The retail landscape is ever-changing and running a successful business means planning and evolving your strategies. By staying ahead to provide what today’s shopper wants, you can help keep your business strong, engage with customers, and keep making the sale.

Here are five steps you could take, and additional resources to help you along the way:

1. Stay connected to your customers. Maintaining regular contact with your customers can help keep your small business top of mind and increase loyalty. Whether it’s through social media, blog posts, newsletters, emails or other online content sharing helpful, relevant information regularly is a great way to help shoppers remember you when they’re ready to buy.

Read More:

• Find tips from the “SmallBizLady” Melinda F. Emersen on social selling and brand positioning.
• Strengthen your customer relationship with a CRM Management tool.

2. Provide customers with multiple types of shopping options. The key word is “flexibility.” Being in the places customers want to shop, when they are ready to make a purchase, and how they feel most comfortable paying is what this year is all about.  You can’t just rely on online or in-store shopping methods to keep customers happy. Instead, offering multiple options to customers will help ensure that no matter how they like to shop, you’ll be able to meet their needs—whether it’s online, in-store, on an app or a combination.

Read more:

• The Social Commerce Journey
• Mobile Apps: The Ultimate Destination

3. Offer a safe, convenient shopping process. The need to feel safe while shopping is likely to linger in people’s minds for years to come. To encourage visits to your store, take steps to help make your customers feel comfortable. This can include posting your cleaning processes, having store layouts that make social distancing easier and offering contactless payments.

Read More:

• The Future of Contactless Payment is Already Here
• How Appointment Based Businesses Can Thrive Virtually

4. Introduce shoppers to your brand. More than ever before, today’s consumers want more meaningful interactions with the businesses they support. Customers may want to know “who” you are as a business, your company values and where you stand on important topics, such as local sourcing and sustainability. If your business has a socially-conscious, community-focused mindset, be sure to let your customers know.

Read More:

• How a focus on diversity can help you build a stronger business.

5. Stay in the know as shopper preferences change. To keep your business thriving, it’s important to stay aware of consumer trends so you can be ready for what lies ahead. Keeping track of the latest economic news, shopping trends and what’s happening in your industry and in your community, can help you adapt quickly, if and when things change. Subscribe to industry newsletters, podcasts, follow organizations like the Small Business Administration to keep up on the latest news. Of course, we invite you to stay up to date with Synchrony’s insights where we share what’s now, new and next in payments, consumer trends and more.

Contact us to see how Synchrony’s decades of data insights and world class analytics can bring you more customers and drive loyalty.

This information is shared solely for your convenience. You are urged to consult with your individual advisors with respect to any information presented.