Surviving a Down Market in the Boutique Business

When business has dried up, you need to get creative.  Use these tips to get customers back into your boutique or ordering from you online.

1.  Start sending out a newsletter.

Make your newsletter unique and interesting.  Use a conversational tone to help the reader feel included.  Send it out by mail or e-mail to your existing clients.  Offer special deals, coupons, discounts for ordering online, whatever you can think of to entice customers to visit again.  Offer extra incentive for customer’s to give a coupon to a friend.  Word of mouth is your best advertisement, so try to think of ways to make your current customers get excited about recruiting a few friends.

2.  Get social.

Build profiles on social networks online.  You can either build it as yourself, the owner, or give it the business name.  You can use your own name and then create a group of people that support your business.  Having people in the group will allow you to update their profiles with special offers, promotions and good deals.  The good part about this is that their friends can also see your updates.  People who become your personal friend because they love your boutique will become especially loyal.  Be personal in your comments and occasionally comment on their updates.  Be careful not to overdo it.  Being friends online often translates into being a loyal customer in the real world.

If you do not have the time or expertise to do this consistently on your own, you can hire a social media company to do it for you.

3.  Get your name out there.

For boutiques, it may not be possible to afford giant billboards or pricey commercials.  But, you can easily raise awareness for causes that you’re interested in supporting while raising awareness for your business, too.  There are many charity events that take place in most towns.  Find out which ones are coming up and start asking your friends and customers if they would like to join you in the event.  If they do not want to, they might donate money towards the cause instead.

You can generally raise enough money to pay entry fees for quite a few people.  Have a t-shirt party and get everyone together to make t-shirts.  Watch out for local news cameras and newspaper photographers.  This could be your chance to get your name out there for free.  Plus, the people who are also participating in the charity will see that your business supports something that they also care about and they may just want to come and check you out.

Your business can thrive with a little networking.  Keep your store stocked and clean, garment racks straight, sales people smiling, and your customers will become loyal ones in no time.