Create a strategy to successfully market your retail merchandise.
A company should look at marketing as one part of its general business plan. For a retail enterprise, a marketing plan is a detailed road map that outlines the company's marketing goals and strategies for developing its brand and adding value to its products and services. A marketing plan can be as small as one page or as large as 50 pages. It is a living document that changes and grows with the business.
Market Research
Gather information about your customer and the general market for your merchandise. This is a core requirement for developing business strategies. Retail trends, business analysis and statistics can be obtained from a number of professional retail market research companies. Retail industry associations such as the Retail Industry Leaders Association and the National Retail Federation provide extensive member resources. Retail publications such as "Retail Merchandiser" and "Specialty Retail Report" are magazines for retail market information.
For market research related to your local target market and customer base, uncover purchasing trends by examining your company's internal sales reports. Sales report information is derived from sales receipts from specific time periods. Conduct surveys that gather additional information about customers' interests. Study your direct competitors and find out what they are doing.
Marketing Goals
Develop short- and long-term retail marketing goals. These are high-level summaries of the marketing plan that are customer-driven and product-specific. One goal might be a time-bound, long-term plan to increase sales in a particular retail department by a certain percentage. Reducing customer point-of-sale wait-times by two minutes on average is an example of a short-term, customer-driven marketing goal.
Action Plan
Based on the knowledge you have about your target market and with a set of marketing goals firmly in place, come up with marketing ideas that encourage potential customers to purchase more of the retail products identified in the marketing goals. Develop ways to address current challenges to delivering more efficient customer service. One solution might be to increase the number of cashiers at particular times of the day. Marketing strategies may relate to promotions, packaging, pricing, bundling and payment terms.
SWOT Analysis
Conduct a SWOT Analysis on the proposed action plans. This is an analytical tool used to examine the Strenths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of a proposed plan. Examine the strengths and weaknesses related to the actionable retail-marketing strategies.
Milestones
Build milestones into the retail marketing plan. Milestones are evaluative tools for tracking progress and determining whether goals have been achieved by certain dates.
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