Maximise Sales: Trading your business online
You may already have a great website and your Marketing strategy is robust and delivering you a healthy and positive Return on Investment from your Marketing spend
Having a Trading Strategy to layer on top of your overarching Business Strategy and to knit into your Marketing Strategy will enhance your Marketing activity and helps cement your website and your Marketing together – there are many benefits to having a Commercial Trading Strategy to help you focus, plan and deliver well-executed marketing campaigns… it will also help you understand what is holding you back, and help figure out how to address these
So, to start with what let’s go through what is needed to develop a Trading Strategy and help understand why thinking about a Trading Strategy can be important for the growth of your business
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What is a Trading Strategy?
A trading strategy is about maximising your selling opportunities at the optimum time – ensuring you getting the best impact from your busy periods and planning to make the most from your quiet periods – all businesses ebb & flow through seasonality or through low stock periods. And alongside this you need a focus on capturing your customers attention from your competitors by giving them a reason to purchase from you, rather than anywhere else
Part of your Trading Strategy could be “to be in stock of your Best Selling products at all times” – easier said than done sometimes depending on product lead times or if you under-forecast sales performance and have sold through quicker than you thought… and if your Best Sellers are a significant percentage of your overall revenue, how will this hurt your business and cashflow if you do sell out – are you in a position to turn on a campaign to focus on your slower-selling lines?
Decisions about “when to go into a Sale event” are driven through your Trading strategy – using data analysis around sales, margin, profit levels, rate of sale and sell through all impact decision making and help educate you to make the right decisions – if you know that your sales across Bank Holidays (for example) spike, then that becomes an opportunity to make that spike bigger, whether that is a “Free delivery weekend”, or “Flash Sale” or a “promotional code” through your email database
These are just some examples of having a Trading strategy – once you have this in place, it can then feed into your Campaign planning for your Marketing Strategy as well as provide you with a better understanding of your trading patterns and opportunities
If you understand what your Best sellers are, when your key trading periods are (and your quiet periods) and you are a commercial thinker then you are on your way to being able to document and execute your Trading Strategy
Contact me today to discuss further