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When entrepreneurs begin assembling the necessary components they do so with one key factor in mind… Cost! Whether they’ve raised their own capital or borrowed it from a bank or business lender, it’s in the nature of a fledgling entrepreneurs to keep an eye on the mounting costs of the overheads so that their retail business doesn’t start its life mired in an inescapable swamp of debt. Inevitably this means that there are certain concessions that have to be made in the name of keeping overheads manageable and this often means compromising on their choice of premises.

After a few years of successful operation, it’s natural that entrepreneurs should want to expand their operations and this may involve moving to a new, larger, better located or better equipped premises. Before you go looking into local skip hire, however, it’s important to know that a move in premises is being considered for all the right reasons. After all, a move in premises is a disruptive and costly endeavour. If you have any of the following considerations on a regular basis it may be a sign that a move is the way forward for your retail business.

You can’t keep enough stock to meet demand

When scouting for an affordable yet appropriate premises for your business, storage space is rarely one of your prime considerations as you start mapping out floor space and creating a mental shortlist of shopfitters. However, if you can’t keep desirable items in stock to meet demand (especially seasonal demand such as the Christmas rush) this can place a sturdy glass ceiling on your profits. Your ability to meet customer demand will be one of your biggest contributors to retail success and it should not be hobbled by the wrong premises.

You keep having security issues

When you’ve worked in retail a long time you realise that corners, alcoves, nooks and crannies are windows of opportunity for shoplifters. If you’re choosing a premises on the basis of affordability it’s easy to gloss over any security issues that the premises may represent. Over time, however, despite the presence of CCTV and other security measures certain premises still present security issues that can be difficult (not to mention costly and time consuming) to mitigate. Sometimes moving to a more open plan premises where you are able to keep a closer eye on all in-store activity is the only way to go.

Your employees are always late

Few employees make an effort not to show up for work on time, but some areas are more problematic due to traffic and problematic road mapping than others. If your employees are consistently late despite making efforts like getting up and setting off earlier the problem may be with the premises rather than the employees.

Your online sales dwarf your in-store sale

Though the high street is still alive and well, few retailers don’t supplement their income with online sales. After all, online availability combined with a potent marketing strategy can help to mitigate the shortcomings in a retail premises. That said, if you notice a growing disparity between your online sales and your in-store sales then your foot traffic is likely less healthy than it should be. Moving to a premises could well give you a much needed boost.

Launching a new marketing campaign is nerve wracking; you’ve put all that time and money into it and there’s no way to know if it’s definitely going to work. For new businesses, the prospect of pumping a big chunk of their startup money into a marketing campaign and hoping it comes off is scary. The worst thing about it is not having a sense of when you might start making a profit, and if you can even survive until that moment.

Knowing when you’re likely to start seeing that money come back in is important because it can help you to plan and divide up your cash to make sure that you don’t run out before breaking even. Digital marketing is the most popular form that most businesses rely heavily on so we’ll focus on that. This is how long it’s likely to take before you see a return, and how you can make sure you survive until then.

Paid Marketing

The first aspect of digital marketing is paid marketing; that’s any pay per click adverts directing people to your site or products. The good news is, return on these kinds of ads is usually pretty instant, if they’re working that is. If you haven’t seen much action after a couple of weeks, it doesn’t look good.

Owned Marketing

Owned marketing tends to refer to websites in this context. The return that you see and how quickly it comes depends on you. The bad news is, you aren’t going to see an immediate return when you launch a new site. Most of the time, it’ll fall down the search listings a bit and you’ll see a drop in traffic. It takes the search engines a few months to reindex new sites but you’ll start to see an increase in traffic after that.

Earned Marketing

Earned marketing is organically generated marketing through customers, in other words, word of mouth. This isn’t costing you anything so you don’t need to worry about that, but you aren’t likely to see a return anytime soon. You need to establish yourself well and really impress customers before they’ll start telling their friends about you.

How Do You Survive?

When you add all that together, you’ll get a small return on your paid marketing quite quickly, but more significant avenues like your website or social media pages are going to take a few months at least before they start making you much money. That means you’ve got to keep your head above water.

The first thing to do is manage cash flow. Invoices that take ages to come through are one of the number one problems for small companies. You can use a cashflow finance company who will pay you most of the invoice right away, then the rest when the customer pays. That helps keep the cash coming in so you don’t get in trouble.

Overestimating is the other important thing. A couple of months is just an estimate, there’s no way to know for sure. If you split your cash over three months exactly and can only survive if you start seeing that return, what are you going to do if it doesn’t happen?

Whether you’re an entrepreneur with a thriving business or a salaried worker tinkering away on a project there’s a unique sense of exhilaration that comes with the invention of a unique product. From that first spark of inspiration to the development of a working prototype it’s a time of real excitement and self affirmation. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if all this hard work and effort were to be rendered pointless if the product’s release were to fall on deaf ears? Wouldn’t it be a mockery of justice if your product were to be unleashed upon the market with a whimper rather than a bang and for your ingenious product to be consigned into the trashcan of history, uncelebrated and unnoticed.

Here’s where the importance of marketing comes in. The right marketing strategy can make the difference between your product becoming a household name and becoming a forgotten obscurity languishing forgotten in a few dozen basements.

Before you start to market your product…

Before you even take to the workshop you will hopefully have carried out tireless market research. You’ll have identified a public need to solve a problem that only your product can solved. You’ll have found a gap in the market and know exactly how your product will fill it. You will know exactly who your target market is and what influences their behavior. You may even have a good idea of what products they may be using that are similar but inferior to your product and how your product will scratch an itch that your competitors cannot reach. You should also have consulted a patent lawyer to make sure that you won’t be infringing on anyone else’s invention and / or copyright.

Take a bite from the Apple

When it comes to illustrating the power of good marketing there’s no better example than the Californian consumer electronics giant Apple. Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign was a masterclass in marketing efficacy that helped the company to become 100% wealthier than the American government. The campaign was clever and funny but although it directly compared the Mac with it’s closest competitor it neither made false or needlessly boastful claims nor did it fall into the trap of disparaging Microsoft’s product. Perhaps this was due to the friendship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

If your product offers a significant upgrade or advantage over another similar product on the market, you could do well to base your marketing campaign around this. You might even be able to piggyback on your competitor’s popularity.

Get optimized

When potential customers look at your product they’ll have a very specific set of expectation which they’ll expect to see in the product descriptions in online retail outlets. Since nobody knows the product better than you, it may be tempting to write these yourself but there’s actually a compelling argument in favor of outsourcing this. Entrusting your product optimization to a company like Grow Online has some distinct advantages. Through a structured and keyword rich approach to product description they’re proven to be able to increase traffic and conversion rates. They will have in depth knowledge of search engine algorithms that they will be able to use to your advantage.

Know your niche

Remember your market research! Many an entrepreneur has fallen short trying to be all things to all consumers. It’s important to know what your target market values and know your niche. Take a cautionary tale from the automotive world. Czech manufacturer Skoda committed a marketing faux pas in the ‘90s that almost did permanent damage to their brand. They marketed themselves on their affordability and resultantly they came across as being cheap and inferior. And cheap is a label that no auto manufacturer can afford to bear. Thus, they shifted their focus at the turn of the millennium with a campaign based around the brand’s reliability and the exceptional value for money they offered customers. The campaign even had a playful and self-effacing slogan; “It’s a Skoda. Honest”. Ensure that you don’t misplace the emphasis when it comes to developing your marketing campaign.

Embrace the power of brand collaboration

If your product comes from out of nowhere it can be laborious and time consuming to build the consumer trust that is essential in building a successful brand. Brand collaboration allows you to pair your product with a brand that produces complementary and non competing products. This will enable you to piggyback on their popularity and capitalize on the goodwill toward the other brand which consumers will read as an endorsement of quality.

Successful examples include Bonne Belle’s Dr. Pepper flavored lip balm and Go Pro’s collaboration with Red Bull.