“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker
The most successful retail stores are constantly monitoring, analyzing and optimizing their marketing performance. This process, results in an extreme competitive advantage over your local competitors. Not only will you steadily be increasing your sales over time, but you’ll be doing it more affordably. How sweet is that?
It’s easy to buy into marketing “quick fixes” and hope for the best. But the best marketing is that which gives a measurable result. Treat marketing as an investment, not a cost. And for any investment to be worthwhile, money earned should be more than money spent.
The Retail Marketing Equation
The success of your store hinges on 3 key performance factors (store traffic, customer conversion and average sales value). Since these 3 key metrics are the key to going out of business or building a multi-million dollar business, these need to be measured often. Ideally, it would be nice to have real-time dashboard, showing you the vital signs of your business.
This simple equation takes into account ALL the factors that contribute to store sales. It fully explains why your store made the sales it did. Once these factors are known, the potential can be seen and calculated, and specific actions can be implemented and evaluated independently.
Data-Driven Marketing
Review these metrics and use them to guide your decisions. With these metrics in place, you can tell which strategies are working and which aren’t. If you make a change, you use the metrics to tell you whether the change improved things or not.
