The retail industry keeps expanding with every fleeting second. Once you have established a successful footing and the business is stable, you start wondering about different ways to grow your company, and rightly so.

Scaling can become quite tricky, though. The consequences of remaining rigid or expanding too fast can be dire for your brand. 

You have to conduct extensive research, implement fail-safe strategies, and develop flexibility for growth. 

The following ideas can help you frame the foundation of your scaling procedures and grow your retail business exponentially.

How Retailers Can Grow Their Businesses: Pro Tips

1. Set up stores at new locations

Scaling and expansion in their primal sense include opening up new outlets at various locations. This strategy makes your products or services accessible to a greater audience. 

It is the go-to idea for a successful offline expansion in the retail industry. You can cater to the preferences of the local audience while maintaining consistent services across all the stores.

2. Expand your product or service

The next strategy includes exploring your niche and relevant markets to expand your range of products or services. Your retail business can benefit from broadening the catalog. 

Effective market analysis can yield several paths that complement the main product or service you sell or another standalone product that can fit right in with your brand identity.

3. Collaborate with relevant businesses

Building on the previous strategy, you can expand your service by partnering with various businesses. Team up with an established business through acquisition or partnership. It makes scaling your company easier, especially in the retail industry.

You can also consider integrating your retail business with other businesses via vertical and horizontal integration. If you are looking to build a solid synergy, it is better to choose a horizontal one, as it allows businesses to share their expertise, resources, and capabilities, which leads to improved business performance.

Thus, join hands with a third party to save time and other resources you may otherwise need to invest while scaling. Add value to your customer journey with a fail-safe collaboration that provides access to their target market as well.

4. Venture into eCommerce

Selling your products through new channels opens an exciting opportunity to scale your business. The advancement of commerce happening through the internet makes reaching the consumer exponentially easier. 

Set up an online retail store or sell your items through the plethora of marketplaces via a micro-fulfillment center for assured growth.

Approximately 2.14 billion people shop online regularly, which makes having an online store an inevitable expansion strategy. Plan an elaborate process to explore the marketplaces for the maximum benefit of the ever-increasing popularity of eCommerce.

5. Adopt social selling

In addition to the conventional operations, build a strong presence on social media platforms. This gives way to utilize social selling to scale your retail business. 78% of business owners engaging in social selling have been observed to outperform their competitors.

Create a business account on the specific social media platforms that your target audience uses. This will help you engage with the existing customers and keep them coming back to your brand. 

Alongside this, you will find the majority of your leads through social media accounts that will further strengthen your bottom line.

6. Add pop-up shops

If you don’t want to go all the way and set up a new store at another location, a pop-up shop provides the perfect alternative.

 You can organize numerous pop-up events that open your business up to a broader audience. It can be a seasonal event, or you can host an exhibition for multiple retail brands. 

Pop-up shops can help you build excitement around your retail business and generate buzz that attracts the target audience.

7. Leverage influencer’s engagement

The rise of influencer marketing demonstrates the influence of such practices and the extent of their effectiveness. The sales skyrocket when you conduct appropriate research and partner with the most suitable influencers. 

82% of the population makes purchasing decisions based on recommendations of a micro-influencer. So you can etch out your scaling strategies around such long-term partnerships for substantial growth.

8. Enhance the shopping experience

Improving the customer experience is a basic necessity for every successful business. You can run a brick-and-mortar store, an eCommerce platform, or operate on both; you have to enhance every step of your customer’s journey. Microsoft Dynamics CRM can help you achieve this by providing powerful tools to streamline and personalize interactions, ensuring you meet your customers’ needs effectively.

This can be done with minor adjustments in your customer service and support teams at the store, ensuring a smooth website online, or considering the improvements suggested via customer feedback. The results will demonstrate better task management and scale your brand effectively.

You can even cut down on customer behaviors associated with poor delivery if your items arrive on time and without damage.

9. Offer various payment options

The variety of payment options leads to greater convenience for customers. This reduces the cart abandonment rate and helps your business develop a better rapport with your consumers. 

For example, Gen Z and millennials prefer using cards, mobile-based payment options, and the best bitcoin wallets for transactions. If you want to scale your business to cater to audiences from these spheres, it’s best to offer them multiple payment options while checking out from your store.

10. Use automation technology

You can work on scaling your business and brewing new ideas by seeking help from automation technologies. Using them for your day-to-day tasks can free up a lot of your time and resources, which can be a further dedication to scaling strategies.

Several processes can be automated in an easy and affordable manner. 

For example, you can:

• Automate the generation of sales and products reports
• Use scheduling apps for social media posts
• Easily manage databases and email lists for marketing
• Target your desired audience and tailor their marketing efforts with market segmentation

Conclusion

Expanding your business is surely a thrilling undertaking. You can make a prominent mark in the retail industry if you do the scaling correctly. 

It’s always better to sync your people, processes, and technologies to avoid any roadblocks on your expansion journey. 

Contact our professional marketing agency to help you achieve that in the most organized and efficient manner!