How Outreach Can Improve Your Own Business

Having a successful collectibles or memorabilia business is dependent on a huge variety of areas. Primarily, you not only need a little luck, but you also need to have a good business plan, plenty of support and know as much about your specialist area as possible. When it comes to making sales for your business, you need to cover as many bases as possible, a term that is sometimes referred to as ‘outreach’. Thinking of your business as a central core with a number of streams extending outwardly from it shows you what areas you’re reaching and which you need to improve on. There are a number of core areas that can help you improve not only your sales, but the opportunity for growth within your collectibles business.

Identifying Your Outreach Streams

When you first start your business, you’re mainly likely to focus on a variety of ways to sell your goods. Most people, if working from a shop premises, will use their storefront as their main location for selling and will perhaps also now and again use the internet to sell if they have set up online selling. This is a fairly standard level of outreach for a new collectibles business. You have two streams that often generate plenty of business and repeat business, so it’s easy to be happy with these and never try to extend further. However, there are always other streams that open up and identifying these streams and using them are the way to ensure that your business will grow.

Business Outreach Streams to Consider

The difference between a successful business and a struggling one can be knowing these extra outreach areas and using them. There are many ways to sell your products and below are just some ways of getting your items to be more visible to a larger number of people.

• Conventions – The collectibles business is perfect for the convention circuit and making sure that you’re always in attendance at local and national events can help you reach other individuals you may be missing.
• Mail Order – It is relatively inexpensive to set up a mail order business and you can start this as soon as you start your business. Print off a small catalogue, or better yet, keep your costs low by advertising your items online and selling them via mail order. You can also hand out a number of flyers that have your mail order details on them.
• Fairs, Fetes and Charity – If you can afford to give up a few items of stock to a local charity do so. Many charities will hold fetes with raffles that give away prizes from local businesses. If you donate some items, make sure that the charity lets the people involved in the raffle know that the item was donated by your business. You’ll reach people you normally wouldn’t this way and you’re also helping others.

Your Local Council and Business Outreach

Your local council will often have a dedicated area that deals with helping local businesses manage and maximise their business outreach. The council want to ensure that small businesses in their area are all given a fair chance at success and can help you in certain outreach programs. They will sometimes be able to help you with things like sourcing local suppliers rather than international suppliers of your collectibles and can even help ensure that you’re handling staff and other areas of your business correctly. Running a successful collectibles business can be reliant on many parts and all these different aspects of outreach can ensure a healthy business with goof profits for you as the retailer.