Best Practices

When was the last time you evaluated your website? Think of your website as an employee, and then evaluate it to those same standards. This article offers six helpful tips for evaluating your website to make sure everything is running efficiently.

The first 30 seconds are crucial for making a sale. In those first moment, customers start making judgements about whether your business feels relevant, trustworthy, clear, helpful and worth any more of their time.

To track business performance, retailers should keep track of a handful of key measurements that provide an ongoing pulse of the business, identify trends and take corrective action before small issues become major problems.

In today’s retail environment, it has become remarkably easy to confuse marketing activity with marketing success. Social media engagement can certainly play a role in visibility and brand awareness, but retailers must be careful not to mistake digital applause for actual profitability. In this article, Alan Miklofsky shares how retailers can turn marketing dollars into sales instead of just social media praise.

The article tells retailers how to leverage vendor relationships correctly so you can use them to help drive traffic, improve sell-through, support margins and elevate the in-store experience.

For independent retailers, marketing often feels like a high-stakes poker game where everyone else has a bigger stack of chips. But visibility isn’t reserved for the highest bidder. In fact, some of the most effective marketing strategies cost little more than time, consistency and a bit of creativity.

A single online review can feel disproportionate. One frustrated customer posts a harsh comment, and suddenly it appears that the entire business is under indictment. This article offers tips and tricks on how retailers can earn reviews and respond positively to criticism.

Independent retailers increasingly serve three, sometimes four, generations within a single transaction. A grandmother evaluating comfort features, a parent focused on durability and price, or a teenager concerned with style and social perception can all be standing at the same counter. Marketing to this blended audience is key in order to be successful.

The modern definition of content marketing has been hijacked by trends that reward spectacle over substance. But for most retailers, especially independent and community-based businesses, the goal of content is not entertainment. Content should help customers make better decisions, feel more confident and understand why your business is worth trusting.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been part of the beverage alcohol logistics conversation for years. Predictive analytics, demand forecasting and route optimization tools are no longer novel concepts; they are increasingly expected capabilities across beer, wine and spirits distribution.