11 Best Marketing Practices for Retailers
Here’s a wish list for the retailers I work with. OK, it’s MY wish list. I wish the retailers I work with would do the following:
1. Start a house mailing list
Retail… wholesale… consumer… trade – this is easily the best marketing strategy any company can establish, and it especially holds true for retailers.
Your house mailing list is your current customers; you know – the people who know where your store is, how to get there without directions, and what you stock. After they’ve been to your store once – if they like your selection of products and services, and the experience they had with you, they know how to get back.
There is “no-wasted-expense” in mailing to this house list of customers. Remind them of sales, new merchandise arrivals, special deals to friends, private sales, free gifts for coming back, “Thanks for your referral!” letters, post cards, coupons and warm and fuzzy personal letters. Face it: if you can’t get a current customer to come back, you’ve done something wrong.
If you’ve captured their date of birth – send a b’day card. Don’t forget letters and post cards for some of the smaller, lesser celebrated holidays like back to school day for kids, first day of deer season… or when trout fishing opens; ground hog’s day, first blue moon of the year, etc. Don’t send a card for Christmas – let everyone else send them Christmas cards, yours would get lost in the pack – who needs that?
Here’s how easy it is to start a mailing list. Have a box of 3 x 5 cards near the cash register and when customers walk by, ask them to sign up for your FREE mailing list. Let them know by signing up for your (confidentially kept) mailing list they’ll receive notices about private sales, special discounts, coupons, and special events. It’s even easier if you have a reception desk or someone who makes appointments – it’s all done at that time.
2. Have a “Best Customer” list
If you have customers that are so good, customers that visit you so frequently that you remember their names and faces, you need to put them on a preferred mailing list. These are the 100 or so best of the best (if you’re a big shop, these can be 500 or 1,000 of your best). Mail them notices of private sales and events (“Only 100 of our very best customers are being invited to this very private sale…”). Make them feel special. They are.
3. Analyze your customers
The difference between marketing and sales is when you are selling, you are selling to anyone. Marketing is selling to a defined audience. When you define your audience you find the common threads that place those folks in the special group of people who want or need your services. When you discover this commonality you can then clone your customers to get more of the same. (That’s why I usually look to customer’s friends to become customers – they’re alike, with similar interests, tastes and values.)
4. Learn how new customers heard of you
Once you find out how your customers heard of you, you can increase advertising or marketing to that medium – it’s effective. Then…
5. Track your advertising
Once you find out which of your advertising works, you need to keep track – and by that I mean write it down. The simplest way for you computer geeks is to enter all this in a database. The simplest way for us normal human beings is to leave 3×5 cards next to each phone, and next to the cash register – and ask everyone who calls right there, up in the front of the conversation (or, if you’re at your store, smack anyone who walks near you upside his or her head and ask) “Hey, how did you hear of us!” Write down each response on a 3×5 card and stash in a drawer.
At the end of the month you’ll know where everyone came from. At the end of 6 months you’ll know – for sure – where your advertising is working… so you can increase that part of it for next year. The other big benefit is you can drop the ineffective advertising that isn’t working.
6. Have a press release program
If you said you have a good press release program, you send out a press release every year, let’s talk seriously. Here’s the program I like: Write down the 12 headlines for 12 press release for sending each month. Work long and hard on this. Make the headlines punchy. Use the “Jeff Dobkin 100 to 1 Rule*”: write 100 go back and pick out your best one! Write and rewrite. From there, it’s easy to back into the copy for the body of the release.
Once you have a tight PR headline list, over the course of the year you’ll have an aggressive PR program, and you’ll know exactly what release is going out, and when. That’s the basic plan, but feel free to interject with a timely news release if something unusual or sensational happens in the meanwhile.
7. Create a sign
When I wrote a marketing campaign for a realtor I discovered she received about 25% of her calls from a sign placed in front of the house. Do you have a sign in front of your store? You should. You can now buy CHANGABLE signs fairly cheaply – you should, and you should… change it frequently. Reason: after people see the same sign week-in and week-out they stop looking. If you change it, they look each time they pass your store. Say something right – and they’ll stop in.
8. Find out where you are making the most money
Unless you are in a strong price sensitive market, increase the price point of those products and services. Then offer add-on options, and similar but more expensive products to increase your customer’s average purchase. Like Sears… have you ever bought a car battery from Sears: Good, Better and Best?
This is your opportunity to be like the car manufacturers: they start most cars at a low price point, then keep adding amenities until you wind up buying a $10,000 Chrysler Neon with $9,000 in accessories. (Did you really need that 426 Hemi engine and 9-inch wide tires on that Neon?) Next year – if they sell well – the base price goes up to $12,500, and even more options are offered.
9. Find out where you are making the least money
In catalog marketing, savvy marketers use a “square inch analysis.” They measure the size in square inches of the product photo and write-up, then calculate the revenue and net profit brought in by that merchandise. Then, if it isn’t essential to the product mix, the merchandise with the lowest profit per square inch is dropped, and replaced with something new. This continual rotation of products is good for the overall mix and keeping the catalog profitable and costs down.
I’m not saying you should measure square footage of your store, but if some products or services are not bringing in as much net revenue for the space they are taking up, maybe it’s time to rethink that product line or service.
10. Use personal letters as marketing tools
Nothing beats a personal invitation – like a letter – to an event. Nothing says “We’d really like to see you here” better than a letter with a gift certificate. Nothing is better than a personal letter to say “Thanks for being a customer, we really appreciate your business!” Even when you send a few thousand letters – if they are well written you can make the recipient feel he really special – and that he is the only person who has received it. Remember when your mom told you you were very special – and you believed her? Your customers will, too.
11. Thank customers for referrals
If a customer sends in a friend or neighbor, send them a small gift, or at least a gift certificate. Don’t forget to include a nice letter with it – the value to you is not what’s in the gift, but what you say in the letter. What are they likely to then do? That’s right – they’re likely to give you even more referrals and send in more customers. Nice.