Devising a way to know your customers better and how to anticipate their needs is paramount in the life of your jewelry business. This information will help you determine where and how you should invest your money.

Knowing what inventory to purchase, what kinds of auxiliary services should you provide, if any, how to differentiate your business from your competitors, and how to create customer loyalty can increase your profits substantially. This knowledge can be gleaned from information gathered about your customers. Here's how....

Data pulled from a customer database, created with jewelry store software, will provide you with crucial up-to-date information allowing you to implement marketing strategies with a higher probability to success.

Furthermore, a method to measure the success of each strategy being implemented should be incorporated into your plan. If a strategy doesn't reach your targeted profit margin by a specified time, then you can redirect your efforts.

Collecting Useful Data

Each purchasing customer or potential customer, should have an account set up in your system. Besides the basic information like name, address, and telephone number, you may want to gather the following information and enter it into your jewelry store software:

• Email addresses
• Product or service purchased (including repairs and appraisals)
• Purchase price and picture of the item
• Information requested
• Warranty and/or insurance purchased (if applicable)
• Any gem quality disclosures discussed (i.e. treated gems)

Running Reports and Analyzing the Data

Now you can have the jewelry store software generate reports from the information supplied above to help you determine sales activities, such as the following:

• What products are selling and which are not?
• What is the average price of items being sold?
• Is there a particular line of product with a high rate of return/repairs?
• Within a specific line, what price range moves the most products?

There are countless ways to manipulate the data into reports, using jewelry store software, to carefully assess market conditions relevant to your business, allowing you to activate effective strategies to exploit emerging opportunities.

Implementing Marketing Campaigns

Before implementing any marketing campaign, be clear on your objectives. Being as detailed as possible will allow you to create appropriate parameters to measure your results.

Examples of measurable goals are the following:

• Increase diamond ring sales by 10% per month
• Decrease return rate by 30% within 6 months
• Decrease inventory of slow selling items by 20% by April
• Increase repeat business sales by 10 % per month

Once you determine the additional investment needed to reach your stated goals, use the jewelry store software to ascertain the resources available (e.g. cash flow, equity, liquid assets, inventory).

Analyzing the data does take experience within this industry, however using tools like databases and reports, generated by jewelry store software, allows the savvy business owner a way to quickly and accurately spot trends and implement strategies to capitalize on them. Any jeweler who hasn't incorporated a database system into their brick-and-mortar business, should seriously consider the many benefits as outlined above.

About the Author:

Cheree Dohmann is an internet marketing consultant that works with individual companies to build branding, search engine visibility and create online advertising opportunity for small businesses. Cheree has worked with IBIS for the past 2 years to promote their jewelry store software. To learn more about IBIS, please visit http://www.ibis-net.com.

Source: www.isnare.com