Top retailers tend to get several key things right, and among the most important of these things is the management of inventory. In fact, this is such an important element of success that some major, global, retailers have built their businesses on achievement in this area alone.
Now, you may yearn for the day when keeping track of sales in real time, and needing alerts to low stock are necessary, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to use inventory management software right now.
After all, it is something that can provide you with a lot of valuable insight into your business. This is particularly true if you are only now beginning to do marketing campaigns of any kind. Let’s look at that a bit more to figure it out and to understand how you can use inventory management software as a key element in your emerging marketing efforts.
Using Inventory Management Software Creatively
You use your inventory management software effectively by integrating it with other management processes. For instance, there are some reliable cloud based services that provide eCommerce support at many levels. These may include inventory, ordering, shipping, and other types of management services, and having everything in your business “synced” in this way is often a very wise step.
The thing to keep in mind about integrated inventory management software is that it can provide you with some “real time” results that you might not have recognized before. Take the issue of SEO or search engine optimization. The smartest online retailers know that their multichannel marketing has to utilize effective keywords (even if they sell in a niche market) if they are to drive traffic to their channels.
What, however, if the keywords chosen could be more effective? How would you gauge this? After all, you may be conducting assessments on keywords based on website or sales channel performance in search engines, but you can also explore how your SEO impacts sales when using inventory management software.
For example, you use the dashboard of your multichannel management system to alter product descriptions to include new terms or keywords. This updates everything from your Amazon descriptions to your direct sale website’s information.
You monitor inventory in the hours and days after this comprehensive update and you see sales go up or down. Though your sites may rate higher in search engines, the data is also letting you know how these changes in SEO actually affect your sales – and your bottom line.
This tells us that your integrated, multichannel management services are great for exploring subtle changes in things such as keywords in product descriptions and other areas of product listings. It provides multiple gauges around the changes, and can help you gain an edge over competitors.
The Bottom Line Assessments
All of this also applies to changes in pricing, product images, package deals, and more. You can use your inventory management to gauge the response to changes, and it won’t require you to babysit or check in on every product at every sales channel.
Think about it for a moment…in the past you would have had to visit each channel (such as a visit to Amazon, another to eBay, and so on). You would have had to make the changes at each site, and then continually draft reports showing if those changes boosted or negatively impacted sales.
When using integrated inventory software, you can manage your stock with great ease but also get creative with your marketing and SEO efforts.
Summary
Integrated inventory management software is great for streamlining your business processes, but it is also a huge asset when exploring various results within SEO and marketing campaigns.
Source: Desmarais, Christina. Choosing the Best Inventory Tracking Software. INC. 2011. http://www.inc.com/articles/201105/best-inventory-tracking-software.html