Warmest wishes to my regular readers, and welcome to any newcomers.
What a time to be advertising. Everyone is breaking their necks to spend money on relatives they don't even like. You should be capitalizing on this. My normal spiel is all about getting your brand image right, but when so many potential customers are trying to throw money at anything that comes along, it's a race between who is getting the most traffic through their store. If in the process you acquire many repeat customers, then great, and you should aim to do this, but the goal is to entice the already spending public to you rather than the other guy.
There are so many simple ways to ride the shopping wave. But I might add at this stage that if you are attempting to plan something now to forget it, the boat has well and truly sailed. Some quick and easy ways to ride the Christmas sales craze are:
- Almost any response driven or retail ad will guide the already looking public to your store. -Press ad, local flyer, Radio Ad.
- A catalogue in the local newspaper - Since people are developing shopping lists from home, before they set out to battle the shops. You might aswell make it easy for them by providing a catalogue of your products.
- Mailout /Email out to existing customers to remind them and/or offer some special deals for them to return to your store - This method is extremely cost efficient, AND your existing customers are already farmiliar with your producs, so are more likely to return to your store. (this is one of my favourites since it works so well)
If you are fortunate enough to be located in a high traffic centre then you can still enhance your customer count by:
- Adding directional signage to the immediate footpath and or street area.
- Having goodlooking guys and girls walk around the local area handing out flyers and directing people to your store.
- Arrange a referral system with relevant fellow merchants who are not in your business but who might have customers who are interested in your products aswell.
Footnote on these suggestions:
The noted practices are very retail orientated, but so is Christmas.
If you are already running a retail organization most of this should be obvious, but It's nice to have a reminder every so often.
Merry Christmas and happy retailing.. see you in the new year for some serious 2006 planning, and some articles on the temptation to discount in the first quarter of 2006.
Mike
