Every store and retail owner deals with items that don’t have a promising or successful sales trend. It’s part of the trade. Some products do better than others, but that doesn’t mean they’re completely unsellable. In fact, there’s a way to turn things around. Here’s how to market your unpopular retail products.
Your current marketing strategy is not working. For whatever reason, either the product or the price tag is not appealing to customers. But here’s what you need to remember: it’s not always about the price or the product. Sometimes you need to sell an experience to grab people’s attention.
Tell a story with the product. People love to envision themselves using or wearing the items they buy from a store, and they like to see themselves happy with those items. If you’re trying to get a new pet toy off the shelves, tell pet owners how the toy will help them bond with their fur babies. They’ll be using your product for a long time, so they need to envision all the moments.
Sometimes the way products look on the shelves isn’t as appealing as you would think. Aside from selling an experience, you need to advertise the product so it looks more popular than it currently is. Customers love to buy products that others are using with confidence.
Believe it or not, a product dump bin can affect your sales in the best way. It creates a sense of urgency, and customers will flock to the bin. Place these bins in the front of your store or in a popular area so customers are forced to walk by and look inside them. Place a sign in front to pique their interest.
The customer is always right. That’s the number one rule in retail. Even if sometimes they’re wrong. You need to find out what they like most and curate your marketing tactics to their interests. Keep track of the latest trends.
Knowing what’s popular right now puts you ahead of the curve. Try to relate unpopular products to those popular trends. Some of that likeability could rub off on those items. Don’t think of it as tricking or fooling the customer; it’s more like meeting them on their footing and speaking their language.
Speaking of popularity, the items that go off the shelves have all the luck. And it’s your job to spread that wealth throughout the store. Bundle some products together to increase sales. People love the term “buy one get one free.”
You just need to change the language a little bit. When they buy a popular item, they’ll get another product—the unpopular one—at half price. You still need to make a profit, and this is one of the most efficient ways.
Use every trick you have to market your unpopular retail products and change the narrative in your store.