myRetailer.ca

Final Sale! Inventory Blowout! End of Season!
There’s a reason why Retailers use these Signs.

image provided by Flickr

A colleague of mine was telling me today about how his staff mistakenly placed an order for twice the number of “Mumsettias” (a holiday potted flower mix with mums and a poinsettia in it) than what they really wanted. A mistake on their part, they had to find a way to deal with the extra inventory. Mumsettias are a holiday, potted flower that usually sells for $9.99 each. However because of the mix up, last Friday he changed his roads sign to read the following:

Oops…
Too many Mumsettias.
Reg. $9.99
Now $6.97

…and sold out completely by 3pm the next day.

Customers are looking for deals. They don’t care how or why there might be a deal, they just want to feel that they are getting bargain of some sort.

In this case, he basically admitted to making a mistake, which resulted a somewhat urgent need for him to give away more than he normally would have in order to sell through his inventory. In the message, he was able to convey that message, making it more believable and giving a reason for customers to come in and take advantage of this particular deal.

Why do you think that Going Out Of Business Sales are so successful? You could advertise 30% Off Everything all you want, and see some results. However if you advertised, Going Out Of Business Sale. 30% Off Everything. Your response will be ten times larger.

Why? It’s because people need to really feel that they are getting a deal. A simple 30% off might be a store promotional campaign, however a going out of business sale is a real deal to customers.

So what kind of reason do you have or can come up with to hold a sale? Some ideas could include:
- Inventory Overrun
- Inventory Clearance Sale
- End of Season Clearance
- Bought Too Much, Need to Move Product

The possibilities are huge. Find a reason why you are in a panic to sell merchandise, or why you have this rare opportunity for customers to save money. This will help build excitement and drive traffic into your store.

Does your company have a website? How about a blog? Are you on Facebook and/or Twitter? What about videos on YouTube?

Want to see something incredible about how the face of marketing is changing? Watch Is Social Media a Fad.

Incredible stats. Makes you think about the future of marketing.

Also, read David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of Marketing and PR. It’s a great read with tons of practical advice. I’m just going through it now and learning a lot of things that I’m really excited about. I’ll keep posting new ideas as I get through the book.

Optimize your marketing tactics and understand the lingo your customers speak.

I heard a presenter the other day speak about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) marketing. He reminded us to always speak to your customers. Duh! No kidding! Shouldn’t we always speak to our customers?

What he was trying to drive home is that when searching for mattresses, most people will not search for Sealy Mattresses in Calgary. Instead they’ll search for what they’re looking for; Mattresses in Calgary.

Most customers don’t know or care what brand name they’re looking for, they simply looking for what they want; a comfortable mattress that is priced right and can be delivered before the weekend.

Whether you’re communicating with customers through a website, e-mail campaign, print marketing, radio, person to person sales, informing of benefits, keep the information relevant to what they’re looking for in the terms that they can easily understand. Don’t make things complicated by using of jargon or brand names that no one recognizes or cares about.

Keep your messages short, to the point and relevant to what your customers are looking for. Nothing more.

When it comes to marketing, less is usually better.

Courtesy of Flickr

Create line-ups at your door by offering amazing deals to your customers. This concept is possible, even for smaller independent retailers.

Years ago, I used to offer a down and dirty deal on a timely popular item every week. This Amazing Deal of the Week was a limited offered to our customers on a first come first serve basis starting every Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. sharp, no exceptions! This created excitement and caused line-ups at our door every Saturday morning. It also created a flood of phone calls and inquiries every week from customers asking; “What are you guys giving away this week?” To choose the item, we would anticipate one of our top SKU’s for that time of year and offer a deal that saved them between 50% and 75% off the regular retail price. Customers were usually limited to 3 or 5 units, which only added to the excitement. Most of the time, we would even leave them on the skids, or the transportation racks that they came on to again add to the excitement and show that it was such a great deal that we didn’t even have a chance to display them on our regular shelving. Again, adding to the excitement.

We moved away from that strategy, thinking we were being smarter by protecting our margins more. We dropped the deal of the week strategy for a few years, this was a mistake that I believe cost us quite a few customers over the years as we started to gain a reputation of only stocking higher end items and not offering any great deals to our customers any more. But, we recently started to move back in that direction with our Weekly Feature Promotion.

We’re slowly changing this perception and are starting to see a return of customer excitement again to the stores. We haven’t seen the line-ups yet, but I fully expect that they will come back.

~Andy

Interesting Articles:

• Using Special Promotions to Generate Business
• Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Image Courtesy of CBC.ca

Businesses have always used creative marketing tactics to increase sales and create a unique experience to attract customers. Take to strategize about what causes increase revenues in your business.

When you boil it all down, what is it causes sales in your business? What one thing that you do grows revenues more than anything else?

When Kraig Kramers works with a company, one of the first variables he tries to identify is what causes sales in the company? Is it sales people, is it the website, is it drive by appeal, is it trade shows? What is it? Then the second step he takes is to add to the horsepower to drive sales.

If you determine that drive by appeal and window displays are what causes sales in your business, then he suggests you drop everything else (print advertising, radio ads, etc.) and pour all that money and resources into your window displays. Have the best damn window displays on your street. Have them stand out so much, that people talk about them across town. This, Kramers would say, is a focused company, focused on growing sales.

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