what you are doing is something on social media at least a few times a month. If once a week, you are looking at 50 images a year.  It does not have to be Earth-shaking images. Few of them we see are. Use a picture of a jigsaw puzzle that has just arrived in your shop,  a new dog for sale, a Christmas greeting card, some perfume, a book, etc. 

Often you can get professional images from your supplier. If not well, it does it have to be professionally made.  With a decent smartphone today, anyone can take a good picture. All you need is some basic photography skills.

A Tip: One advantage that an amateur photographer has is that they can take as many photos as they like whenever they like.  Professionals can only come at set times and rarely will go back. Use this advantage and take many pictures, up, down, around, left, right, etc. until you get it right. If none worked, try again, it cost nothing today to take heaps of photos.

Another tip: Check out a few youtubes on taking photographs with smartphones. For example, this guy explains it well. 

Knowing how to take a good photo today on a smartphone is a skill worth learning. 

Give it a shot, and I would like to see some of your examples.

If you want to sell gifts in your shop, you need to know how to tie a proper ribbon on a gift box. You want to look professional!

I remember my grandfather in his shop, teaching me. It took me quite a few attempts to get it right. Like so many things, it is easy to do once you get the hang of it. Note it would be best if you did it a few times as in retail you will need to be able to do it quick under pressure.

Your customers will often take it very seriously, so you need to do it right!

Here is a youtube that explains it very well a simple and good knot for you to start learning.

This is a common problem in retail having:

Slow stock does sell but only slowly.

Dead stock does not sell at all.

Both cost money to the retailers, costs cash flow, money and takes up space that should have stock that sells better.

Now in identifying your products that are slow or dead go to register reports > stock titled "Old Stock on hand by Date last received"

I tend to do it in two parts. I check the overall problem in the shop to see the scale of the problem. Then I go by department in detail as its people find it better to examine this way.

This gives you a listing of your stock based on when you received it. This stock is rarely doing you much good. As I stated, it costs you to keep it.

Now once you identified it, what are you going to do about it?

I would suggest firstly move it because maybe it was in the wrong area. Good clean and a nice presentation can do wonder.

If your decision is to minimise your losses on this stock by slashing the price and to move the stock here are some options.

1) Offload them on sites such as eBay.

2) Use it to make a bundle. Put an old stock item that does not sell with something that does sell and turn it into a bundle.

3) Make a bargain bin.

4) Use the stock for your loyalty marketing program.

5) Use them as specials when you have a marketing season.

Planning the layout of your store is quite an art. This video may give you some tips on how to improve your shop layout and design.

One point here is that Australians shoppers do move clockwise. That is why when we set sales budgets in our POS software, we make the left side of the shop more than the right side. If you are not doing this now, I suggest that you start now doing that now.

Near the front counter, the items with the highest return on investment should be there. It is easy to get a list of these go to

Cash register report > GMROI (see the selection highlighted) in your point of sale software in the reports here.

Ignore departments and see what they are. Now see how you can use them at the counter.

Say your supplier decided to make a marketing promotion and asked you to take part. Our client said yes. They went through quite a bit of trouble, and now they want to know how well the promotion did. They do not see much, yet the supplier does. So we are helping out.

The problem here is that no-one before it started thought to make any KPI. So what happened is that the operator adjusted the price with a discount. As there are a lot of discounts, it is hard to determine whether it was a promotion sale or not. Usually what we could do here is to try to determine what the usual amount of discounts are but now who knows what is typical.

What it shows is that it is crucial if you are promoting to make a KPI policy before starting.

Otherwise, it can be hard to determine whether the offer worked.

This woman has good ideas about how to package a gift bag, these gift bags do sell well but only if they look nice.

Here is how to make it look nice.

Social media like Facebook is no longer optional with this pandemic. In the past, I have felt that it was an excellent way for small business owners to connect with their customers. Now its a necessity. People no longer just walk past your shop, see it and come in. The best, cheapest and possibly only way to communicate today to these people is online with social media. 

Here are some key statistics

1. 85% of the eligible (age 13+) Australian population have active social media accounts, Source
2. Australians spend an average of 1 hour 47 minutes per day on social media, and this has been increasing slowly over the past 8 years. Source

I have been doing it for years successfully, studied on it and here is my latest qualification.

I will do a webinar on the basics of how to market your shop free online in your marketspace if there is enough interest.

This came up a few days ago, and what it has done is mucked up a shop's sales history file about profit.

Say the retail item cost is $10.00 and it costs you $5.00

What happens is you may decide to do a sales promotion in your shop, and it looks like this.

Here every pack sold means that each item sells at $6.66 and they cost you $5 each. So you have made $1.66 profit on each item. 

Now the retailers had some dead stock and wanted to get rid of some of it, so he introduces a new product into the mix. 

An item (B) that say also sells at $10.00 and costs them $5.00. I am trying to illustrate a point here. 

So your promotion offer now is a “buy this item and the other item free”. 

Now should your sales and profit figures be recorded in your POS system? 

Method (1) The first item at full price. 

So each pack means that you have sold each one of them for $10.00. Their cost is $5.00 thus giving you $5.00 profit on each one. Item (B) is considered being given away for free.

Or

Method (2) All the items considered sold at $6.66. 

They all have a cost of $5 each. So you have made $1.66 profit on each item. 

You need to decide. 

What has happened here is that as a shop did not make a policy. Some people rang it up using the method (1) and others used method (2). 

Now what is showing in history is a higher sales margin on one item then there should have been. 

You need consistency in tracking promotions if you wish to correlate your sales.

Make a policy first.

Why identifying your top-selling items and you can do with this information!

This is widely used by our clients in music shops but it can be used by any business.

Well, who knows what sells well today! It is all different than it was! With COVID-19, your experience now works against you.

What you need to do is look at today, see what worked, and try to figure out why it worked. We can help you with this, and it is easy to do in our point-of-sale system.

Go to Register reports

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Now in the form put in yesterday.

Now a report comes out that looks like this with your top sellers listed.

Now, these need to be reviewed to see what you did right here. Take your time.

Now the kicker in retail is a top seller today will often be a good seller tomorrow. Studies show that a top seller today will sell about 66% tomorrow. So you need to check if you have adequate stock for tomorrow. If not in that spot you will need a substitute. 

Give this a shot and tell me how you went.