If you have not yet, look into using Social Media marketing!

Today more then ever, every business needs social media marketing. Few are going to walk past your shop now. So many of our clients now every day do something on their Facebook company page. It is their main communication method. Today in business using social marketing has never been more important. Vital, I would say.

No business can ignore social media as part of its marketing mix.

Checkout statistics for social media in Australia

"85% of the eligible (age 13+) Australian population have active social media accounts and spend an average of 1 hour 47 minutes per day on social media."

I was shocked a couple of days ago when a client asked us for help in setting up a Facebook page. We did help him out but now the problem is that he does not know how to use it. I told him, that he better learn. There is no excuse if he cannot do it get someone to help him. Then I gave him a few pointers. What I advised him was that there are plenty of good online courses, that he does not need to pay a cent for them, to learn.

The two courses that I suggested was

Facebook Blueprint

And if he wanted something more detailed, Hubspot was pretty good.

If you know something better please let me know.

The fact is that every serious business and organisation today needs a web presence. Today the web is the major means of communication between business and their clients.

So I recommend you go to Facebook now. See what a few similar businesses to yours are doing there now. Check the ones you like and take a few notes about what your business needs. Note the words they say. Presumably, they have experimented and found that these work for them so why not for you?

If you are not there, I recommend you go to Facebook, see what a few similar businesses to yours are doing on Facebook now. Check the ones you like and take a few notes about what your business needs. Note the words they say too. Presumably, they have experimented and found that these work.

Items like Facebook are mainly free.

You can always experiment later with the paid services.

I have spoken about click and collect a few times here over the past years. 

If you have not already done so, this is why you should look at Click and Collect!

Near me is a small strip shopping centre. I walked down the shopping centre what I discovered that every single shop in my centre had a sign in their window advertising their click and collect service. Looking at the cars coming and going, I could see it was in use. Some of the shops, its the only business they can have. 

Now, this is not a notable centre. Although new it is ordinary with a range of shops having small to large retailers. Clients are not computer savage or sophisticated. 

Let me start by saying that our POS system makes it very easy for you to set up and do click and collect, more about that later. 

Here are some reasons why you should consider doing this if you have not already done so.

-Many people now do not want to come to your shop because of COVID-19. To service these people as a retailer, you now have to look at alternatives or lose these people.

- Here is a costing from the USA costing out the alternatives by options. If you go through the list, you can see significant operational costs savings compared to delivery by click and collect. 

-For many small retailers, delivery in Australia is not worth it. You need as a rule orders of about $100, to make it worthwhile delivering. 

-Click and collect is much faster. Your customers can have their goods often in minutes. 

-In the click and collect model, the customers come to the shop to collect their purchases. Many, studies state that between 49% to 61%, make new unplanned purchases. These are often impulsive or forgotten items. You are not going to get much of this business from a delivery model.

-People are comfortable buying on click and collect, as they know you. They know if anything goes wrong with their purchase, they can go to your shop immediately. 

My advice is to try click and collect and see what happens. You can make adjustments as you go on, if it does not work, you can stop it.

If so, you want to do it. 

You need to make a clear strategy for your program! Go out of your shop, see what others are doing, check out the opposition and make a plan. 

- Do you want to introduce a fee? Can you?

-What packaging are you going to use?

-Where is going to be your collection point?

- How will the customer warn you that they are here?

 etc. 

Now once you are on your trial. 

Advertise it boldly in your window! There is a question often raised did "A tree did not fall if no-one heard it!", if you do not advertise "Click and Collect" you do not have it.

This is how I recommend doing it in our software. I would suggest using business invoicing with an A4 receipt in the cash register. It is easy to do. 

Look for the item, to click and collected. 
Click on the "Receipts" button. 
Find the receipt you would like to print.
Then select the "A4 Print" button as here.
 

Out will come an A4 receipt:

As always, please let me know your thoughts and how it goes. 

I got quite a few enquiries about my post on marketing face masks, so after talking to a few people here are my thoughts.

The spread of coronavirus is driving the demand for face masks. 

"The global face mask market size was valued at $1,523.0 million in 2019, and is estimated to reach $ 2,455.4 million by 2027 with a compound annual growth rate of 4.4% from 2021 to 2027."

The industry is looking at an annual growth rate for disposable face masks of 53% for the next few years. 

This is in a high growth rate industry with high margins! So as well as traditional brands like 3M, who are going flat out, many others are entering this space. If them, why not you too?

It sells in many shops.

Interested, then you should, of course, do some research first. 

Check out what is for sale in your local area, talk with your staff, customers, etc. Try to figure out your niche. Actually, why not try a few niche markets and see how they work out for you. the cost of entry is minimal. $30 can buy you 100 disposable masks, worst case your family can use them. 

Of course, common sense here is required when entering the market of where to buy and how to handle it. Worst case though if you get some stock that you cannot return, and have doubts. All you need to do is use a texture to cross out the claim, e.g. as above N95, and sell it as a face mask. If you are paying about a $1 for a disposable each and selling at $2.50, you have room to discount. 

Note although there is no legal rule for sales of face masks to the public now yet, you cannot make false claims. For example, you should not sell an N50 mask as an N95. I would advise you NOT to make any medical or health claims about your product even if you believe they are correct. However, if your face mask is washable, adjustable, or reversible, then YES talk about this.

As far as I know, there is only one Australian supplier of P2 (P2 is the Australian standard which is like N95 US standard) face masks.

If you are concerned about whether you are dealing in fake face masks, here is some information on how to check to spot a fake face mask {link removed} and Counterfeit face masks

As far as monitoring how sales are going in your shop, it is easy, make a new family, then every so often

Go to Register reports

Select the "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Put in the appropriate options for this family and you get a report with the sales in order of what is selling. The rule is now, to concentrate on the top sellers.

In Victoria, face mask sales were high already, but now they have exploded. I have a client that sold out in hours his whole stock on the day it was annouced. Talking to a few of my clients interstate, they are selling well there too. 

So it is not surprising that a salesman contacts me, as wants me to use my users for marketing his company range of face masks. When I asked at a price, it became clear that the cost of his masks was higher than an online retailer. So I told him, no and to come back with a real price.

But I did some research. Here is some information that may be of interest to you if you are thinking of marketing face masks in your shops. 

There are two markets. The first is for people who want one urgently and those that want it in bulk. I am sure there would be good money in buying a packet say of 50 surgical masks, which on a quick look, I saw for under $30 on eBay with delivery and selling them individually at $2.50. Of course, do some research to see what the prices are in your area first if this interests you.

If you are looking to buy them to resell them here are some points. 

The gold standard is N95, in Australia but the problem is that it is somehow this standard is legally tied down by 3M. From what I can see, most Chinese and Australian companies use KN95, which is very similar.

N95 is the American accreditation 

KN95 is the open accreditation 

P2 is the Australian accreditation 

KMOEL is the Korean accreditation 

FFP2 is the European accreditation 

DS is the Japanese accreditation 

From what I can see, all accreditations are only slightly different, check them out here.

Of course, many people do not want an N95. Besides price and availability, many find it hard to breathe through an N95.  

And we do have a range of standards. In practice, according to studies, I saw even the lower grade are almost as good for the public. The problem here is that the Australian community looks at N95, so I would not rush to stock even a slightly inferior standard like the KN90.

Note some just use a scarf, in Victoria which is useful as you can avoid getting a $200 fine here. 

If you are interested in some history of the modern face mask, is considered to being a Chinese invention invented during the Manchurian plague of 1910. 

They were in many places mandatory during the Spanish flu too

and were as controversial then as now. 

I hope this helps and if you have any comments let me know.

Now is a perfect time to make a stocktake sale.

Please keep it simple and focused.

Concentrate on the stock that you need to clear. Then place them in a prominent position with a sign. Make sure that people outside your shop in front can see your stocktake sale sign.

Want some ideas of what stock to use, this is the report to use.

Go to Register reports > Stock > Slow-moving Stock lines

Now call it up here, you will get a screen like this

I am going to do it by the department because it is easier to assess and collect if you work in a logical order. Here I asked for anything that I had sold less than $100 in a year and am now stocking something.

Interestingly this shop when I ran the report had over $20,000 of worthless stock in just this department.

This is just one report in our point of sale software that can help you expand your business and grow.

The challenge retailers now face now is uncertainty. Consumer shopping habits have changed, for example, how now people are moving around the shop. In the past people wanted to browse, now you need to get their attention in a few seconds from the distance. This is the main comment people told me from yesterday's post.

What we need to do is see how shopping behavioural patterns have changed

As such now my article here on how to make up a shopping planogram can do it for you.

All you need is our software.

A big sheet of paper

A ruler

A black pen

Four marking pens - Red, Yellow, Green and Blue

20 minutes

Multiple discounts often called stackable or cumulative discounts is a common problem in retail. 

A typical example is that a person comes into a shop with a discount voucher that you have issued say to a nursing home nearby for 5% off (which by the way is a very effective form of advertising in local retailing). Now he comes and to buy an item on discount in the shop at 20% off. A typical response among retailers is to say we will give you the best discount, which is 20%. Then tell the customer this is a much better deal than the 5% on the voucher. 

But is it the best approach? Maybe? It saves 5%. However, I attended a webinar. There the speaker told us that you need to remember the 5% discount is what brought the customer to the shop. He then went on to say that adding many discounts was more effective than providing one discount. Then what he quoted was a rather exciting research. That in the above example, the discounts of 5% and 20%, which equal 25% were more effective than one voucher for 30% off. This is despite the fact the one discount is more. Have a chew about it. 

From the comments and discussions here are some thoughts people had about it.

People react better if the discounts are in order of lowest to highest. This is because here a 5% off does not look much after a 20% discount. It looks much better to say 5% off and then 20%. 

There can be problems if one discount is an amount and the other a rate. For example, if the nursing home discount is 5% off, and the item is $20 with $5 off. 

If the nursing home discount is first: 
The price is $20 less 5% discount less $5 = $14.
We now have $20 less $5 less 5% discount = $14.25 ( This is how our POS software works. )

Please let me know your thoughts.

The end of the financial year (EOFY) sales typically works well so why not make one?

Consider that 

* Those tax refunds are coming. 
*  Many people's accountants are telling people to buy now. 
* Today many have benefited from the government payouts. 
* Plus now with COVID-19 shutdown, many customers have much that they need to buy that they put off. 

Well here is your mission, to think about your EOFY sale. 

Here are some ways to start:

* Now have because of the COVID-19 shutdown, many of you will have stock that needs to be moved. Look at this excess inventory, much of this, if not moved soon, will be a disaster. These might make good loss leaders.

* Ask your suppliers, they will have some ideas. Now they are helping too, I notice and they have excess stock also. 

* Check what shop like you are doing.

Now I have noticed that people are starting to think of their shop of what it is and what they want to do with it.

You need a vision of why your target market should buy from you and not from your competitors.

This question is called your unique value proposition?

It does not have to be much.

It does not have to be great.

It does not have to be brilliant.

But it must be there.

Without it, you cannot even advertise.

It should contain all the following:

What you propose to do for your customers.

The relevance of your offer to your customers

Why your customers should take this offer from you instead of your competitors.

A very good place to start on this is to ask your top customers, why they buy off you.

As it needs to be clear, what I find good is to explain it to is an 8-year-old kid. somehow kids seem to be able to get to the heart of the matter better than adults with our preconceptions.

COVID-19 restrictions are being lifted, restaurants, cafes, pubs, travel etc. are open now, and soon the footy will come back in our lives again. To restart business many of my clients are launching campaigns or bootstrapping on someone else promotions.

This is easy to do as our software has many tools to help you to do promotional campaigns.

Every campaign needs to be measured.

This does not mean only looking at the sale of the promoted product. What you need to do is look at a campaign by analysing the total sales during the promotion. The targeted product was the enticement; what you often need to assess is the extra products that were not part of the promotion.

Now what you need is to compare these sales to some appropriate benchmark figure (budget), which is now a bit difficult to determine. Commonly used here is last year this time, plus or minus a suitable percent for your shop. Make sure that you determine this benchmark before, you do the comparisons.

Some KPIs, I would be looking at would be

#1 Sales Revenue

#2 Number of sales

#3 Basket value

#4 Gross Margins

All these come out of your software.

If you are not able to measure the results, you’ll never know how effective your promotion was, and most importantly, you will not know what works in your shop.

With your Customer relationship management (CRM), why not now offer an extended birthday reward?

People respond positively to birthday greetings with a positive reaction, surveys show up to 88%. This is when people do some self-indulgence and spend. It possibly the most important marketing holiday in retail as nothing else seems to bring people in like a birthday offer. Here is a screenshot of a study.

According to a study, 51 percent of consumers do feel special if a retailer acknowledges their birthday, and 40 percent are more likely to shop at a retailer that recognises their birthday. I believe that as nothing seems to bring people into a shop than a birthday offer.

With our point of sale software, Birthday offers record typically of about 25% success.

Now because of the COVID-19, many people have missed their birthday and only now starting to come out. Why not offer an extended period on a birthday offer now? What you are saying is that we know you could not celebrate it then but now we are getting back to normal your reward is waiting for you to use.

Here is how it works and it is easy to set up, when you are entering a VIP customer, simply put in their birthday. It is much better if they use their real birthday but if not, put in their join date. You can always correct it later if they point it out.

Overall now, I estimate from our client base that general retail is down about 30%, much less in essential retail shops but there is another effect of this virus in that people are changing their spending patterns.

This is where your experience tends to work against you. What you are used too often does not apply in times of crisis like this one. 

Here is a report that can help you, 

Go to Register reports

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

Now select yesterday

Out will comes a report with the top sellers for yesterday and it will look like this.

Now, these need to be checked that you have enough stock now as this is now what is selling.

Give it a shot and see how you go.

It is a good idea every morning now to run this report.

PS If you haven’t already, consider setting up new buying options for your customers such as home delivery and click & collect.

Right now, when people go to a shop, consumers know what they want, they plan their trip carefully. Shopping is not a social activity now. If they browse, it is online. They know what they want, and they go straight in for it. They do not look right and they do not look left. 

If you want them to come to your shop you have to make sure that people online can find you and they are clear about what you have.

We call this type of online activity - The local Web. I think it is worthwhile studying this diagram because this is where you need to be now.

Here is what I suggest you do, imagine you are a consumer and you are looking for a product or service that you are in, do an online search for the product and try and find yourself?  Make sure you look up google, bing and yahoo.

Why not ask your customers if you were looking for XYZ product how they would look? 

Do you have a google business page? Google is by far the biggest search engine in Australia if you do not have a Google Business Page you are in trouble. Why not get it as it is free? Click here.

Google will be pushing people to these businesses.

Do you have a Facebook page? If no, why not again it is free?  Facebook has an estimated 16,000,000 Monthly Active Australian Users. If you think about it, there are 25 million Australians, so we are talking 60% of all Australians. The percentage is higher with shoppers.

While you are at it, why not check out your competitors online on social media platforms. Look for their Facebook page, what are they doing?

There are many more social media sites to review; here is a March 2020 list {removed} rated by importance to Australians.

PS All retailers that are doing well have websites; please do no longer consider it an optional extra. Its is not that hard to start, use your top-selling reports to put in your top-selling items, you do not need that many to start as a rule the ten stock lines do about 33% of the shop sales. The key things for each product should be readily available, and off you go.

Rethink your marketing

Whatever debates people have had in the past about marketing, e.g. social media, discount vouchers vs loyalty programs. The reality is now that the only form of marketing now is online, and the only growing market is online.  The debate is over for the next six months may be longer.

People are stuck at home. They are bored. They use online to buy. Whatever else is happening, sales online is holding up.

Do you have a digital strategy?

Do you have a Facebook page for your business, if so you need to use it now? If you do not have one, then I suggest you start now. Note we do offer a free Facebook advice line to our clients if you need some help there.

Do you have a loyalty club with email addresses, if so you need to start a regular email newsletter to your clients as we have been suggesting to our clients for years to do, well use it?

Do you have a website, now you need one. 

If you have a website, I hope you have a click and collect or delivery service options.

My advice is to revamp your online now.

What differentiates large and small organisations is often their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. What I often see is that large organisations often know more about their customers' details then small ones. This is a big plus when it comes to winning new customers or getting an existing customer to buy more. 

The most popular and successful is birthday promotions. A special offer goes off to the customer on their birthday.

Do you send something to your customers on their birthday? 

It is that CRM which is you can unlock your potential, and push growth in your shop

So I urge you to look at the next major upgrade which is coming, in it, you will see our CRM software has been overhauled, you can find some details here.

Right now because of coronavirus. We are in the middle of a shopping frenzy for toilet paper.  Shops have entirely sold out even though many are getting daily deliveries.

Explore search interest for Toilet paper by time, location and popularity on Google Trends

{links were removed}

I confess I do not understand why, if someone had or suspected to have it, yes I could understand them mass hoarding, a family with two (2) weeks isolation needs a supply but not this?

Old-timers and farm boys know of an old solution, do you remember this?

Anyway, the problem some of my clients face now is that they have customers coming in trying to buy toilet paper and they have none to sell. One of them sent me a checklist of what his chain sent on what they suggest that you do if this happens to you.

1) Try to get more supply, do your best. One of my clients managed to get some commercial toilet paper from a cleaning company. Its not good stuff but at least he got something.

2) Accept the importance of the issue to your client, whatever you think, to the customer, it is crucial, and it is your responsibility to act on the issue.  Tell them the truth that you are trying your best. If they want as supply comes in, that you are prepared to keep some for them in a special order.

3) Above all, stay calm.

Are you ready for Valentine's Day!

This year,  IBISWorld forecast predicts Australians will spend $1.09 billion on Valentine's Day, the average Australian consumers are expected to spend $43.61 on someone special. If so to give you a feel of its size, that is about 40% of  Boxing Day.

I believe it as when I look in google trends and put in Valentine's Day, for Australia over the past five years, you will see this graph which shows that there is a lot of interest, comparable to previous years.

So I hope you have some plans to take advantage of this interest.

One point I can assure you is that you don’t have to be in the chocolate or flower industry to win some of that business.  We have a client that sells a lot of mobile phones on that day so try to find an angle.

Start off here and see in your point of sale software, how your existing stock goes for Valentine's Day and ask yourself do you have this stock?

The report I recommend you look at is the Top N stock report which gives you among many other details the top-selling items.

Go to Register Reports marked in green.

Select stock and now you will see two reports, click the one on green first. The purple you should hold in memory as you may need it before placing an order.

Now select last year, for this date until Valentine's day (see yellow arrow)

Here I would suggest looking at the top 40 items, which for most shops should be plenty.

Now you will get a report with your current stock on hand figures to see how your shop looks stock wise for Valentine's day. You also have supplier's details too which you can investigate with the Top N stock report by suppliers that I spoke about above.

Another idea to consider is I did this report for last year, it's a good idea to do it for other years as well.

Now gather the items together as Valentine’s Day is known for having plenty of last-minute shoppers. So you need to make easy for them to find appropriate goods in your retail store. If possible make it a spot in the shop with plenty of red.

Happy Valentine’s Day retailers! And happy selling! 

I first came across this product when my daughter demanded that we get her Sphero SPRK+. After using it, I was hooked too.

I then enquired with some of our clients. I was not surprised when they reported good sales with the new Sphero's SPRK+. While not a massive seller, it's worth it as the margins on offer are good.  Some stated that they had people waiting in line to snap it up. They consider it to be a destination product.

Here is a report of the public interest in the product.

When I reported this, some were negative as for a toy it has a high cost. They fail to realise that schools are pushing it now, too. So the interest by the public is high, and because of the teachers, parents are willing to pay this high price. There is much hype and excitement for this product. 

The other positive is that Disney is pushing it. Any toy driven by Disney is worth investigating.
 

It is an excellent marketing idea to create a sale on a specific theme. Doing so will make it easier for people to relate and grasp your promotion.

There are many, and they are all the time. Piggyback on holidays such as Mother’s Day, Father's Day, ANZAC day, etc as themes.

You should also consider piggybacking on *unofficial* holidays.

For example, I am a huge coffee drinker, so an advertisement like this, in a shop that sells coffee is something that I can relate too.

Why not do something similar. Look for the holidays. It does not have to be an official one that relates to your business and use it as a hook to draw people.

Click here for a list of unofficial ones

We are the only point of sale system. I know that has data mining so our users are lucky that can drive through their tons of data unaided for free. 

With margins so low now in retail, you need every help you can get to gain those few extra percentage points that make or break a business. 

Today business is about data and analysing.

Here is one example, SMB has a significant problem with setting up sales targets that are reasonable as who has time to go through every stock item and make a sales budget. Yet if these sales budgets are:

1) If they are too high soon, no one pays attention to them

2) If they are too low, then its no challenge, what people tend to do here is once they make the budget to stop.

What can help drive sales are targets that are challenging and believable?

Well, our clients have an automatic system that can do that now. It is the focus number. It will give you a reasonably good idea of what sort of movement you can expect from every item in your shop. It is a weekly budget.

Here is how you set it up.

It is easy to set up, and use for details click here.

With capable software, you can assess your stock sales better. You can see what you did right and what you did wrong this week.

For details on how to do this, please, click here.