So many reasons small business retailers choose POS software from Tower Systems
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Shops near me: Tower Systems helps local retailers attract people looking for local shops
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FindIt.com.au, the free marketplace from Tower Systems, shines a light on amazing local, independent retailers. We built FindIt as a free platform for our local retail business community that uses our POS software. They have free access to FindIt for listing what they have in their shops. As we note at the FindIt website:
FindIt is a marketplace platform created by Tower Systems for the thousands of local small business retailers using its POS software.
It’s a place where you can find a broad range of items from many different retailers, all local, all keen to serve local shoppers.
Some retailers will use FindIt to list products that they sell in-store while others will use FindIt to sell directly online.
What’s unique about FindIt is that it only lists products from local retailers, small business retailers, and it shows products in-stock. You can be confident as to availability.
FindIt is new and as such we will learn over time, and adjust accordingly.
Thank you for stopping by.
Think of FindIt as a treasure chest overflowing with goodies from independent retailers across Australia. It’s a marketplace offering anything and everything.
For the Shopper:
- Support Local! FindIt makes it easy to find and support businesses in your neighbourhood. You’ll be pumpin’ money back into your community and helpin’ it thrive.
- Discover Unique Finds! Unearth a world of special products you won’t find on the big online stores. From handcrafted jewellery to locally-grown produce, there’s somethin’ for everyone on FindIt.
- Know who you’re buying from! FindIt gives you the details on each shop, including their location and contact details.
For Local Retailers:
- Free to join! If you use Tower Systems POS software, you can sign up for FindIt at no cost. This saves you the hassle (and expense) of setting up your own online store if you want, making it easier to compete in the digital world.
- Reach new customers! FindIt exposes your products to a wider audience of people who are looking to shop local.
- Sell smarter, not harder! The platform works seamlessly with Tower Systems POS, makin’ sales a breeze and saving time on admin.
FindIt’s a win-win for everyone!
You get fantastic local products, and retailers gain a platform to showcase their goodies and reach new customers. It’s a brilliant initiative that strengthens Aussie communities and supports the backbone of our commerce – our amazing independent retailers.
Gettin’ your product info (text and images) onto FindIt is a walk in the park thanks to the Tower Systems POS software integration. Tower even helps retailers with advice, training, and support to get connected.
The ultimate goal of FindIt is to make it easy for local to shop locally, to get more people like you walking through the front doors of our fantastic local shops!
This is an exclusive marketing benefit provided by Tower Systems for its local retail business community.
This is us
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Grateful to serve local
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TikTok is helping drive terrific traffic.
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We have a skilled team working in our shops, including the brilliant person behind out TikTok.
Your local Aussie newsagency is likely not the business you remember
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Many Aussies think of the local Aussie newsagency as a papers, magazines lotteries and car shop, around the corner, close, a bit dark, run by someone old, carrying a bit of everything, expensive for some things, probably out of date for today.
That’s the narrative pitched in too many stories. It’s out of date, many years out of date.
The local Aussie newsagency, the one serving where you live, is most likely not like that old narrative. It’s changed.
We made this video Tuesday for one of our own newsagency shops, to promote it on social media as well as YouTube. Below we explain how we made the video and, more important, why we made the video.
We took the photos on my iPhone and used promo.com to assemble these, add text and lay music underneath. All up it took less than 10 minutes. I share these details to illustrate how easy it is for anyone to make a video like this.
Now, the why.
This video is important as it is us pitching a narrative for this shop. For decades, the narrative of the local Aussie newsagency has been controlled by others. Today, in 2023, the narrative about our shops is rooted in decades ago. It is out of date. It challenges our relevance. It does not help us.
We wanted to have a crack at recasting the narrative for this one shop in a suburban Westfield centre in the bayside area of Melbourne. While for sure we are biased, we think it’s a good video that does re-cast the narrative for this newsagency, while at the same time making a statement about the channel, calling for others to see us differently and not as others so wrongly and ignorantly pitch us.
We’d love to see more newsagents do this, make videos and other social media content that pitches our businesses with a fresh and relevant to 2023 narrative. Points about lottery jackpots and the major seasons are predictable, expected. The more we play outside of what is expected the better for us, the more we are likely to attract new shoppers to our businesses.
As we noted above, this video took less than 10 minutes all up. There are plenty of platforms you can use to make videos just like this one. While we pay a commercial licence for promo.com, there are others out there that are free.
As for the products we chose to highlight, plenty are made in Australia. In fact, half the air time of the video features Australian made, small business sourced, products.
We want to call out the final frame. This features a pair of colourful stud earrings on a card that says you inspire me. That is a very deliberate choice to pitch that message at the close of the video.
Hopefully all this background is helpful enough that other newsagents create content to recast the narrative of not only their newsagency businesses but the channel more broadly.
But back to the video. In 24 hours it passed 20,000 full views thanks to a nudge through the YouTube ad platform. Tonight, Friday night, it’s at 37,000 full views. That’s 37,000 people in the area of Melbourne I targeted who watched the video in maybe the first newsagency pitch they had seen in years.
We appreciate it’s not call to action advertising. It’s not intended to be. As we wrote above, this is about the narrative relating to the Aussie newsagency.
Here’s a footnote about why we’re writing about this here at a blog for our POS software company.
Tower Systems is not your average POS software company. This video speaks in a small way to that, it shows us engaged beyond the software, in service of one of the local small business retail channels in which we serve.
The advice in this post could relate to any of the specialty retail channel s in which we serve.
Christmas marketing tips for local small business retailers
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Yeah, it’s odd for a POS software company to offer Christmas marketing tips to retailers because … we are tech people and not retailers. That may be true for some.
Tower Systems has owned and run retail businesses since 1996.
We are not your usual POS software company. We actively share marketing tips with our customers. Here are some Christmas marketing tips for retailers that we hope some find useful, or at least inspiring to you to develop your own.
Today, we offer low cost and no cost Christmas marketing tips for retailers ideas to help create a different Christmas experience in your business.
- Sell cards, wrapping paper and tape. These items work in every kind of shop.
- Make it easy. People often talk about how hard Christmas is. Be the local business that makes it easy. The ways to do this are with easy Lay-By, free wrapping, better shop floor help, guide buying advice or tips on perfect gifts no one else will think of. Consider making Christmas easy as being a key part of your messaging.
- Host a party. To preview Christmas, say thank you to shoppers and support a local cause. Do it when the shop is closed. Limit numbers. have some drinks and food. Have fun. Celebrate.
- Use video. To promote products on social media.
- Offer impulse purchase of often forgotten lines. At the counter, with newspapers, next to weekly magazines.
- Offer help. For kids and others who ,may find choosing a card or writing a card difficult.
- Visit nursing homes. With some gifts and cards for easy shopping.
- Be thrilled people are in your shop. Your personal smile or greeting is something they may not see in a big business where employees are less invested in each shopper and where the owner is usually thousands of kilometers away.
- Make the giving easy. If people purchase items from you to send somewhere else. Offer a one-stop shop. Save them the trip to the post office.
- Make the shop less about Christmas. Consider pulling back on the Christmas visual noise. Go for something simple, muted, respecting the season but making a calm statement. Consider declaring the shop a Christmas carol free zone – not because you hate carols but because you want to help customers take a break.
- Help people rest and recharge. Create a Christmas shopping rest and recovery zone. Offer free tea, coffee, water and something to eat. Encourage people to take a break in your shop – without any obligation for them to spend money with you.
- Let your customers help each other. Setup a whiteboard or sheets of butcher’s paper, yes keep it simple. Get customers to write gift suggestions under different age/gender groups. For example: Girls 18 – 25, Boys 55+. Encourage your customers to help each other through their suggestions.
- Make price comparison difficult. If you sell items people are likely to price compare with other businesses, package them so price comparison is not easy. Put items into a hamper as a perfect Boy 8 to 12 bundle for example. Or offer the item with pre packages services if appropriate for an item.
- Less is more. The stack em high watch em fly mantra can be wrong. Indeed, it is often wrong in retail. Shoppers can be store blind because a shop is too full or a display is too busy. Consider creating simpler less cluttered displays and window promotions. Draw attention to what you want people to see by promoting that one thing. Every time someone asks if you have something that you think through should be able to find easily – take it as a challenge for you to address rather than a commentary on a facility of the customer.
- Change. Christmas season in your shop should evolve. Major change weekly is vital for people to see what you have that they could buy.
- Be socially engaged. On Facebook, Instagram, twitter and elsewhere, be the calm voice, the person people enjoy reading or seeing photos from. Provide entertainment this Christmas rather than the usual retailer shrill of come and shop here!
- Be community minded. Choose a local charity or community group to support through Christmas. Consider: a change collection tin at the counter; a themed Christmas window display; promotion on your social media pages; a donation to their work; a collection point for donations from customers.
- Facilitate sharing stories. Find space in your shop for customers to share their Christmas stories. It could be a story wall inside or in front of the shop. This initiative encourages storytelling by locals and better connects the business with the community.
- Award a prize at a local school. Fund a year-end prize at a local school. Attend a school assembly to award the prize. Work with the school leadership on a prize appropriate to your business.
- VIP preview. Host a VIP shopper preview night when you show off your Christmas ranges ahead of being available to the general shoppers. Respect and reward your local shoppers with deals and the opportunity to preview ahead of others.
- Leverage Christmas traffic. Encourage the Christmas shopper traffic surge in after Christmas. Give them a reason to come back. A coupon promotion or a discount voucher on receipts could be the enticement to get shoppers back in-store. Note: the Tower POS software produces discount vouchers to rules you establish.
- Become a gallery. Work with a school, kindergarten, community group or retirement village to bring in local art for people to come and see through Christmas. A small space commitment can drive traffic from family and friends of those with art on show.
- Dress the shop. Fully embrace Christmas. Create a Christmas experience such that shoppers know they have stepped into somewhere special this Christmas. Go for more than some tinsel and a tree. Fully embrace the opportunity.
- Make your shop smell like Christmas.
- Send cards. Send Christmas cards early in the season to suppliers, key customers and local community groups. This connects you with Christmas. Invite all team members to sign each card.
- Host a Christmas party. For shops nearby. You are all in the season together – let your hear down before things get crazy.
- Ensure you have gifts targeted at occasions. For example: Kris Kringle, by price point and by recipient. Make it easy for people to know what they could give.
- Stocking stuffers. At your counter always have one or two stocking stuffers for impulse purchase.
- Offer gift vouchers – for someone to give when they are not sure what to give.
- Be local. Ensure you have a selection of locally sourced products available for purchase. Make it clear in-store that these products are sourced locally.
- Tell stories. On your Facebook page, talk about what is important to you at Christmas. Personalise the season and deepen the connection with those who could shop with you.
- Offer a free gift. Bulk purchase an item to offer those who spend above a set amount. For example, spend $65 and receive XX where XX may have cost $5.00 but could have a perceived value of $20.00.
- Keep it fresh. Every week make significant change to your Christmas displays and promotions to keep your offer fresh.
- Share Christmas recipes. Each week for, say, four weeks, give customers a family Christmas recipe. This personalises Christmas in your business, creates a talking point and makes shopping with you different to your bigger competitors.
- Free wrapping. Sure, many retailers offer this. Make your offer better, more creative and more appreciated.
- This is essential in any business. Manage it through your computer system with strict rules.
- Work the floor. Increase time on the shop floor. Be present to manage shopper flow and to facilitate purchases.
- Christmas is crazy busy I most retail situations. Give yourself and your team members sufficient time to recharge so the smile greeting shoppers is heartfelt.
- Keep a secret. If yours is a business selling gifts a partner may purchase for their loved-one, create some mystery with a closed off display for the shopper to see the products.
- Free assembly. If you sell items that require assembly. Offer to do this for free.
- Free delivery. Offer free Christmas Eve delivery for items purchased for kids for Christmas.
- Sell training. Leverage the specialist knowledge you have in your business by selling as gifts places at classes you run sharing your expertise.
- Hold back. Don’t go out with everything you have for Christmas all at once. Plan the season to show off what you have as the season unfolds. This allows you multiple launches.
- Share a taste. Regardless if your type of business, bake a family recipe of Christmas cake, Christmas pudding or Christmas biscuits and offer tastings to shoppers on select days. This personalises the experience in your shop.
- Offer hampers. Package several items together and offer them as a hamper. Time-poor shoppers could appreciate you doing this work for them. We have seen this work in many different retail situations.
- Buy X get Y. Encourage people to spend more with a volume based deal. Pitched right, this could get customers purchasing items for several family members in order to get the price offer you have. Use your technology to manage this.
Christmas is the perfect time to plan for next year. It is the time to do everything possible to leverage bonus Christmas traffic to benefit your business through next year.
Feel free to share these Christmas marketing tips with others.
POS software co. Tower Systems launches free online marketplace for local indie retailers
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Tower Systems has launched www.findit.com.au, a free marketplace for local indie retailers, like jewellers, bike shops, toy shops, pet shops, garden centres and newsagents. Listing products on FindIt is free for Tower Systems customers – and that;s 3,000+ local small business retailers.
The goal for FindIt is to help customers looking online for items local retailers sell, to drive traffic to their local shop.
“We have built FindIt because of the growing importance of being online to in-store retail, and because some retailers are challenged with creating and running their own website. This is a no cost / low cost solution to help you be found online”, commented Mark Fletcher, CEO of Tower.
Retailers can choose to sell through FindIt, or just list what they have available in-store. If they do sell through FindIt, there is a fee of 10%. This covers Tower for credit card fees and Afterpay fees once that is live. It also covers us for credit card fraud claims. Retailers choose whether to sell through FindIt or not. Again, to list products and have your shop found is free
The FindIt website is hosted on a large secure and fast server in a remote data (offsite in Australia) centre. The Tower team is also doing the backend SEO work to raise the Google profile.
Customers will land on the website from Google. As the ranking of the site increases, products on FindIt will list in Google results. Customers will be able to add items from multiple retailers to a FindIt basket in a transaction.
The FindIt website confirms the order to the customer and provides the retailer with a recipient created tax invoice. Retailers will be able to go to their FindIt vendor panel to download a picking slip.
Retailers choose the price of what they sell – it can be their web price or their retail price. In the Tower Systems POS software, retailers choose whether a product is listed online.
The image for a product will be the first image loaded for a product. If a retailer has a better image than the first one loaded by another retailer, it would take a manual process to change it, a process not currently in place. The same applies to descriptions.
The tech connects products by barcode. If a retailer generates their own barcode for an item already on FindIt, it will treat that product as a new item.
The price will be the retailer’s price – yes, multiple retailers on FindIt could result in different prices for the same item.
The product description is the key. Our advice on this is to try and think about what someone is likely to type into Google.
Retailers will have the option to be either freight free or charge. If a retailer has product dimensions and have selected to charge freight, the Australia Post plug-in we have will calculate a freight charge. Retailers will also have an option, on their vendor page in FindIt to set a flat freight charge if you wish.
Retailers can connect with FindIt by emailing orders@findit.com.au.
New window bling
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We have added some visual bling to some windows at our Hawthorn, Victoria, office.
POS software helps small business retailers with Christmas in July
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Christmas in July is a terrific retail tradition in Australia. It is an excellent opportunity to clear stock, boost foot traffic and reset the shop floor of any retail situation.
Using our POS software retailers can easily manage the Christmas in July. In particular, our POS software can help with:
- Identifying what inventory you can pitch in Christmas in July to quit stock.
- What sold at this time last year, and the year before.
- Bundling items to given them a fresh look.
- Managing the pricing offer between nominated date and time periods.
- At the register pitching up-sell opportunities from the Christmas in July campaign.
- Tracking the success of the campaign.
Christmas in July is a wonderful opportunity in almost any retail setting. We say this based on our experience working with a broad variety of specialty retailers. The key is to have a strong offer, well situated, pitched well, understood of all team members and targeted to sell what you need to sell. That’s the key here – the commercial outcome for your retail business.
Here at our POS software company we can help you make the most of the Christmas in July opportunity.
Here is a refreshed list of tips for making Christmas in July a success.
- Run the Christmas in July campaign over no more than two weeks in July. One week could be enough.
- Choose dates which are away from any other promotion – it works best with little competition.
- Get all team members engaged.
- Set aside spoke front of store, in their face.
- Dress the team and the store to suit the Christmas theme.
- Display any spare Christmas stock from last year.
- Play Christmas music.
- Choose a day for an extra special celebration and make this an all-out focus.
- Have a competition for the kids around the theme.
- Create a giant Christmas stocking which one lucky customer can win.
- Use the event to discount any slow moving items. It its a perfect opportunity to quit stock.
- Promote on social media.
Christmas in July is an excellent opportunity to get suppliers on board. Maybe they could provide products for you to give away as gifts – I.E. every shopper gets spending over $10 a ‘Christmas’ gift. Suppliers could use your promotion as an ideal time for trialling products and getting your customers engaged.
Marketing tips for small business retailers
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Here at Tower Systems, through our work with our specialsist retail POS software, we get to see many different types and sizes of retail businesses. we are grateful for the insights they share and the inspiration they provide.
We have put together this collection of local small business retail every day marketing tips. These are tips that could work in almost any business situation. We hope you find it useful.
- Always unpack and price products on the shop floor and not in the back room or outside of shopper view.
- Always have a value-proposition offer just inside the entrance to the business. This should be a double-sided offer, one they see as they enter and as they leave. Ensure it is:
- Easily understood.
- Easily purchased.
- Broadly appealing.
- Something people will talk about.
- Fun, ideally.
- Always have an appealing impulse purchase offer at the counter. Change this weekly. Use the opportunity to learn more about what your customers will purchase on impulse.
- Always know your top selling items in the store and always place products next to the top selling item thoughtfully, to leverage the eyeballs looking for and at the top selling product.
- Run a generous loyalty program where the value is understood. This probably means not using points, because points have a questionable value thanks to the trashing of loyalty programs by big retailers.
- Create stunning window displays people would not expect to see in your type of business.
- Offer multi-buy opportunities unlocking savings for people purchasing more than would be usual in a single visit.
- Be brief in talking to customers about your products on social media: a single product per post. Two sentences. Short sentences. Make the post appealing beyond you trying to promote your business. Entertain them.
- Send customers a card for special occasions, a personal card to reinforce the personal relationship you have with them.
- Change the front two metres of your shop weekly, keep it fresh for your customers and your staff.
Our goal with this list is to give you ideas you can use right away as well as ideas that will get you thinking of your own ideas.
Go for it. Remember, if you do next week what you did this week you cannot expect any growth. Growth only comes from change.
Retail marketing tips for Easter 2021
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Easter is what each store makes of it in retail. Each retailer decides through their engagement whether this is a big or not so big season.
Our advice, based on working with retailers across a diversity of business settings, is don’t get caught up in tradition, think about easter 2021 as one of connection. This can broaden your focus and provide a more useful pathway to sales success.
Here are some ideas to get you thinking what easter 2021 could be in your retail business…
- Have fun. No matter what you do, make sure it involves fun, active fun.
- Promote connection. Easter is a good this for people to connect with people nearby and far away. help them do that.
- Do good. Collect for something during the season. Given the animal theme of so much Easter product, maybe a local animal shelter.
- Have fun give rabbits a discount on a set day or days. Give a doubt to everyone who presents as a rabbit. Promote it widely – get the local paper in for a photo. Make the discount worth it for them dressing up.
- Invite a wall of stories. If you have a wall available, cover it with paper and invite your customers to write or draw what Easter means to them. this makes the season more interactive.
- Make a giant papier-mâché egg with things you sell (old newspapers, coloured paper, paint). Go big, I mean really big. Taller than a person. Let the kids paint it. Make it a local thing for people to come see.
- Have an Easter Egg hunt for over 70s. Egg hunts are usually for kids but those over 70 will have a different recollection of the season from when they were kids. Cater to them with a hunt in your shop for tasty eggs.
- Respect the season. Easter means different things to different people. Respect this outside of the fun you may have. Be sure about your greeting and that it is appropriate. Maybe include a nice message on your receipts.
Easter is considered by many in retail to be a small season. I see it as full of opportunity and primed for fun in the newsagency. Chase year on year growth.
easter 2021 is an opportunity to guide connection. Our advice is be part of that opportunity.
Aussie POS software helps local shops nurture local tourism
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With local tourism relying on local tourism while the international border remains effectively closed, POS software from Tower Systems is helping local businesses promote local tourism opportunities.
Embedded in the Australian POS software are facilities through which local tourist locations and opportunities can be pitched without additional labour investment from the business for each pitch.
This smart POS software makes it easy for regional and rural businesses to shine a light on tourism opportunities, to feature local sights, local things visitors to an area should do.
Fishing and outdoors businesses can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software to help people visiting an area to have a more successful fishing experience.
Bike shops can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software to promote local riding tracks and cyclist destinations worth visiting.
Garden centres can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software to feature local gardens of note and bush trails sure to excite a gardener.
Pet shops can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software to highlight local pet locations where they can date the dog for a play or otherwise enjoy what the local area has to offer.
Produce and farm supply businesses can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software highlight local crop and related information to encourage a better yield.
Other local businesses can use these local tourism marketing facilities in the POS software to encourage the visiting of local tourist destinations in a structured way to help local tourist operators and thereby more broadly help the local town.
These facilities in our POS software are loved by our customers as they make it easy for them to boost their community connection, easy to show their community support. They help better integrate the business with the local community and tourism opportunities the local community has to offer.
This is good for business and good for the community.
With so many of our POS software customers in regional and rural Australia, these facilities made sense when we first offered them years ago.
Tower Systems is grateful to help regional and rural retailers to support their local communities.
Black Friday sales for retailers using POS software
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Embedded in the Tower Systems POS software are smart tools for leveraging Black Friday sales opportunities and more. These are tools that have multiple levers, multiple opportunities for retailers with which to compete with online retailers and big businesses.
Black Friday sales can be won by being smart and engaged, going beyond the usual straight discount. There is where the POS software from Tower Systems can help small business retailers differentiate.
Thanks to the seamless Shopify link, selling online to win Black Friday sales is achievable too with minimal business investment.
With the Black Friday sales a few days away, Tower systems has been busy offering advice and help to small business retailers, to help them make the most of the opportunity in 2020. We have been doing this based on experience in past years and as a result of our work across plenty of retail channels in physical stores using our POS software as well as online.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday and now key selling opportunities for retailers and our job as a POS software company is to offer our retail business partners opportunities to leverage these opportunities as much as they are able in-store and online.
Our Black Friday sales opportunities include bundling, BOGO offers, hampers, straight discounts, bonus product offers, post sales discounts and more. There are plenty of opportunities for helping small business retailers to have a terrific Black Friday opportunity this year.
It is easy for small business retailers to say Black Friday is not for me. We disagree, there are many opportunities that we see. It takes planning and engagement and this is where the options available ion our POS software come to play to help drive sales outcomes.
From our help desk team members to our marketing team to our leadership team, we are able to help small business retailers to win terrific business in Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Our goal is to help many retailers new to Black Friday to have a terrific experience.
Black Friday is a good example of how we help beyond our POS software by itself. We have in the software tools that help achieve this. We back this with advice and support. We do this from the context of our own retail business ownership and management experience – reaching beyond what’s traditional for a software company.
46 Christmas marketing tips for small business retailers
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Yeah, it’s odd for a POS software company to offer Christmas marketing tips to retailers because … we are tech people and not retailers. That may be true for some.
Tower Systems has owned and run retail businesses since 1996.
We are not your usual POS software company. We actively share marketing tips with our customers. Here are some Christmas marketing tips for retailers that we hope some find useful, or at least inspiring to you to develop your own.
We offer you 46 low cost and no cost Christmas marketing tips for retailers ideas to help create a different Christmas experience in your business.
- Always:
- Have tape with wrapping paper.
- Have wrapping paper with cards, at the counter and with magazines.
- Have Christmas bags at the counter.
- Have tape at the counter.
- Pitch easy to purchase ready to go hampers close to the counter.
- Keep displays fresh.
- Run your loyalty programs through Christmas – to bring them back.
- Make it easy. People often talk about how hard Christmas is. Be the local business that makes it easy. The ways to do this are with easy Lay-By, free wrapping, better shop floor help, guide buying advice or tips on perfect gifts no one else will think of. Consider making Christmas easy as being a key part of your messaging.
- Host a simple party. To preview Christmas, say thank you to shoppers and support a local cause. Do it when the shop is closed. Limit numbers. have some drinks and food. Have fun. Celebrate.
- Use video. To promote products on social media.
- Offer impulse purchase of often forgotten lines. At the counter, with newspapers, next to weekly magazines.
- Offer help. For kids and others who ,may find choosing a card or writing a card difficult.
- Visit nursing homes. With some gifts and cards for easy shopping.
- Be thrilled people are in your shop. Your personal smile or greeting is something they may not see in a big business where employees are less invested in each shopper and where the owner is usually thousands of kilometers away.
- Make the giving easy. If people purchase items from you to send somewhere else. Offer a one-stop shop. Save them the trip to the post office.
- Make the shop less about Christmas. Consider pulling back on the Christmas visual noise. Go for something simple, muted, respecting the season but making a calm statement. Consider declaring the shop a Christmas carol free zone – not because you hate carols but because you want to help customers take a break.
- Help people rest and recharge. Create a Christmas shopping rest and recovery zone. Offer free tea, coffee, water and something to eat. Encourage people to take a break in your shop – without any obligation for them to spend money with you.
- Let your customers help each other. Setup a whiteboard or sheets of butcher’s paper, yes keep it simple. Get customers to write gift suggestions under different age/gender groups. For example: Girls 18 – 25, Boys 55+. Encourage your customers to help each other through their suggestions.
- Make price comparison difficult. If you sell items people are likely to price compare with other businesses, package them so price comparison is not easy. Put items into a hamper as a perfect Boy 8 to 12 bundle for example. Or offer the item with pre packages services if appropriate for an item.
- Less is more. The stack em high watch em fly mantra can be wrong. Indeed, it is often wrong in retail. Shoppers can be store blind because a shop is too full or a display is too busy. Consider creating simpler less cluttered displays and window promotions. Draw attention to what you want people to see by promoting that one thing. Every time someone asks if you have something that you think through should be able to find easily – take it as a challenge for you to address rather than a commentary on a facility of the customer.
- Change. Christmas season in your shop should evolve. Major change weekly is vital for people to see what you have that they could buy.
- Be socially engaged. On Facebook, Instagram, twitter and elsewhere, be the calm voice, the person people enjoy reading or seeing photos from. Provide entertainment this Christmas rather than the usual retailer shrill of come and shop here!
- Be community minded. Choose a local charity or community group to support through Christmas. Consider: a change collection tin at the counter; a themed Christmas window display; promotion on your social media pages; a donation to their work; a collection point for donations from customers.
- Facilitate sharing stories. Find space in your shop for customers to share their Christmas stories. It could be a story wall inside or in front of the shop. This initiative encourages storytelling by locals and better connects the business with the community.
- Award a prize at a local school. Fund a year-end prize at a local school. Attend a school assembly to award the prize. Work with the school leadership on a prize appropriate to your business.
- VIP preview. Host a VIP shopper preview night when you show off your Christmas ranges ahead of being available to the general shoppers. Respect and reward your local shoppers with deals and the opportunity to preview ahead of others.
- Leverage Christmas traffic. Encourage the Christmas shopper traffic surge in after Christmas. Give them a reason to come back. A coupon promotion or a discount voucher on receipts could be the enticement to get shoppers back in-store. Note: the Tower POS software produces discount vouchers to rules you establish.
- Become a gallery. Work with a school, kindergarten, community group or retirement village to bring in local art for people to come and see through Christmas. A small space commitment can drive traffic from family and friends of those with art on show.
- Dress the shop. Fully embrace Christmas. Create a Christmas experience such that shoppers know they have stepped into somewhere special this Christmas. Go for more than some tinsel and a tree. Fully embrace the opportunity.
- Make your shop smell like Christmas.
- Send cards. Send Christmas cards early in the season to suppliers, key customers and local community groups. This connects you with Christmas. Invite all team members to sign each card.
- Host a Christmas party. For shops nearby. You are all in the season together – let your hear down before things get crazy.
- Ensure you have gifts targeted at occasions. For example: Kris Kringle, by price point and by recipient. Make it easy for people to know what they could give.
- Stocking stuffers. At your counter always have one or two stocking stuffers for impulse purchase.
- Offer gift vouchers – for someone to give when they are not sure what to give.
- Be local. Ensure you have a selection of locally sourced products available for purchase. Make it clear in-store that these products are sourced locally.
- Tell stories. On your Facebook page, talk about what is important to you at Christmas. Personalise the season and deepen the connection with those who could shop with you.
- Offer a free gift. Bulk purchase an item to offer those who spend above a set amount. For example, spend $65 and receive XX where XX may have cost $5.00 but could have a perceived value of $20.00.
- Keep it fresh. Every week make significant change to your Christmas displays and promotions to keep your offer fresh.
- Share Christmas recipes. Each week for, say, four weeks, give customers a family Christmas recipe. This personalises Christmas in your business, creates a talking point and makes shopping with you different to your bigger competitors.
- Free wrapping. Sure, many retailers offer this. Make your offer better, more creative and more appreciated.
- This is essential in any business. Manage it through your computer system with strict rules.
- Work the floor. Increase time on the shop floor. Be present to manage shopper flow and to facilitate purchases.
- Christmas is crazy busy I most retail situations. Give yourself and your team members sufficient time to recharge so the smile greeting shoppers is heartfelt.
- Keep a secret. If yours is a business selling gifts a partner may purchase for their loved-one, create some mystery with a closed off display for the shopper to see the products.
- Free assembly. If you sell items that require assembly. Offer to do this for free.
- Free delivery. Offer free Christmas Eve delivery for items purchased for kids for Christmas.
- Sell training. Leverage the specialist knowledge you have in your business by selling as gifts places at classes you run sharing your expertise.
- Hold back. Don’t go out with everything you have for Christmas all at once. Plan the season to show off what you have as the season unfolds. This allows you multiple launches.
- Share a taste. Regardless if your type of business, bake a family recipe of Christmas cake, Christmas pudding or Christmas biscuits and offer tastings to shoppers on select days. This personalises the experience in your shop.
- Offer hampers. Package several items together and offer them as a hamper. Time-poor shoppers could appreciate you doing this work for them. We have seen this work in many different retail situations.
- Buy X get Y. Encourage people to spend more with a volume based deal. Pitched right, this could get customers purchasing items for several family members in order to get the price offer you have. Use your technology to manage this.
Christmas is the perfect time to plan for next year. It is the time to do everything possible to leverage bonus Christmas traffic to benefit your business through next year.
Feel free to share these Christmas marketing tips with others.
Free socials to help small business retailers pitch good habits
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We help our small business POS software customers with free social media content for appreciation and behavioural encouragement. Here are some of our new social media posts made available to Tower Systems customers:
Thanks to our creative in-house marketing team, plenty of social media content collateral is available to help customers of Tower Systems promote their businesses.
3 shop local community connection and marketing tips for small business retailers
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2020 is the year of shop local with a surge in people shopping locally. In our work with 3,500+ small business retailers, we have seen a surge in sales, both in -store sales and online sales with small business retailers.
It is wonderful to see, this authentic support for shop local in 2020.
Today, we share some tips for small business retailers on how to maximise the shop local opportunity, marketing advice on how to make shop local work better for you. These are marketing tips you can use right away without spending any money in most cases.
- What makes your business local? Know this and you can know much more about your message and how you can leverage it. For many retailers, their local connections are a point of difference. usually, what makes your business local is local knowledge. If this is you, serve this knowledge through touchpoint in your POS software. It is easy to encode local knowledge is related to what you sell and auto-serve this through customer purchases.
- Connect with the local community. Offer community groups fund-raining opportunities when your members choose your local business over other local businesses. It’s easy to manage through your POS software, to track the purchases by group members, given them a benefit and gift the community group itself a benefit in appreciation for their recommendation. This can be a perfect win / win / win for all in the local community.
- Stay connected. Through social media, email and other platforms, keeping connected with locals by sharing locally relevant information you can connect and share knowledge and this will be appreciated by locals. Your POS software can capture email addresses and share these with mailChimp for safe and spam free emails.
Know where your customers live. It’s easy to capture the postcode of shoppers. In every business we see doing this they learn things about shoppers that they can leverage, for better local community engagement especially.
Nurturing local shoppers really is all about your local community connection. It helps to have ways to do this that do not take too much time, ways that are consistently leveraged. This is where good POS software with tools for pitching your local connections can help.
Here at Tower Systems we care about small business retailers. We care for your businesses, those who rely on the business for income and your local shopper customers. We only work with and help local small business retailers with our POS software.
Marketing tips for independent toy shop businesses – helping you sell more toys
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Today, we share practical no cost and low cost marketing tips designed specifically for independent toy shops – local shops, high street shops, shops that are competing with mass retailers, national retailers and online retailers with big budgets.
We are sharing these tips because we believe in small business, independent business, because we will do everything we can to help local toy shops as they are bread and butter customers for our toy shop software.
When it comes to retail business marketing, we like to keep it simple as we have found simple works best in our own shops. here are our marketing tips for local toy shops:
- Run a championship. Choose a simple and fast to play fun game and host a local championship. Like Connect 4 – in a day and a series of heats in-store you could fine a champion and give people a heap of fun.
- Run a community noticeboard. A toy shop is a perfect place for a community noticeboard where families can share games and toy ideas with other families and where games clubs can let people know their news. Be an information hub.
- Create a community gallery. In a quiet part of the shop, create a gallery where people can share photos of achievements relating to what you sell. Photos could be of a completed jigsaw, a completed craft item, a winner of Monopoly, a completed Lego project and more. The idea is to give people a place to shaw their achievements.
- Customer reviews. Include customer reviews of games and toys with products in-store. Personalise and localise your business.
- Toy of the week. At the counter, pitch a specific item each week. Make sure the pitch explains why.
- Staff picks. Near the front of the store have a shelf or several shelves for displaying staff picks for this week. have a card next to each with an explanation, in their own words.
- Leverage collectibles. For those collectible items people will buy regularly over time, offer a reward when they reach a certain number. It can work like a coffee card. It locked them into purchasing from you.
- Share your knowledge part 2. People like buying from people who know what they are talking about. You can show off your knowledge through videos, which you have made, on Facebook, videos on your website and in-store.
- Share your knowledge part 2. Include product car and use information on receipts. This can be handled easily by your software.
- Support community groups. Offer a fundraising deal where group members purchase from you between set dates and they get a discount and the group gets a rebate. Your software can manage this. You help the customer and you help a group they love.
- Use loyalty rewards people understand. Any any customer today what 100 loyalty points are worth and they will not have a clear answer in most situations. Ask them how much a $10.00 voucher is worth and they will, for sure, say $10.00. Offer $$ as loyalty rewards and leverage this to get people to spend more than they used to. It’s done easily on your receipts.
- Bring them back. Use email marketing tools to thoughtfully invite shoppers back because they bought a particular item or brand or they bought for an annual occasion, like a birthday. Collecting a small amount of data in the sale and having your POS feed data to an email tool can make this email invite easy to achieve.
These are some of the marketing tips we have for local and independent toy shops. We love helping local indie retailers to thrive. We hope these ideas are useful and that they inspire you to create your own.
Small business rocks!
Driving Halloween sales in small business retail
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Through our POS software retailers have access to a range of tools for promoting and leveraging Halloween opportunities. From reminders, to product pitches to advice to special offers served in a targeted way, retailers using our POS software can pitch Halloween in 2020 to leverage the uniqueness of the fun day this year.
For sure, Halloween 2020 will be different. We are seeing this already in businesses we run, where Halloween products are being embraced early, even a month ago. One hit product already is Seeds from the Ty Plushies range.
For that business we made this video 100% in-house and served it using tech to reach new shoppers. We mention this as another example that we are not your usual POS software company.
What’s working in small business local retail through the second lockdown in Victoria?
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We are grateful to see sales data from a range of different Victorian retail businesses using our POS software. Here are trends from the latest Victorian lockdown:
- Relaxing products. The jigsaw surge from March and April is back but in an expanded form – adult colouring, art and craft, journaling, cross-stitch, knitting, games and art. Smart retailers are selling these items as well as offering customers opportunities to connect with others doing this.
- Nesting. This category is surging not only in Victoria but nationally. Nesting includes candles, diffusers, essential oils, rugs, cushions, homewares, pets, cooking and related.
- Tactile products. We have seen a surge in cuddleable (not a word I know but it best describes it) products. This segment includes plush and other soft toys, pets, rugs, blankets, pillows and similar. With touching and hugging discouraged, it stands to reason that people seek out alternatives.
- Easy shopping. We have seen retailers gain sales by making shopping easier through packaging items often bought together and having these placed front of store and at the counter.
- Postable gifts. People are loving that they can easily send a gift to people they are unable to see.
- Working from home. For some, this is now a permanent arrangement. Many retail channels have offers they can make to those working from home and businesses with employees working from home. The opportunities are usually broader than retailers think.
- Contactless retail. Having the EFTPOS machine shopper facing and situated for easy tap and having in place arrangements for the lowest cost possible to the business for EFTPOS.
- Online. Having an online offer matters. While people like the safety of having goods shipped, they also like click and collect and they like to use the website to ensure you have something in stock before they visit the shop.
- Online events. More retailers are hosting events to show off new products and offer education – Zoom, Facebook live and similar events. Unboxings, educating on new products meet the maker and more.
- Christmas has started early. Yes, we are seeing Christmas purchases already in businesses that are offering Christmas stock.
While the pandemic has disrupted business, in that disruption are opportunities. The Victorian situation is a reminder that disruption is not temporary. We think history will show that winners will be those businesses that adapted early and were able to finesse their offering and processes as the market demanded.
Click frenzy for Tower Systems POS software small business retailers
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Tower Systems is grateful to have customers using websites created by us for B2C activity that they are turning into B2B for a private Click Frenzy opportunity.
We have customers offering other customers discounts off terrific products that they sell direct to consumers.
This click frenzy promotion for 3,000+ retailers in the Tower community offers them the opportunity to purchase gifts at a discount off retail and through this to experience another POS software connected website created by us.
So, our customers save money, they can themselves win new customers too. This is a beautiful win win. That is that the Tower Systems small business click frenzy is all about – helping small business retailers to encourage small business retailers.
We launched the opportunity with an announcement to our customers weeks ago:
Tower customer click frenzy opportunity.
If you have a website, come and join our small business to small business promotion. To promote the websites of Tower customers to other Tower customers, we invite you to set up an offer code – TOWER – in your website to run from July 6 to July 31, giving those who use the code a discount, which you set.…..
To ensure consistency of information in the list I will share with our customers, please follow this standard.
Our goal here is to help you show off your website and to, hopefully, get more small business retailers buying from small business retailers.
Ours is a diverse small business community. We’d love to see this diversity reflected in the range of websites that join this promotion.
We will only promote it to Tower Systems customers. That is to 3,000+ small business retailers.
Plus…
We will include a list of all Tower POS software connected retailers who send us the above information on our own website. This will be a new page we create: Retail Businesses We Love. That listing will have your business name and web address. We will not publicly share the discount code. The goal of the listing is to give you another backlink.
The idea of the small business click frenzy experience is to shine a light on website marketing and to provide an opportunity for small business retailers new to online to leverage this into what they might do when promoting their businesses outside.
This is another way Tower Systems is guiding retailers with practical help and advice in improving their businesses and finding new shoppers.
Happy love day
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Here is some art from us created for the newsXpress retailers celebrating today, love day.
Here’s a shop local Christmas video we created for any retailer to use
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Here’s a Christmas we created for any retailer to use
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Tips for small business retailers promoting Halloween
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Halloween can be a good season for indie retailers.Success depends on active in-store and out of store engagement.
We do it in shops that we own and run and have evolved it from a low price point everyday halloween offer to a higher end specialty offer that is leveraged by fewer retailers.
Halloween is an excellent opportunity to ramp up traffic and sales leading up to Christmas. It is also an opportunity for the business to play outside its comfort zone. This is great news for any small business retailer.
Here is our advice from seeing Halloween in many retail businesses, advice on ways to promote Halloween to drive the opportunity further:
- Make your front window or front of story scary amazing, so shoppers have to step through it.
- Maybe host a night, after the shop closes, where people share local ghost stories. have some fun and get known as a place where local stories matter.
- Run a series of Facebook posts early in the season. Through these demonstrate your engagement as unique, different.
- Have a fancy dress competition on the weekend before.
- Mock yourselves in social media and elsewhere about being big kids, scary pants or more. Change how people look at your business.
- Run sales connected with people dressing up to access a sale price.
- A colouring competition for kids with a prize for the best.
- Have candy to give away.
- If you’re in a small town organise a Halloween trick or treat party for safe kid fun.
- Print a recipe sheet and give this away. Online you can find recipes for eyeball soup, eyeball appetisers, bloody desserts and the like.
Here at Tower systems we are all about small business retail. Anything we can do to help we will do, including providing practical business management advice for retailers on seasons such as Halloween.
Retail is all about entertainment. The more you embrace this the more fun people visiting your shop have. halloween is an ideal season for embracing retrial as entertainment.
Sometimes, the best way to get from A to B is to take a 90 degree turn.
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