It’s an exciting time to be a retailer. Retail sales hit a record high of $6 trillion in 2018,
surpassing even pre-recession highs. Consumers have money to spend and more ways to do so than ever—including using their mobile device to make purchases on the go.
There’s a lot of opportunity to excel within this industry right now. But there are still the age-old challenges of slim margins and tons of competition. It’s important to keep uncovering new revenue streams rather than falling back on how your company has always done things. How? By using sales analytics to pull useful insights from within data.
Empower Employees to Access Data Insights
Retail companies today have no shortage of stored data. But there’s still the issue of getting it into the hands of the people throughout the organization who can use it, and in an accessible format.
Sales analytics are trending toward self-service in response to this challenge. Sales analytics platforms like ThoughtSpot allow users to query data directly, even if they have no background in data. This alleviates the need to outsource report requests to a designated IT or data team, meaning teams like marketing, merchandising, branding, store operations, logistics, etc. can get answers quickly.
Just as important as which revenue streams you uncover is how you do it. Better analytics means better insights, which fuel better business outcomes like higher profit margins.
Take Advantage of Omnichannel Flexibility
Your products might be flying off the shelves in real life, but your ecommerce sales figures leave something to be desired. Or, perhaps the ecommerce side of your business is a boon while physical sales leave something to be desired. If your store is online only, you might notice a discrepancy between website sales and app or social sales. The point here is that there’s always something you can do to streamline your approach to omnichannel sales.
Using retail analytics is the quickest way to figure out how your various channels are performing—and to identify hiccups customers are encountering as they move between them.
Segment Customers, Then Solve Pain Points
By now, you have a pretty solid understanding of your customer base—who they are and what they like. The good news is that you can absolutely tap into new revenue streams without having to target an entire new subset of customers. Instead of hunting for brand new buyers, work on segmenting your current customer base even more effectively and identifying their pain points. Then work to solve them.
In other words, ask yourself: What else can our business do for customers? Sure, you currently offer [Product Type A] successfully. But it’s highly likely there’s an opportunity for your company to provide [Product Type B] or [Product Type C], too.
One CEO and Inc. contributor points out how Amazon began as an online book store, then expanded. This ecommerce giant tapped into new revenue streams as it went, including retail grocery, web services and more. Some of its new revenue streams came about to service the company’s existing customer base; others struck out into totally new territory.
Amazon capitalized on the fact that their customers turn to them for convenience and speed. Then they applied this business model to grocery shopping, which has traditionally been an inconvenient task for many. By addressing this pain point for their existing customer base, they found a way to expand their offerings in a profitable way.
Turn to data analytics to deeply understand your customers and their experiences—both positive and negative. Use this knowledge as a jumping-off point for building upon your existing revenue streams. Figure out what your customers are missing then be the company to provide it.
Want to uncover new revenue streams? Start by optimizing how your company handles sales analytics.
