Long-term, short-term, now-term — with so many different points in time, how is a seller supposed to craft a master business plan? Well, there’s no need to worry now that RepricerExpress has sped onto the scene faster than The Flash. We’ve got the scoop on what it takes to put together both a short-term and long-term sales strategy.
Thinking About the Next Couple of Steps
There are two words we want you to keep in mind for this section: flexibility and adaptability. We want you to do this because these are two characteristics you’ll need to formulate a successful short-term sales strategy.
Being flexible and adaptable means you can take advantage right now of techniques and strategies that can provide a quick, but powerful, boost to your sales. This includes things like sales, promotions or bundles you normally wouldn’t run, but are using to get that surge — and when you get a surge like that, you can translate it to increasing your product’s ranking and longevity (as well as boosting your reputation, reviews and metrics).
Don’t Forget to Think About the Future, Too
One thing we can’t stress enough is to try and avoid damaging your long-term sales strategy to make the short-term pay off. It’s sort of like your favourite football club selling their young prospects to bring in one or two ageing, overpaid superstars. Sure, those new players might make things better this season, but what about the next five? And if your young guns are gone, who’s going to save your team from relegation?
This is why it’s crucial to also keep an eye on the future. You never want to risk long-term pain for short-term gain, as ecommerce is most definitely a marathon and not a sprint.
So having said that, what are some things you can do to bolster your long-term sales strategy?
For starters, think carefully about how and when you’ll be generating sales campaigns. Putting up promotions is a great idea, but only when used correctly. If you’ve got a pile of unused stuck that’s creeping close to long-term storage fees or it’s seasonal and you need to unload it, then go ahead and mark the price down. But doing so because you want to out-sell your competitors and get instant rewards is not only a fairly poor idea, it also runs the risk of a race to the bottom.
Instead, focus on increasing sales slowly but steadily. Let’s say you sell an average of 10 picture frames each day, but your competitors are outdoing you by 50%. You’re outranked by them and at that pace, will never pull away from the pack. And sure, you can slash your prices and sell possibly 20 each day, but at what cost?
Instead, track your metrics and concentrate on boosting sales by a few each day, with the goal of increasing sales by just a few more than your competitors. Drive conversions by taking advantage of social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Vine, etc.), smartening up your email marketing campaigns and making your products Prime-eligible. And if buyers get wayward about leaving reviews, send them a friendly email reminding them of needing feedback so you can start to amass those pretty gold stars.
Final Thoughts
Something you’ll want to more than consider is repricing your products so you’re always staying on top of market trends, as this will help you maximise sales both in the short- and long-term. But instead of doing the dirty work yourself, hand it over to RepricerExpress, who’ll set you up with a free 15-day trial.
