Episode #226: 5 Boutique Owner Myths Debunked with Our Host Ashley Alderson, Founder of The Boutique Hub

Hey, guys, it's time for episode 226 with yours truly. And today we're going to talk about five boutique owner myths debunked. So get ready. There's some truth bombs here. When it comes to myths around growing the traffic and the conversion rates inside of your boutique, Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works. From mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire eco ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, guys, it's me, myself and I today on the podcast, and I want to share a couple of quick tips with you today that I think so many boutique owners need to hear, especially as we enter a season of growth and lots of sales and traffic and excitement in our businesses. So today we're going to talk about five boutique owner myths debunked when it comes to increasing your traffic and growing your sales. Are you with me? All right, number one, the myth is working with influencers will help me get my products to sell faster. Now, I know so many of you have been down this road, right? You've been excited to work with influencers and bloggers. You've had so many of them reach out to you on Instagram, which some of them, you're wondering if they're a scam or not. And you've had high hopes in sending products to a blogger, thinking, man, it's time to double down and order triple the packs I usually do because I'm prepared to sell out. And then she posts and nothing happens. You hear crickets, right? So, guys, I want to talk about how to effectively use blogging as a strategy that can grow your traffic. Now, blogging is truly a brand awareness and customer acquisition strategy, but you and your business have to be the ones to actually go in and close the sale. The best a blogger can ever do for you is to send you traffic, but at the end of the day, the customer has to feel like you're a great fit for what she's looking for. And you've got to have the goods, right, that she needs, so she's actually going to convert and close that sale. So, couple of ways around this. Number one, let's make sure that we're looking and vetting the right influencer for your brand. So What I would do is go full on Instagram stalker mode and start to seek out the bloggers that truly do represent your brand ideals. Let me give you a quick example. I know Jessie Jarvis has been on this podcast before and we've had this very conversation. She's a rancher from Idaho. And so as she is an influencer, if there's a boutique, let's say that is ethical, say vegan only products, partnering with a blogger that's a rancher may not be a good fit and vice versa. So make sure you're looking for a blogger that truly fits your, your genre, your audience base, your aesthetic, your style, your price point, and someone that you feel like your customers would really resonate with. Find the right influencer that fits you. Number two, find the right influencer that has engagement over followers. You know, follower counts can be so deceiving and they can be inflated in a number of ways. And really so can engagement too, because of Instagram and engagement pods that people have. So, so what is important to look for is even if this is a micro influencer, quality over quantity always matters. So if you're looking at a micro influencer, make sure you go through her content and make sure the engagement, the comments, the likes are coming from real people, not seemingly bots and people that are actually engaging with her and asking her questions versus someone that looks like they just came out of an Instagram engagement podcast. Number three, let the blogger choose what she wants to wear. So sometimes I know I've run into boutiques that have had this idea, you know what, I'm just going to clean out my sale rack and I'm going to send it to these bloggers and it's going to be a win win. But the truth is, if you are really working with an authentic blogger, she wants to feel good about the products that she's wearing and that she's representing. And if she's got a really authentic, engaged audience, you know, the truth is she's not going to want to post anything she doesn't absolutely love. So if you want to collaborate with her, make sure you let her choose of your products what she wants to wear, because chances are she's going to wear it more times than once if she actually loves the product. Number four, make sure you have an agreement in place with this blogger. So the number of posts she's going to make, the timeline she's going to do it in, how she's going to tag you, how many Instagram stories she might do, and, and any other shared insights you're hoping that she's going to share with you, for example, a screenshot of your followers before she posts a screenshot of her Instagram analytics or her story views. So you get some kind of an idea of an ROI and how much traffic you actually did gain from that agreement. You might also consider having an agreement that if she did pick free product from your website that she isn't able to turn around and destash it and sell it on her Instagram just a couple of days later. Because it all goes back to this idea of creating authentic, engaging partnerships with bloggers. Now last thing is test and test and then create long term brand activations. Some bloggers work with brands over a long period of time because they find it such a natural fit. I would create in your contract with bloggers an opportunity to do a one to two post test campaign and based on the outcome of that campaign, something that's a little bit more lucrative. Long term brand activation which also increases the likelihood that this blogger is going to want to organically post about you time and again. Alright, myth number two. As long as I'm meeting my daily sales goal and I've got money in the bank, I'm growing. Yay me, right? Yay me. Have you ever been there? What do they call this? Bank account balance tracking. And it doesn't tell you anything about the health of your business. But far too many boutiques are intimidated by numbers and find it easier sometimes. Raise your hand if this is you to put your head in the sand and not always look at the numbers for fear of seeing that you're not growing. Have you been there, guys? Honestly, I've been there myself in business. I'm not scared to admit it and it sucks. It's terrifying. And what happened to me when I was at that point in my business was it also ruined the relationships around me because I was pouring all of my heart and all of my time into something that simply wasn't growing. But when I was asked about it, I was defensive because I wanted to prove that I was growing. But I couldn't because I didn't have the numbers or the KPIs in place to know where I was. It wasn't until I understood how to make numbers really speak to me that this started to make sense and I could give a clear explanation of here's my goal and here's my path for growth and here's how I'm going to get there. So the fastest way to go out of business is to not operate like a Business, right? I used this analogy recently when I was speaking in Texas at Dallas Market Center. And it was the analogy of this would be like a rancher not knowing how many cows are out in the pasture, right? Or a dairy farmer on the flip side, not understanding which of his cows actually produce the most milk and then just letting the bull turn out on the whole herd and, you know, do his teenager bull thing. He's just going to go crazy. But you've got no idea what you're breeding for because you don't know what cows produce and what cows don't. Hell, you don't even know how many cows you have in the first place, right? So in order for the old rancher or the dairy farmer to have some kind of an idea of what's happening in his operation, he's got to know the numbers and so do you. So here's where a really healthy snapshot every week on the same day, it's a sit down date with your numbers comes in to be so handy. And this is truly where the art of retail, right, the fun, pretty customer facing side of retail meets the science of retail, right? Right brain and left brain have to work together. So number one, what's your margin? Right? What's your margin? What is your maintained margin? So over a period of time, let's say a week or a month or however you prefer to track and have this date with your numbers after you sold a product and all discounts were given, how much of that margin did you maintain over time? That's your maintained margin. So are you giving away the farm? Right? Are you making a profit or are you just barely skating by? Number two, how much inventory do you have on hand right now? And is that inventory aged or is it fresh? Number three, what's your daily sales goal number, Your annual sales goal number, your monthly sales goal number, and what's that compared to this time last year? Right? So you have a comparison of where you are and where you need to be next. If you've done the boutique traffic plan formula, based on that sales goal number and based on your average order value and your conversion rate, how much traffic do you need to see to your business every single day for you to meet that daily sales goal number? And for more information on that, send me a dm. We talk a lot about the boutique traffic plan inside of Boutique Bootcamp and inside of the Hub. All right, what is your open to buy budget? So based on that inventory you have on hand right now, what's fresh and what's aged, what Is your budget for the next couple of weeks, the next quarter, Right. What do you need to buy in each of your categories based on what's turning right now and your sale product projections for that next month or that next quarter? So you know when you're going in to buy, whether you're shopping on Fashion Go or your vendor's website or you're going to market, you're actually buying smart into that plan each and every month. All right, finally, how about your best turning categories? Your sales by vendor and also your returns by vendor. Get an idea of what's working and what's not working in your business, you guys. Finally, the last piece is basic, basic bookkeeping. And that's what's your P and L, right? What's your cash flow? So of all the money that's come in, minus your cost of goods sold, right? That gives you your net revenue. Now you're taking out all of your operating expenses from that time period and hopefully you're keeping track of all of this in QuickBooks and it's giving you what is your net revenue for that time period. You have to know, are you operating at a profit or are you operating at a loss? This is a really, really important number to look at on a regular basis. It allows you to look at what number you're going to set aside for if you're doing the profit first plan, whether it's savings or your owner pay or inventory that you're going to reinvest into. Make sure your taxes are separated out into separate accounts. You've got to be looking at that number on a regular basis to get a really healthy snapshot of what's happening in your business and not just add the number sitting in your bank account. All right, Myth number three, cheaper prices will help turn my products faster and increase demand. Yes. Sam Walton, the same thing happens at Walmart, doesn't it? Right. You cannot be Walmart and your customer does not want you to be Walmart. Right. If you want a price compare, you're going to be out of business so darn fast. And really, price does not create loyal customers. Service does. So your job is to really become a style educator in your business and to build a brand that your customers are drawn to and that they trust with products that are curated and they're quality and they're things that they want to shop for. You guys, I came from a very small town in North Dakota, right? A town of, I don't know, 1600 people. It was tiny. No stoplights, no McDonald's, nothing but there was stores there that sold high end products, right? There's women there that buy $350 cowboy boots, including me. So you can't tell me that just because you're from a small town that people won't pay for a $40 top, because they will. But if you project your money story onto somebody else saying, gosh, I just don't think someone will pay it, so I'm just gonna take less for it. Hey, honey, you're only hurting you at the end of the day. So please don't project what you think your customer is saying onto your customer. Instead, offer the product, but give her a reason to buy it. Educate her on how she might wear it, how she might style it, how does it fit her body, how quality is this product. Get a great photo shoot with those products, do fit videos and live videos, and try on sessions with the products so she understands how this product is going to work for her, how it might be a staple piece, and how if you actually calculated out the cost per wear, that she's saving money by spending more up front on a quality piece than buying a cheap $20 throwaway item. You know, Eric said something to me the other day. He said, you know what? That person will step over a dollar to pick up a dime. And I thought about that. I was like, man, there's so many ways I could use that analogy in my life. Or, gosh, as I analyze the life of my parents, whatever it might be, right? There's many times where I watch my parents step over a dollar to pick up a dime, and I just don't want that for you guys. Myth number four, my team was trained when I hired them so they'll know what to do. Yeah. Awesome. How many of you guys listening have a team, right? And truthfully, I've been here with our own team. I tell you, if there's one thing that people do not tell you about owning a business, it's just how challenging it can be to grow a team. And it's something that really, I think, exposed a lot of, I'll say, weakness in myself. It really made me second guess myself a lot because, you know, I was confident running and gunning and creating something myself. But when it came to providing for someone else's entire livelihood, when that was on my shoulders, I truly felt the weight of it. And it made me realize, man, I really got to do something to provide quality to my team, to educate my team, to empower my team, or they're going to go somewhere else, or this Business is going to go down and they're going to be without a job, and they've got kids, all these things. Having a team is the thing that keeps me up at night more than anything else. And I think that it's good to have kind of that healthy dose of fear because it keeps us running every day and trying to do our best and empowering our team to do their best right along with us. So when I say this, I say it kind of tongue in cheek because, guys, the team is the most important asset you could ever have. And truly, the only way to scale a business is to have a quality team that you trust and that understands your mission and believes in your why wholeheartedly as much as you do. But also a team that understands processes and that you've trained to spot the gaps in your operation and for them to, without even asking you, figure out how to fill those gaps. So make sure that you're taking an opportunity to provide ongoing training for your team. Weekly team meetings, ongoing team communication, whether it's through Slack or keeping your lists in Trello or a Facebook group message. Make sure you've got checklists and manuals. And your team is cross training one another on new products every week or new promotions every week, or how to approach customers or how to deal with difficult customers or how to close a sale. Man, there's so much that we can do to train our team on a regular basis that's only going to empower them to be even better at selling on the floor or selling online or posting on social media than we are. And I know I say this right now in the middle of the fall as we approach the busiest season of the year. So if there was ever a time where it's time to double down on educating your team, it's right now. Because, truly, we're entering the sprint season of the fourth quarter and the holiday season when your team truly, truly, truly matters. Every ounce of effort they put in into your business truly matters. Because it's customer acquisition season, people. And I know you couldn't be more excited about what's to come in this last quarter of the year. All right, guys, last myth is if it didn't sell, I'll just put it on sale, right? Have you ever been there at market where you're like, oh, that's cute. You know, I'm gonna buy that for Tina and Sally and Jane, you know, and if it doesn't sell, I'll just mark it down. Right? Well, let's talk about first. Why didn't it sell. So going back to training your team, if you have team, whether again, social media or salespeople on the floor, ask your team, why didn't this sell? Because chances are they'll have watched a customer come in and touch the product and then put the product back or they'll have been with a customer near the try on room or they'll have dealt with a customer on social media that actually returned the product and they'll know why it didn't sell. So every markdown is actually an opportunity for education. So you know what not to do next time, right? So every time we have that situation in our business, did we restyle the product, reshoot the product and repost the product? Did we do a try on session to try to educate our customers or did we merchandise the product? You know, I'll give you a great example. A while back, I think it was over magic. Last February, we had Hotline hair ties. Megan, who's a part of the Hub, she was a sponsor of our meetup and she brought these cute little samples of all of her little hair ties. And I know a lot of you do business with hotline hair ties. And Sarah grabbed a little sample and she said, okay Megan, tell me about the product. And she's like, well, you know, here's, you know, the order minimums and requirements and here's how they come packaged. We just got new packaging and you know the number one problem people have with hair ties, period, as they stretch out. And she said, what people need to know is if you actually put these hair ties in hot water, they'll contract back to regular size. And I was blown away by this. I had never heard this myself. And she said, the last thing you need to know is we actually have a guarantee so if something breaks, you can send it back to us and we'll replace it. Now this got Sarah and I thinking, how easy is it for you to go to market and you buy a great product like that and you're mesmerized, you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that's how it worked. But then the information dies with you and the product you bring back, you put it on the website or you put it on your shelf and the information is not passed on to the customer, right? So the hotline hair ties then may not sell because they don't know all these great resources that come with hotline hair ties. So the truth is it's up to us as a boutique owner to come back and educate our staff and educate our customers on the information we've learned from the reps and the business owners and the vendors that we're buying from on a regular basis. A product is not just a widget, right? There's a why and a reason and a mission behind everything we buy and we stock in our store. Next last piece of advice when it comes to putting items on sale is, you know, sometimes we just have to fail fast. We get excited about social media and what we see on bloggers and we're onto the next trend before our customers have even adopted the one that we're in right now, the season that we're in right now. And if you're like me and you're from the Midwest, it might be four seasons that your customers are still loving. And we're on four seasons ahead, right? Sometimes trends move a little bit slower than we like them to. So it's okay to fail fast. To try something, offer it to your customers. If it doesn't work, here's where it is. Time. After you've restyled it, reshot it, reposted it, done everything you can to educate your customers about it. Some things just don't work right away. But that's when it's important to have a markdown strategy. So make sure you get that cash out of your product quickly. So go big and go fast. If you need to take pieces and mark them down at 20 to 30% after, after, let's say four, five, six weeks, whatever your current rotation might be, make sure you get that money out quick because it's better to get that cash back and reinvest it. Make that failure turn into a lesson plan than it is to let that sit there and continue to hang on your shelf and just eat away cash that you could be reinvesting into something that does win. Guys, that was your five boutique owner myths debunked this week. I hope you found some gems inside of this lesson. Make sure you DM me over on Instagram Jalderson. Let me know what you think, what your biggest lesson was. And I mean we might as well do a giveaway this week. It's getting cool in Wisconsin and I have got the cutest boutique boss sweatpants that I would love to send to one of you. So tag me in your post when you listen to the podcast this week. I'll pick a winner and I will send you some super cute sweatpants in the next week. Guys, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for being a part of the boutique hub and I can't wait to See you guys next week. Hey guys, can I ask you a question? Is your store really ready for the fourth quarter? I mean, are you ready to actually grow your profitability this fourth quarter and not just your revenue and all the chaos that comes with it? Hey, we have worked with so many boutique owners over the last several years inside of the hub to help them maximize their holiday season in their fourth quarter. And we put everything that we know into one single training so that you can take this right to the bank. Hey, I want to invite you to join me this year inside of the Holiday Marketing Masterclass where we cover six key ways that every retailer, whether you're a brick and mortar online, you do pop ups or mobile events, can really maximize the season. We'll cover everything from how to get ready and pre plan the entire season right now, how to buy smarter, how to train your staff so that they can be right there working for you so that you don't have to take the entire season upon your shoulders if someone doesn't show up for a shift or you get overwhelmed with shipping. We're going to talk about how to get real ROI from your events hard and soft. We'll talk about the difference between a sale and a promotion and how to keep more money in your pocket at the end of the day and then all of the marketing and e commerce strategies that you need to know. How to set up the right landing pages for the holiday season, how to build collections and bundles and gift guides and and ultimately how do you drive more traffic to your online business and to your brick and mortar so that more people are seeing what you have to offer. So join me at holidaymarketingmasterclass.com 2019 or check out the link in the show notes and I'd love to see your store grow this holiday season. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.