In this episode, Ali Dee breaks down the top three most common mistakes she sees retail business owners making, and how to avoid them.
Join us inside the TRENDSETTER membership here.
Work with me in The Sales Lab, DM me SALES on IG or TT for the deets
Follow the Retail Success Club on TikTok and Instagram @retailsuccessclub
In this episode, Ali Dee breaks down the top three most common mistakes she sees retail business owners making, and how to avoid them.
Join us inside the TRENDSETTER membership here.
Work with me in The Sales Lab, DM me SALES on IG or TT for the deets
Follow the Retail Success Club on TikTok and Instagram @retailsuccessclub
Hey, welcome to the retail success club podcast. I'm Allie D I'm so excited. We're back. We are reigniting this podcast. I know this has been a fan fave for anyone that follows the retail success club. Oh, and by the way, you may have noticed we had a little change, a Rooskie with our names. So we were boutique success club and we're for several months and this brand just blew up beyond my wildest imagination. And I felt like not only was a catering to a lot of boutiques, but a lot of brands and a lot of retail businesses in general. So I decided to change the name from boutique success club to retail success club to really be more encompassing, but also for the recognition that as a boutique owner and as a brand owner, you are part of the heartbeat of the retail industry. It's all of these amazing small businesses across the country that make up a huge bulk of main street USA. And we're talking about. Retail businesses that cater directly to the customers that know them that love them. And I didn't want anyone to feel left out, especially I was getting a ton of DMS, a ton of messages from all types of retail businesses, asking for help saying they love the podcast and just giving me like the best feedback. And I'm so thankful that you reach out and you tell me these things because it keeps me going. It keeps me excited because at the end of the day, the whole reason that I started this. One day I was sitting in my store and I just felt like there was some things that I saw as someone who's been in the industry for multiple years, over 10 years, there was certain things that I was seeing a lot of the new boutique owners and even some of the vets and brand owners just kind of missing the mark on. And I felt like, you know what? I'm going to hop on tech talk. I'm just going to create some content and I'm going to see what happens. This is something that has been a dream of mine for years, but I just never really pushed the go button until I guess it was, um, almost a year ago that I decided, I think I have to check on that. Um, decided to post my first tech talk and then not just blew up from there. Now we've got 20,000 followers. We've got this great podcast and we're back. We're ready to roll. So that's the scoop on that? Today, I want to talk to you about. Three mistakes that I see that will kill your online sales. And I don't want this to sound harsh. It may sound a little harsh. But as I've been helping boutique owners and brand owners day after day after day now for several months, I'm kind of seeing the same mistakes happening across the board. So I wanted to make this podcast to just give you the three mistakes that I'm seeing over and over again that are really sales killers, like murderers. I don't want to say that, but really, truly these are things that I see happening and I'm like, okay. If we want to get to that place where we're getting daily sales or we're reaching like five to 10 K sales per month. We have got to address these mistakes that are going on in the industry. So that's what I'm going to do here today. This first one can be a real doozy. And this is probably the most common mistake. These are all three. There's a really common, but this one is just like glaringly obvious to me because. As I have students that come in and start working with me and we work closely together and I review their content and I look at what they're doing and where there may be there some gaps in their business where they can improve things and or where they're missing the mark. This one comes up time and time again. And I just feel like, Ooh. We got to discuss it. And I actually made a take top about it the other day and it blew up. So I know you all are out there doing that, so let's just quit it right here. The first mistake is not posting your product enough, or as many times as it takes to actually get sales from that product, what happens a lot of times as a new boutique owner or brand owner, or maybe you're even a vet you've been in the industry a few years, but you're kind of new to. Selling online or a content creation and how that all works. And what happens is they get their new products or their new arrivals. You feel so excited. You are just like, oh my gosh, this is so cute. I can't wait to show my customers. I'm going to make the cutest piece of content. I'm going to get all ready. I'm going to make the product look amazing. Like I'm so excited. That that at the dot, you know how that goes. You post your content. And you get crickets. No one buys. It's a total flop and you go into a major panic mode. I already know, because I used to do this too. You start thinking, oh my gosh. What's wrong with me. My inventory is horrible. I can't believe that piece of content was terrible. Everything's ugly. Everything is not up to par wise, nothing selling, blah, blah, blah. Like you just go into this tailspin. In your head as to why you didn't sell any of that specific product. But what I want you to understand and kind of like take a step back from, and maybe take a deep breath so you can really absorb this. Is that you have to post that product. Multiple times in order for someone to actually make a sale. So you can't just post a product once. I think it's a flop give up on it and then throw it to the back of the inventory pile. You have to post that product. Over and over and over again. In fact it can be seven or eight times that your customer sees a product before they decide they're going to make a purchase. So seven or eight times. And if you actually go to like the boutiques that you love, or the brands that you love, or any of your competition, that's kind of on a higher tier level that you're looking at. And you're scrolling their feeds. You will see. They post the same product over and over and over and over again. And especially if it's a product that hits meaning it's a sellout they're going to restock. And post that product restock and post that product, because if it works, you want to maximize that. So I really want to encourage you. And I know you're out there going, oh, that's me. Yep. That's what I do. I post a product once and then I don't get any sales and I give up, I want you to stop that train of thought. I want you to commit right now. You're not going to make that mistake anymore. You're going to create content. You're going to post your product time and time again. You're going to give yourself a fighting chance to actually move that inventory. Here's the next big mistake that I see a lot of boutique and brand owners making is they don't know who their ideal customer is. And this is one of the most foundational pieces to running a retail business, really any business, but especially when it comes to retail and especially when it comes to online sales, remember selling online is a whole nother beast than selling in person. So if you're going to pop up shops and you're doing great, you have a store. And in-person store brick and mortar people come in, you feel comfortable there, but then you go to jump online and you're like, what the heck is going on? Like, I have no problem selling in person, but selling online. I just can't seem to get it together. Weather. Most likely you have a root issue, which is you're not being clear on who your ideal customer is. I actually have an entire program based on ideal customer clarity, because this is so important. You cannot see consistent sales or five to 10 K months or hit any of those milestones that I know you really want. If you're not clear on your ideal customer, this has to be so specific. This has to be so glaring in your content because what happens online is there's so much competition. People's feeds are full of all kinds of stuff. So in order to get their attention and to have them stop the scroll, look at your site and shop with you. You have to talk directly to them. You have to say something, that's going to grab their attention. If you're making generic content, which just means like you're doing some try-on videos, maybe you're posting some product pictures that are like stock photos from the vendor, your kind of doing like some trending sounds that are just random because some fricking ticktock guru told you that this trending sound is going to blow up. If that's what you've been doing in your content strategy. And we'll talk about that more. That is going to be a failed Strat. Strategy on line. 2024, more than ever. You're going to have to get super duper specific in your content. You have to map out who your ideal customer is. You have to know every single thing about this person, and you have to know how to stop the scroll. So you can attract that person to your store. This is going to be the way that you crest the competition. This is going to be the way that you get sales every single day. And you wake up to that. Dean Shopify notification that we all know and love. That means you had a sale. If you want to hear that noise consistently, my friend. There is, this is a non-negotiable. You have got to get clear on your ideal customer. And knowing your ideal customer is so much more than just knowing their gender, how old they are, where they live. I'm talking about the psychographics of that person I'm talking about, what do they value? What are their beliefs? What types of things are they doing on a daily basis? How can you help them? The whole reason we have an online boutique is to sell products to people that we think will need them. Or want them, it's all about your customer's needs and your customers. Once, once you nail those two things, you will see your sales skyrocket. If you let yourself just waiver and flounder around and not get specific on targeting a niche. You can't rise to the top. You'll just be lost in a sea of boutiques and a sea of retail businesses. and I don't want that to happen to you. So we got to make sure we're getting clear on our ideal customer. We're actually in week four right now of the ideal customer clarity program. It's four weeks long. I think I need to change the name because that is a mouthful. Ideal customer clarity. Anyways, we're in week four, like I said, it's a four week program. So this week, what we're focusing on. Is applying all the insights that we've learned about our ideal customer over week one, week, two, week three, and now we're applying it into our businesses. So it's really cool. Cause we work on all kinds of things that help you really nail down your messaging, nail down your ideal customer, and then totally transformed the way that you're doing business. Everything becomes easier when you know who your ideal customer is because your decision-making is so much more obvious, so much easier. And then. That. The real fun happens. Like you start actually having fun, waking up every single day to work on your business and not waking up and going, oh my God, what am I going to do today to get sales? Because once you're clear on your ideal customer, that all falls into place, you know what to do, you know how to reach them, you know how to speak to them, you know how to get them to buy. Real quick. I know the feeling you're creating content and posting it on Tik TOK or Instagram. And you just aren't seeing consistent sales from it, or like no sales. Plus it takes you forever to make your content. And this is so frustrating because it's just a time sucker and you aren't seeing sales from it. You're not even growing your following. Uh, this was me too. And what I did to fix it was I got super fricking clear on my niche. So clear that every single time that I post content, I make sure it's exactly for my niche. My ideal customer, the person I know is going to actually add to cart and check out. If you need help figuring out your niche. I want you to check out my new program, niches to riches. In this program, you will work directly with me to hash this out. So by the end of it, you can start creating content in five minutes, max, and actually make sales from it. You'll start building a fan base of customers that buy from you again and again, and love everything you sell. This strategy is how I went from averaging like a thousand dollars in sales per week to, we just did over a thousand dollars today. And it's not even noon yet. It's how my views went from like one to 2000 views on average, on Tik TOK to 18,000 to 65,000 views in just two weeks per piece of content. I'm fricking telling you this is the most important thing you will ever do for your business and you only need to do it once. It's what I specialize in. It's what I love. If you want more info on joining us inside, just go to retail success club.com and click on niches to riches. Mistake number three, this definitely ties in with mistake. Number two, not knowing your ideal customer, but this one is poor messaging. So what messaging is, is it's the way that you speak to your customer in your marketing and in your content messaging is how you communicate with them. And quite frankly, messaging is like the heartbeat of your content. You can have all the cutest, fanciest equipment and products and. Everything. But if you don't have clear, good messaging that targets your ideal customer, you're going to miss the mark again, my friend. And I've really want you to focus on your messaging in 2024. So some examples of messaging, I'll just throw off the top of my head. So you kind of know what I'm talking about because it can kind of seem like a weird concept, like messaging. What does that even mean? Again, messaging is just simply how you're speaking to your customer in your content and in your marketing strategy. So let's say you're going to post a take talk, and you have a new arrival and you say something to the camera like, Hey, I've got some new arrivals for you from X, Y, Z boutique. Okay. That's very generic, bland messaging. But let's take a look at, let's say you're a boutique and your ideal customer is a stay at home. Mom. Who's looking for like comfortable clothes, but also she wants to feel good about herself. She wants to feel trendy. She doesn't want to feel frumpy anymore. This needs to be in your messaging. So you draw that person in because you have the products that, you know, that they're most likely to buy. So instead of saying, Hey, I'm Sam with such and such boutique. We've got some cute new arrivals for you. You would say something like. If you're a stay-at-home mom and you're looking to be comfortable every single day, but you still want to be like trendy and not frumpy. Let me show you some new arrivals. Can you see how that will stop that person right in their tracks. Can you tell how much more powerful that messaging is? I hope that example kind of makes you understand the concept of messaging a little bit more. It means getting specific. It means getting concise. It it's strategy. Every single business that is selling a crap ton online, whether it's on take talk. On Instagram, through their website, through their email marketing, whatever channels they're using, they have refined the F out of their messaging. This is the whole thing. Again, this is what we're working on right now in our ideal customer clarity program. It's so crazy. We're working on content prompts that help them become clear on their messaging. And it's so cool to see like the transformation of where the messaging is in the beginning to where it starts to turn now. You know what? I actually want to pull up one of these content prompts and read it to you. So you can think about it for you and your business. And it's, it's just a really fun exercise that it's kind of like content 1 0 1, it gets you brainstorming and you can use one prompt, multiple different ways, multiple times. So. Here's one for you to think about. I know as a blank. That's where you describe your ideal customer. It's tough to find blank. That's the product, but look what I found for you. Okay. So again, it's I know as a blank, this is where you describe the ideal customer. So it's, I know as a stay at home, mom, I know as a corporate nine to fiver, I know as a retired woman living her best life on the beach, I know as a whoever your customer is, okay, this is why getting your ideal customer clear is so important because it goes in every single thing that you do in your business. So I know as a, let's say, stay at home. Mom, it's tough to find cute trendy, comfortable clothing, but look what I found for you. Or I know as a stay-at-home mom, it's tough to find an outfit that actually goes together in the five minutes. You have to get ready, but look, what I found for you. So you can see, like, as you are. Putting the messaging in there you're getting clear, which means you're drawing in the right customer, which means you're drawing in more sales. So let's make some notes. Let's review what we've learned today. I want you to think about this as you start crafting what's going to happen for the rest of your 2024 with your marketing, with your sales and everything for your business. Keep these three mistakes in mind so you don't make them because again, these kill your online sales. So first, remember not posting your product enough. You got to post that sucker over and over and over again for you to sell it and for you to get any traction. Number two, not knowing who your ideal customer is not being clear on a specific niche that you are targeting. Remember, the riches are in the niches. That's one of my favorite sayings. It's how I've sold millions of dollars worth of product online. It is true. And I want you to remember, you got to know your ideal customer, you got to niche down. And the third mistake, poor messaging. If you have poor messaging, your content won't reach who it needs to reach. Even if you do know who your ideal customer is, and you're not including that in your messaging, your content's gonna flop. I'm sorry, it's just the way it is, it's not like it used to be where you could just dance around on camera at a viral sound. And next thing you know, you've got a million views now we're fighting for views out there. And in order to rise to the top, you have got to get specific on your messaging. Okay. So I hope this episode really helped you. I hope it's setting you up for success for 2024. I'm so excited. We're back the retail success club. Thank you so much for joining us today. And I would love if you would give us a five star review. If you're listening to this podcast, please tag me on Instagram. It's at retail success club. Share it to your stories. Tell your boutique and brand besties about it. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Ali D we'll see you next time.