Have you decided which products you are selling at your new retail store? With so many to choose from and the risk of failure at the helm, this decision can be taxing and feel overwhelming. The right products can catapult your business into profit, but the wrong ones can derail your earnings plans and set you back considerably.
Starting a new venture should be exciting, however, so to help you feel more at ease, consider the following tips while making your final product decisions.
Analyze the competition
A healthy dose of competition is normal, but too much competition could keep customers from finding you and negatively affect your product sales. Research your competition by visiting their websites and joining their email lists. Get a good grasp of the products they sell. The sweet spot for your products is to meet industry standards and stay on par with your competition, yet also offer products that are unique enough to stand out.
Stay focused
If you are just starting out with your business, don’t sell a wide variety of products. Keep your product line and your marketing more focused. Keeping it simple will help you more easily identify what works and what doesn’t without wasting a lot of time and money. As you grow, apply what you learn about your industry and your customers’ desires and choose products accordingly.
Recurring sales
Seasonal merchants are at a disadvantage. Demand for their products only comes at specific times of the year. While demand for those items is high at the top of the season, it can be difficult to sustain the company during the off-season.
Though not seasonal, one-time product sellers are also at a slight disadvantage. Once consumers buy their products, they have no more use for the merchant. An example of one-time products would be wedding favors or baby name books.
For maximum sales potential, choose consumable products with recurring sales value and ones that consumers will need to re-purchase. Think food items, motor oil, skin care, cosmetics and any other item that consumers use up and need to replace.
Market research
Before you sell any product, determine whom you are selling to, so you can learn about their wants and needs. Who are they? What are their pain points? What do they need solutions for? Answering these questions will help you select the products that will be attractive to your target audience.
Your market research should cover basic demographics such as age, ethnicity, location, employment status, marriage status, gender, etc. Dig deeper and also research behavior, interests, and personality traits as well as what will motivate your customer to want to buy your products. Understanding your customers this deeply will help you sell exactly what they want.
Your product also does not need to attract the masses. It’s more lucrative to attract a smaller subset of people who will find value in your products than to appeal to a wider range of people who may not be as enthusiastic.
How else can you learn about your customers’ wants and needs?
The key to understanding what products your customers want is to connect with them and understand them at a deep level. Market research is the first step and vital to grasping the depth of your target market.
Another way to get inside the hearts and minds of your target consumers is to ask them questions directly. And one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to do this is to conduct phone surveys via voice broadcasting using an IVR solution (interactive voice response).
Voice broadcasting is a service that enables businesses to send out custom voice messages to all of their contacts simultaneously and within seconds. This saves them time and money, eliminating manual calls that can tie up company personnel and resources. IVR is a technology that allows people to interact with a computer via the use of voice or tones.
Using voice broadcasting to send out surveys to all of your contacts to ask them questions about what types of products they would like and what solutions they are looking for. Use an IVR solution when you send out your surveys so your participants can respond with a simple key pad press on their phones. IVR makes the survey process easy for respondents, and with CallFire’s IVR solution, you can also have the system automatically call the recipient back if he/she did not get the call. In addition, collect the responses inside your dashboard and analyze them to gain greater insight on what products your customers will buy.
CallFire is one of the oldest industry partners offering IVR solutions, and we would be happy to help you get to know your customers better. For pennies a call, use voice broadcasting with IVR to maximize your product campaigns and get to know your target market better. Set up is simple and fast on our website. Simply sign up for a free account here.