As a retailer, I’m sure you’re well aware that the atmosphere in this industry is just, well, different. Your business may require more hustle than you’ve had to give in a long time (or ever!).
These three marketing mistakes I saw last year are the most important to avoid in 2024 if you are trying to grow your business.
1. Overcomplicating your offers
It’s so easy to panic when sales aren’t meeting your expectations. Maybe a launch didn’t go as planned, or you didn’t meet that sales goal you needed to make a profit.
Regardless of the situation, I’ve seen more businesses fail this year than I wish I had due to this mistake.
Owners start to feel pressure, and they panic. Instead of leaning into what IS working, they begin overcomplicating things. If your sales are suffering, adding more discounts and offers is not your best bet.
Doing this will hurt your business more than it will help.
2. Adding MORE to your business
This generally goes hand in hand with overcomplicating your offers. It’s easy to feel scared about the current retail atmosphere, but I beg you to take a minute to look at the facts before adding something new.
Adding more products, drop shipping companies, or product categories only muddies the water for your customers. If they are not buying now, adding more for them to trudge through won’t help. Your issue lies elsewhere; I’ll write about that more over the next few months.
Instead of adding something new, look at the proven history. What has worked well for you in 2023? What was your top-selling category? Take that and go deeper.
For example, if your highest sales category was dresses, how can you incorporate buying more of what sold best? What types of style videos, in-store events, or live sales can you create around the product that already works? And most importantly, how can you generate more profit margin on that product? You already know it sells well; think about how you can create more income by strategically buying and marking up.
3. Failure to stay up to date with compliance and deliverability standards
Klaviyo has already started rolling out the new requirements set forth by Yahoo and Gmail for email marketing in 2024. They’ve released an article explaining what you must do to keep your emails going to the inbox and keep your reputation great with servers.