How to Make Retail Store Profitable: 25+ Tips to Maximize

To retailers, their prime goal is to attract more customers and keep their sales growing. Well, if there are no sales, there is not business either. 

Thus, retailers must keep the focus on maximizing the most from their store profit. 

According to the U.S Census, In 2018, retail sales hit $6 trillion, which was higher than last year’s record. In 2017, the amount was $4.4 trillion.

However, for retailers, it’s crucial to understand that evaluating their business strategy will help maximize the profit. 

Also, it’s important to look out for customers if they felt it was unfair to them. You will eventually stop getting customers which will get you back to the square. 

How To Maximize Retail Store Profit?

Sales will go down or sometimes it will be at a high rate. Both situations are inevitable. As for retailers, it’s not possible to control the change. 

But you can take certain steps, follow some tips, and make strategies to maximize your sales without upsetting the customers. 

Here is what you are going to need if you don’t want your sales to slump. 

1. Advertise As Much As It’s Possible 

Image source: designhill

Advertisement keeps your brand in the eyes of people. Also, the right marketing keeps your business to the right people. 

That’s why advertisements can help you in avoiding the major slumps in sales. It’s best to keep your sales up during the slow seasons. Consider both online and offline options. 

Speed your marketing efforts on how to make your business visible to potential people. Include options like newspaper ads, specialty publications, magazines, and different other marketing forms.

Keep your ads as much as a sales motivator along with the branding. 

2. Create Your Holidays 

Celebrating national holidays like Christmas, July 4th is good for the business. But most of the retailers spend it, in such a situation your business should have their holidays. 

People love celebrations and for keeping their excitement at its peak, it’s important to have their holidays.

Instead of waiting for holidays to come, make your holidays. 

To make your holiday, you can consider what you sell. Find something similar to this that can be celebrated. And you got your holiday-ready to celebrate. 

Make it an event, and draw more people to your retail stores. 

3. Use Your Online Presence 

Not having an online presence can drop your sales. There might be people online who are looking for similar brand like yours. 

Image source: refferralcandy

Make sure where your audience can search you, for example, most of the customers look at the business on Google. So it’s important to have your presence.

Use the relevant keywords to make it easier for finding you. For example, if you sell shoes,  make it easier to find you when they use keywords like “ Best shoe stores near me”.

Also use platforms like Facebook, Yelp, and Google. Keep your description as detailed as it can be possible. 

• Add tons of visual content such as a virtual tour of the store, photos, etc.
• Add your business name, phone number,  address, and keep it identical to other different sites.
• Add the business hours ( Opening and closing )
• Keep positive reviews 

Also, you can consider adding your catalog using Google Local Inventory Ads. This helps your customers to find your products when they do a related searches.

4. Master The Upselling 

Upselling offers the pricer version of what the buyers are looking for. However it can be tricky but if you know how to do it, this can help you in maximizing the profit. 

Image source:pixelproudction

For upselling right, the basic key is to focus on showing the value or benefit. Your customer should know that it’s worth the price and give it a chance to spend their money. 

Takeaway: Educate your customer, so they can buy the premium product. You can show enough evidence to make sure it’s worth the price is given. 

5. Consider The Cross-Selling Option 

Cross-selling is recommending more products as complimenting the real product the buyers are purchasing. 

The best way to do it is to understand your inventory completely. Being a retailer, you should know what you sell. Understand what will go with the product and help the customers.

Image source: baymardinsitute 

The recommendation is helpful even for the customers since most of them are not aware of what they need. You can drive their attention to purchasing by using the cross-selling option. 

Next is timing,  The best time for adding cross-selling is when your customer is committed to do the purchase. By this stage, you will understand your customer.

Don’t push new purchases when the customer is in the deciding stage. They will drop the whole idea of purchasing as it can confuse them even more. 

Takeaway: Take the time to know them and understand their behavior. Keep them educating and add genuine value to their purchase. 

6. Keep The Process Convenience & Easy 

When your customer decides to purchase, use this opportunity wisely. At this moment, your purchasing process should be hassle-free, easy, and convenient for them.

In case of slow checkout or lack of inventory can make you lose your customer which decreases customer satisfaction. On top of that, you lose your sales and profit too. 

Keep the checkout process streamline. Train your cashier and staff to make the process fast and smooth for both of them.

According to Jamies Hess, Truxx ‘s co-founder and CEO, Investing in self-checkout and adding new technology can eliminate the queue lines.

Image source: Transporttopics

 Also, offering services like the last mile can help the customers who are purchasing items like furniture, grills, etc that don’t fit in cars. 

Takeaway: Offering hassle-free services in ordering and checkout keeps your customers staired to do their next shopping. It increases sales as old customers do more purchases as compared to new ones. 

7. Add Mobile Checkout 

For your customer, waiting and sending their valuable time is a hassle. Installing a Mobile POS system to keep the shoppers from making purchases from anywhere like Sephora did can help.

So it avoids the situations when people have to wait in line. And people do faster shopping from anywhere and on spot.

8. Add Endless Aisles 

Endless aisle is a concept where your customer can browse the store with virtual browsers. This includes the product which is either not in stock or not sells in-store. 

Such items get delivered directly to the home. 

Image source: Aceturtle

This concert is adapted in lots of stores, it can help in maximizing the sales. Also, it gives comfort and hassles free shopping experience to the customer.

Takeaway: For the endless aisle, remove any kind of bottleneck process in the purchase.  It eliminates the stock-outs,  long lines, and inefficiency of the issues.

Also, make sure that the delivery to doorstep process is simple and easier for your customers. 

9. Get The Best Of Email Campaigns 

Email marketing campaigns can have major effects on how much profit you can maximize. 

According to Forrester,  17% of digital marketing spend happens due to email. The contribution of the email is 24% in overall revenue. 

Thus, it proves email marketing is one of the effective channels for repeating customers and boosting sales.

Image source: campaignmonitor

You can email what doesn’t go with your social media post. Also, you can actively do newsletter promotions, blogs, and other options to get more people to your store.

For customers, it’s easier to access as they can use smartphones for this. This allows them to use their promotional codes, coupons, etc that can be used in-store. 

To make your emails effective and build up your base for subscribers,  you must provide the value for it. For this, you can add – 

• Relevant topics and content that help customers to purchase.
• Newsletter for announcing offers, upcoming promotions, events, and product tips.
• Exclusive free gifts and codes.
• Welcome or Thank you email after every purchase. 

10. Use Your Signage For Effective Results 

Signage can be a great and powerful tool in retail. Understanding your signage tool can cause some major impact on sales as well as your customer satisfaction. 

Image source: telemetryTv

With the correct use of signage, you can attract more people. It helps in educating your customer and make them compelling to do shopping. 

According to Stan Tan from Selby says,  informative signage can help the customer throughout their purchase journey It can work as store aids to help in taking decisions and purchasing the product.

Takeaway: Signage can help the customer who is unsure about making the purchase. Using informative signage can give reliable and Point of sales information to help. 

11. Give a Safe And Secure Environment To Customers

In a situation like COVID-19, The best way of keeping your foot traffic increases and making sales high. Without letting the pandemic affect your business, it’s important to make your customer safe. 

If your customers don’t have to be convinced of safety when they are in the store, they will avoid shopping in the future too. 

Image source: pharmaceuticaljournal

Explain to them what measures you are taking and how they are safe so they can shop without any hesitance. 

Communication is important. You can share the information through your different channels like – 

• Mobile app
• Social media
• Email marketing 
• Website 
• Message 

12. Engage More With Customers 

Engaging with customers is a vital role in making them feel welcome. For example, Apple stores are masters of understanding and implying the role. 

They attend to every customer as soon as they walk into the store. The associate greets them and helps throughout the process, including answering questions and clearing doubts.

That’s why Apple stores are considered as the most profitable retail stores per square foot. 

The customers who walk into your store could be potential supporters and buyers. To understand the importance, stores are required to make them feel the information and attend to them. 

Takeaway: The key here is to smile and give a warm greeting. Look out for them whenever they are in doubt or have questions. Even though they are browsing, please treat them with the same respect. 

There are chances that maybe they are not purchasing but in the future, they can do it.  It’s crucial to nurture the relationship effectively for future purposes. 

13. Show you Appreciate Your Customers

In retail, the best option for boosting your sales and maximizing the sales is to keep your approach customer-centric. 

In the end, it’s your customer who is going to buy products.  So it’s important to keep your services focused on your buyers. 

Listen to their queries, and understand what motivates them to purchase. Show that you are genuinely interested.

When a brand is genuinely interested, it creates brand loyalty, and customers purchase more. 

Also, Express your gratitude and appreciation to them. You can offer services and products to add value, loyalty programs, etc. 

Takeaway: Writing thank you notes or appraising the customer increases positive feelings. This lets you build loyalty, but customers like to do more purchases to get appreciation. 

14. Consider Using Click And Collect 

Click and collect lets customers shop online and collect directly from the stores. It doesn’t require them to stand in line or waste time. 

However, after COVID affected businesses,  Click and collect was largely adopted in different stores. 

Image source: salecycle 

The reason is to make the customers visit their stores when they collect the deliveries. It increases the traffic, which means more customers are interacting. 

When you have customers, it will increase the change of sales too. Click and collect is a proven method for boosting the retail store profit too. 

According to research,  45% of people did purchase something when they made a trip to collect the delivery to stores. 

15. Keep The Buzz High 

Generating buzz about your store gets attention from the buyers. And also you create space for your retail store among the competitor world.

Send the press release about the store in the media. Use the free coverage to get information about what you do and offer. 

Get the use of social and community events. Host different classes, use the networking hosting events, or create one for your store.

You can also do promotional events for generating more buzz regarding the items you sell as well as the business. 

16. Be  A Social Butterfly 

The most cost-efficient and hassle-free thing here is being a social butterfly. Use social platforms to promote your business. 

Make sure that you have a steady stream regarding what activities you do online. 

Overdoing shows that you are desperate and customers get the idea that your sales are down. 

Don’t overdo it or do it occasionally. Keep it steady and fix days for it. 

Use social media to make your presence highlighted. Introduce new products, promote your offers, etc. 

17. Increase Price Selectively 

If your items require a price increase, make sure you are well aware of the reasons. 

Customers won’t mind paying extra but for some nonsense reasons, they will never do it. So make sure to update your customer about the reasons. 

Also, you can show the value of what they will get from it.  Don’t create too much gap between new and old prices. It will be difficult to make your customer see the reasons. 

Takeaway: Increasing the price of the product is risky but if it’s needed, make sure to do it but with all precautions. 

You don’t want your customer to drop using the product because they feel paying extra for it is unfair. 

18. Choose Order Via Mobile 

Image source: medium 

Mobile ordering is not limited to the food industry but the retail business is also considering the options too. 

For example,  Grain & Vain, a boutique wine and spirit store located in New York offers mobile ordering through its apps like Drizly, Minibar, and Postmates. 

Mobile ordering keeps the customers interacting with products and businesses no matter where they are. 

According to Micheal Nagdimunov, owner of Grain & Vain, adding the mobile order boosted their sales revenue to 25%. Also over 12 months,  they noticed the orders ramping up from 100 per month to 600 orders. 

19. Hire & Train Employee For Exceptional Customer Service 

In retail, your business depends on your employee. They are the people who are doing the sales. 

So when you are boosting sales and profit,  invest in your employee training. 

It’s important for your staff to feel the same level of passion and motivation to do sales. Help them in understanding what they sell, so they know everything inside and out about the product. 

If your employees are excited and passionate, it will impact the customers too. Having knowledge about the product will help in making them confident. 

According to Nick Stagge, VP of Marketing at ExpertVoice, he says to drive more sales and keeping your staff effective, here are the points to follow- 

• Get help from hiring sales associates to help share the passionate and knowledgeable details about products. 
• Make your sales associates empowered so they can interact with customers confidently. Let them focus on the customers first. 
• Train them to boost their experience and help to find a solution if they get stuck 

20. Be Smart When You Set Sales Target 

Establishing a goal to boost the revenue and profit of the retailer However doing it property can help but lots of times it looks challenging and hard to achieve. 

According to Kevin Graff,  Goals require at least 70%, if it’s not happening then it will demotivate the staff.

If the goals are achieved to 90%, it’s too low for pushing the staff to see their potential.

When you are setting goals, make sure to communicate with your staff and focus when planning it. 

The best way to do it is to get help from your point of sales system reporting to get more visibility of your set sales targets. 

Takeaway: Setting your goals gives a clear idea and push from time to time so you get what you are looking for. Not just setting goals is important but also monitoring is crucial.

22. Promote Social Responsibility 

Doing good always helps your business to boost its positivity.  Also, several studies showed that customers are more into companies who are doing good for the community. 

For business owners, giving back to society and the world makes your company reliable.  It helps in increasing the profit by boosting sales. 

Make sure you are part of CSR or Corporate Social Responsibility. Find the good cause to which you can relate and promote it. 

To promote, you can do in different ways, it includes : 

• Creating or hosting events for promoting the cause
• Donating the sales or portion to the charity
• Ethical during how to manufacture the products
• Invest in workforce
• Supporting the project and incitative

23. Invest In Your Store Visuals 

Visuals are playing a vital role in today’s purchase behavior. No matter what you are selling, if it’s unappealing to your customers, they won’t buy it. 

Having strong visuals when the customer enters your store is important. It attracts attention and engages them which leads to purchase and sales.

Image source: hubspotblog

To add stronger visuals to your store, here are a few points to know. 

• Keep your store display multidimensional. Focus on the visual elements as per their height, depth, color, type, etc. 

• Display the products which are a strong pint of yours. Communicate about your capabilities and make it easier to talk with staff.

• Keep your products easy to understand and interactive. Seeing products in action boosts confidence in buyers. Display the products and let your customer show their curiosity.

• Focus on keeping everything neat and tidy.

• Focus on focal points to show the details. Avoid making your customer feel overwhelmed and confused. 

Show your customer more about the product, give them information but keep it according to their stage. 

If customers are deciding, too much information will make them feel confused. 

Takeaway: Visuals are crucial for selling your products. Invest in lighting, decor, and presentation to boost the appeal. 

The more attractive it looks, the better customer will decide to purchase which will boost sales. 

24. Add More Value To Your Merchandise 

Well, an interesting fact to consider is cosmetic retails have one of the best margins in profit.

According to the experts,  cosmetic retailers successfully create a strong personal and emotional connection during the interaction with the customs. 

Beauty retailers focus on creating the feeling of being better and foster the idea to strong customers. 

It boosts loyalty and merchandises the exploration sense among them. 

It depends on the packaging,  branding, and other important factors that add value to the product.  

For retailers, it is crucial to manage their brand management and creating emotional levels including lifestyles, status, etc. 

No matter what you sell, focus on unique brand positioning, and use it to increase its perceived value.

Takeaways:  For retailers, it’s circular to find the perceived value and focus on converting to emotion as well as the lifestyle that you can offer. 

Make sure that your customer understands what your products can offer. Also how it can solve the problem and make them feel better. 

25. Boost  The Average Order Value 

AOV or basket size from the customers who are in the store can help you in increasing the profit.  

They are already invested in what you are selling, and focus on ways to maximize their time in the store. 

Here upselling and cross-selling helps. Share the recommendation on what else can help in purchasing. 

Such customers are open to what you offer as compared to a brand new person who just interacted with the products. 

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Find the products which go perfectly together. Keep the sales genuine for them instead of completing focusing on profit. 

Manage your store so it can boost the average order value. Put the profitable products on the displays and keep them naturally without pushing too much. 

Takeaway:  Boost the average order value size. Find more ways to increase it and upgrade the selling game. Use high traffic store areas to promote buyers. 

Also, focus on promoting impulsive purchase during the checkout time. 

26. Boost The Relationship With Vendors 

Vendors can help you in cutting costs and also in maximizing retail profit. 

Consider the steps to make sure you are creating a strong relationship with your vendors.  It’s important to engage with the joint business planning.  

Focus on providing the benefits of both parties, not just the one. And focus on increasing profit. 

Next is to reduce the supply chain cost.  The process of getting your product from your factory to the store can be costly and lots of inefficient. 

The supply chain can cost lots of energy and price. It’s important to eliminate the causes that increase the price of the supply chain. 

As a retailer, you should be aware of what you are sling but also how you are getting from the factor to the store floor. Manage the list that can tell what is wasting your money on it. 

For example, if you are shipping a product that is less as compared to a full truckload will cost more when it’s full.

Ask your suppliers to understand if there is anything that is costing more and can be stopped without affecting the chain. 

Takeaway: The key point here is to have a better relationship with the vendor and supplies. Where your customer can increase the sales and product, but you might be spending on some loopholes that are not needed. 

Having clear communication and understanding about your supplying process, you can get more of a grip on where you are spending the money. Also, it can help in keeping the profit for important use. 

Frequently Asked Question ( FAQs)

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