Planning Promotional Events
H O P P E R P E D I A ©
-Brian Hammons
June 14, 2010: 4,314 hits
Develop A Promotional Filing System
Create a promotional folder that includes all of your past promotional direct mail pieces. Create another for advertising that has a successful track record. Create a third folder for innovative marketing strategies that catch your attention from other industries. When you are ready to create your own promotional calendar, you will have a filing system FULL of proven and innovative ideas to help you brainstorm.
Evaluate And Brainstorm
Now that you have a collection of ideas to brainstorm from, you can go back and evaluate each one. As you evaluate past promotional ideas, pay attention to why they drove traffic to your business. Also evaluate what did not work so that you don’t make those same mistakes a second time. Sometimes your best promotion ideas fail simply because they were held on the wrong day or the wrong month. With a little adjusting it could be a winner the second time around.
Develop Your Strategic Plan
To be successful in retail you must plan promotional events far in advance. Plan to implement a MINIMUM of six promotions per year. That is minimum! When I had my retail stores I was implementing some type of promotional event every month. This is easy when you have a strategic plan in place. You must keep reminding customers to come back to your store. The number one reason why customers don’t return to you time and time again is because you allow them to FORGET about you. Keep reminding them and get them excited about shopping at your store more often.
Involve Your Team
After you have outlined your promotional ideas for the year, hold a staff meeting to discuss them. Share your ideas on a large calendar board and let your team know that you are PLANNING for success. Ask your staff to share their creative ideas too. Set sales goals for each promotion and offer a bonus reward to each salesperson that reaches their goals. Once your team buys into your promotional plans, they will BUY into SELLING more customers on attending too. Plan to have enough staff on hand to make the event run effectively.
Plan Out The Details
Evaluate your best promotional days and months. Select days and months that you drive the most traffic to your store. Plan out all the details of the event. Leave nothing to chance. The more you plan out the details and systemize your events, the easier and more successful they will be.
Reserve And Design Advertising
Plan your advertising and direct mail well in advance. Build excitement for the event by featuring the benefits of attending. Create a call to ACTION. Tell your customers WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and WHY. Offer short deadlines, powerful offers and guarantees with teeth.
Contact The Media
If you are putting on a charity event, contact the media well in advance. Send a press release about the event and ask the media to attend. Tell them how your event will benefit the community or share details about a cause. Take your own photos at the event as well and send them along with a follow up press release.
Non-profit Example: Collect used items and donations from event attendees. Offer them an incentive for each item they bring to the event. Take photos of the persons donating the items and the staff accepting them. Then issue a press release with the photos. This will reward you with tons of FREE media exposure for months after the event.
Create Attention Getting Direct Mail
Spend 50 percent of your time writing a GREAT headline that is BENEFIT RICH. You must HOOK their attention quickly before your direct mail gets trashed. Make your offer and event so exciting that it triggers a FEAR OF LOSS in the customer’s mind. Allow them to think about what they will be missing if they don’t attend.
Develop Promotions Based Around A Theme
If you want to stand out from the competition, you must be DIFFERENT. The more you conform to be like everyone else, the less successful you will be. Create fun events around unique holidays. Promote when your competition is not promoting. Your event does not have to be a SALE. There are lots of ways to promote without giving the store away. Make your events so much fun that your customers promote you back with word of mouth advertising.
Example: The Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon is an annual event that grows larger every year. Not only are runners donating to an amazing and heart felt cause, but they are promotong healthy eating and healthy lifestyles as well. Prior to the event, runners pick up their "packets" containing their runner's bib at an expo held at the OKC convention center. Numerous companies give away and sell products that correlate with the theme of the event. This is a great way to promote your company at very little cost.
Plan An OTB Increase For Special Events
Why would you want to create more promotional events?
To keep your store in your customer’s mind and to INCREASE SALE AND PROFITS! Therefore you must increase your open-to-buy and invest in additional inventory. Keep giving your customers more reasons to come back to YOU time and time again.
