Article first published as Stop Complaining, It’s Your Fault Your Business Struggling on Technorati. For retailers the last few years have been tough, really tough. Since 2008 and the whole financial crisis, there has been a steady flow of negative news to ensure consumer confidence remained low and spending, well followed suit. It is human nature that the majority of us will wait until things are bad to reflect on what and who has caused it. For retailers, there’s a few points that they’ve been focusing on in recent times. Online retail is offering discounts that they can’t match, the big department stores are on sale 12 months of the year, government (all levels) are making things harder for them, media is beating up the economy and scaring consumers, and worst of all the shoppers are not loyal anymore (they want the cheapest price!). By all the media reports, things are dire, consumers are not spending and retail is in trouble. It really is a terrible situation and given all the effort they go to, we should all be supporting the traditional retailer during this crucial Christmas retail period. After all, these retailers have been gearing up for Christmas for months, they’ve organised to dress up their shopfronts, they’ve run instore competitions to create some excitement, they’ve consistently kept chatting with us on their Facebook page, and their customer service is impeccable. If only this was true across the board. Unfortunately, this is rare and many are just still too busy complaining. So what to do? This year is done and dusted now, there’s not much you’re going to do in the next week that will radically change your business’ performance. So we look towards 2012 with a more positive outlook and a little more self-reflection. Stop blaming others and ask yourself, your staff and some of your trusted shoppers..What can I do to make this store more appealing? What do my customers want? What has the store across the road got that I don’t? Being online does not mean you need a shopfront, the moment you start thinking like that is the moment that you say well that’s not for me, it’s too much work. Being online is about providing customers researching with the necessary information on your business and your products/services to make a decision. Being online also means getting on social media and chatting with your customers, empowering your biggest fans to talk about your business. You’ll get a sore neck if you keep looking backwards. What worked in 2005 does not mean it will work now. Don’t keep running the same promotions. The world has changed a lot in that time. Keep learning. If you get yourself in the swing of learning new things something will click one day and an opportunity will present itself to drastically improve your business. Discounting is a lazy marketing strategy. You already know that the bigger stores have better buying power and will safely discount more than you. You know that online...
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