Just like any other business, gift shop managers need to always be creative and find new ways to boost their sales.
With Cerdá, we want to provide some sparkles of inspiration: let’s find out the 5 best-working ideas to increase your gift sales.
The gift shop ideas we’re going to discuss down below are intended for any kind of business retail or online. Keep in mind that such a distinction between physical and online business is disappearing: customers aren’t picking one of the two alternatives but they’re buying both online and in local stores, depending on the prices, occasions and other factors. What does it mean for your business? Do not focus on a single sales channel, but start thinking about how you can provide multiple sales channels for your customers and then optimize each of them to boost your sales!
What gift shop ideas can you exploit in your local stores? We can think about some.
The biggest competitors of all local businesses are always online ones, but the in-store has a great advantage that the online one could never have: the experience itself!
Do not limit yourself to placing items on the shelves: create a unique experience for your customers. Your attitude, kindness, and expertise will make a difference too.
Technology is changing the way we make purchases. For example, we no longer have wallets full of banknotes and coins, but small credit card holders in our pockets. New payment methods are being introduced in the market every day and customers are always curious about them. Some of them also allow users to save money or receive a cash back so that they’ll be more likely to make purchases where that particular payment method is accepted. Always be up to date with the novelties of technology.
The Internet offers many and great opportunities that you can exploit in your marketing strategy to boost your gift shop sales.
Many users all around the world use the Internet only to browse through social media. There is an entire generation for which the Internet is social media. Your business should have its pages on the major social network platforms and use them to introduce and promote your business to the public.
Social media is also important for advertising. Their advertising programs always allow you to target a specific segment of the audience and run a targeted marketing campaign.
Despite the development of technology, good old emails are still the most efficient way to engage customers, introduce promotions and build a strong relationship with them.
Social media are important but you should also have an independent website through which you can show off your items, build your brand image and also have the chance of being independent of social media algorithms that can change at any moment.
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Building a relationship with your clients is important whether you’re running a local or online store as well. The ways through which you can build such a relationship are different, but the goal is the same: make your customers come back to you, become a reference point for them.
In your retail store, your expertise, kindness and friendship will be important, but also initiatives like customer cards, discounts for repeated clients and things like this.
Can you build a relationship with your clients online too? Of course, you can! You have tons of tools that you can exploit: newsletters, discounts after the purchase, promotional codes for those who subscribe to your newsletter, and others.
The key here is to avoid thinking that once the client has made the purchase your job is over. On the contrary, think that your job begins there: now you have a base on which you can build your relationship with that client!
When you run a selling business, you should never forget that - other than providing products to your customers - you are also providing a service. Such a service should be excellent! Every aspect of it!
Your service includes getting only the best-quality and trending items, putting your expertise at the service of your customers, being able to advise them, letting them know what is trending… All these aspects of your customer services should be taken care of just as you do with the choice and display of your items.
You could -and should - also provide additional services to your offer: for example, gift wrapping and consultation should be provided for free, as an act of kindness from your business to your customer. This is how you can build a strong and long-lasting relationship with them, and we’ve already spoken about how important your bond with your client is.
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A winning strategy to make your business’ profits grow is to start including licensed products in your offer. Licensed items with decorations from children’s and grown-ups’ cartoon, movie, and comics characters can attract a wide audience: not only children, but also parents, and grown-ups who are fans of the Kidults growing trends.
You can rely on Cerdá and our tips to multiply your sales with licensed products. Cerdá has a long history of collaborations with the major creators of characters in the worlds: Disney, Marvel, and the Harry Potter franchise are just an example.
Cerdá’s products are also suitable for a wide variety of gift shops since we manufacture and distribute clothes, shoes, and accessories. Cerdá’s licensed products are your opportunity to differentiate your gift shop from your competitors, attracting and retaining customers both locally and online.
This is how you can boost your gift shop sales and stand out from the crowd of competitors. These five ideas that we’ve shown can be intended as areas of intervention: you have 5 directions where you can go and exploit the several opportunities that each of them has to offer.