“Without promotion something terrible happens… Nothing!”
~P.T. Barnum

When P.T. Barnum spoke about promotion, he was most likely using the word as a verb.  When I speak of promotions, I mean it as a noun.  It’s a planned and coordinated event meant to sell a specific product or service for a limited time and that meets a seasonally relevant consumer need.

Promotions, when done well, are an effective way for you to market your business or products and services.  I’m not talking about promotions where you drop the prices on your existing products significantly, or when you have a blowout sale to move stale inventory.  Instead I mean a well-planned, seasonally relevant focus on themes or solutions wrapped around your products that your customers will take note of and value, and that prospects will be enticed to try for the first time.

With that in mind, here are nine benefits of running a well-planned sales promotion:

1. Creates differentiation – When you launch a new product or ask customers to engage with your business in a new way, this sets you apart from your competition.  Promotion planning compels you to identify something new or different that offers value to your customers;
2. Creates new content and communication opportunities  – One of the easiest way to create new content for your customers is to create news.  Promotions are news.  News is content;
3. Creates upsell and cross sell opportunities  – When you package or bundle products around a theme or solution, you can often generate sales of multiple items rather than a single item.  When you focus on creating added value to your regular assortment, you can charge premium prices;
4. Drives customer decision making – Limited availability offers can create a sense of scarcity in your customers that get them to act.  When combined with new content that helps customers clearly see the benefits of what you are promoting, you can create compelling reasons to buy now.  If you can add sampling of your promotional item to the mix, you'll create a lot of reasons for customers to buy;
5. Creates word-of-mouth opportunities – If you operate a retail store, your regular customers are almost always in a routine to buy from you.  Promotions can often get your regular customers a new reason to be surprised and delighted by your business which gets them to talk about you  to their friends;
6. Creates training opportunities for your staff – Like regular customers, your retail sales staff (or any employees who have direct contact with customers), can fall into a routine and lose the enthusiasm in their voice.  Promotions gives you a chance to to train, prepare and reengage them in what’s new in your business;
7. Creates company focus on marketing – Developing a promotion calendar forces you to plan for new marketing programs focused at specific times of year.  If you don’t have a dedicated marketing team doing this for you already, creating a promotions mentality will get you marketing with more frequency and give you more experience to build on;
8. Creates testing opportunities  – Maybe you have ideas that you think customers will like but are unsure of the outcome.  Promotions give you a limited time window to test new ideas and new products and to measure them.  This will help you figure out whether they warrant additional investment of time and money to make them permanent products or services;
9. Grows revenue – As I like to say, Ka-Ching!  This is the lifeblood of your business.  Sales promotions are a great way to build year-over-year and month-over-month revenue growth.
    

What are other benefits you think of around sales promotions?
 

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
~George S. Patton

Sometimes all it takes to create a powerful marketing program is to think up new ways to deliver benefits to your customers.   In the event that you don’t have enough time to think this week, I’m offering you 5 new marketing ideas you can implement with just a bit of time, some basic communication efforts and no out-of-pocket spending.  Sure, you may need to offer a discount here and there, but if you learn something from doing any of these 5 ideas, it will be worth it.

My objectives with these ideas are that they help increase foot traffic, increase loyalty, increase word-of-mouth, or some combination of any of the above.  With each idea, I’ll tell you why it will be beneficial to your retail store, give you an example (or two) of how others have done something similar, and a mention few things you need to think about to implement without significant problems springing up.

Create a card asking customers for online reviews

Why?  It will help your search engine performance.  Increasing your online reviews is being increasingly recognized by Google and other search engines as important content that searchers value.  If some information has value to the searcher, then you can bet your bottom dollar that Google will find a way to capture that relevance in its search results.
Example:  I helped one of my clients get established on Google Places, yelp, tripadvisor and other relevant directories.  Now it plans to hand out a variation of this card to customers after completing their transactions.  Easy peasy!

Create a combo product that provides a customer discount over buying items separately

Why?  Increasing your average transaction amount is a great way to increase your overall revenue.  Yes, you will reduce your margin a bit, but if you combine the products into a solution that makes sense for your customer, you will start to train them to spend more in your store each visit.  Then your register will sound sweeter when it goes Ka-Ching!
Example:  The classic example is of a Happy Meal, or any other fast food combo.  When I worked for Clorox, we’d sometimes bundle two different scents of Pine-Sol into a combo pack.  If you have a café, you could create a breakfast special that includes a large coffee and a pastry.  Or if you have a deli, sandwich + chips + a beverage.  If you have a women’s boutique, maybe it’s a handbag and hat ensemble.  Get creative!

Create a customer photo contest

Why?  It allows your proudest customers to showcase their talents, and if you pick your theme right, your products.  It will also most likely result in you having lots of pictures of happy customers to share and reuse on your website, in marketing materials, or just displayed in your store.  After all, a picture tells a thousand words.
Example:  Pizza Orgasmica, a chain in San Francisco, hangs framed photos of customers and has a gallery on its website of customers who share pictures of them wearing branded t-shirts from around the world.  George’s Music in Berwyn Pennsylvania is running a photo contest though its Facebook page and asking fans and customers to “Post a pic of you and your instrument to our Wall.”

Bypass Groupon and announce your own group offer on your Facebook page

Why?   Your Facebook fans will see the offer, but they will probably have to round up non-Facebook fans to bring in a group to your store.  New customers introduced by current customers is a win-win for everybody.
Example:    Tropisueno, a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, has a standing group offer of free drinks for the person who brings in 5 additional friends.  If you own or manage a restaurant, my recommendation is to announce a specific day and specific time frame when this offer can be redeemed (such as Happy Hour) so you can fill seats that normally are unoccupied.

Tweet a secret word that customers have to share in order to get a discount or t-shirt (with purchase of course)

Why?  It keeps your customers engaged in your twitter feed, gets them more deeply involved in what you have to say through gaming mechanisms, and if you announce a secret word on random days, does not become a predictable way to get regular freebies (after all, people who only buy for free don’t help you make money).
Example:  Cold Fusion Gelato Store in Newport, RI

What downsides or challenges do you see about implementing any of these ideas?

 

“Beliefs and values that have held sway for thousands of years will be questioned as never before.”
~Carol P. Christ
 

Diageo is a global liquor and spirits giant.

An orthodoxy is a widely held belief about what drives success for a company or for an industry.  For instance, you (or your management) may believe that:

• to grow your business means that you have to do so at the expense of your competition (grow market share);
• to maximize sales, you need to own the major holidays, events, or usage occasions;
• men are the purchase decision makers for your products at retail.

An orthodoxy is just a fancy term for prevailing wisdom, and it’s usually rooted in past experience.   After all, leaders of businesses, be them marketing leaders or not, usually gain their positions of influence through delivering past results.

But what would happen if you turned the words “past experience” into a negative?  Perhaps you’d call it a dogma.  Then what you would have is a “established belief or doctrine…[that] is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioner or believers.”

What then happens when some heretic within the company (our outside the company) suggests that you challenge the beliefs you and the industry hold so sacredly, or better yet, gains information that refutes them?  What happens when you gain information that suggests that the world is changing, or has changed right before your eyes?

What happens is that you unlock a new world of opportunity and you get to innovate!

Diageo is a $14 billion global company that owns and markets many of the #1 alcohol brands within various segments.  It’s brand lineup is staggeringly impressive:  Smirnoff is the #1 vodka in the world, Johnnie Walker is the #1 whisky, Jose Cuervo the #1 tequilla, Bailey’s the #1 liqueur,  and Guinness the #1 stout.  

Diageo Expects Sales Growth After Focusing on Shoppers

Rather than resting on its laurels as the undisputed industry leader, 3 years ago, Diageo embarked on a mission to better understand who buys these products, why they buy them, and just as importantly, what stops them from buying them.  It created a shopper marketing team that set out to deepen its understanding of consumer shopping behavior.

Generating new consumer insights is not the only way to challenge your orthodoxies, but it’s a foundational marketing practice that often will.

So what did Diageo learn that were assuredly “aha” moments within the company?

• Women are the primary shoppers for spirits and liquors, not men, as had been assumed;
• People buy spirits and liquor for special occasions, but they define special occasions much more broadly and frequently than holiday and birthday celebrations, as had been assumed.  Informal, spontaneous group events such as dinners, porch parties, or backyard grilling were just as likely to drive purchase occasions;
• Many people are intimidated to buy spirits and liquors because they don’t have a go-to repertoire of cocktail recipes.  They don’t know what complimentary products they would need to be able to serve a cocktail to a friend or guest;
• Beyond the consumer insights, Diageo also learned to better understand its retailer’s needs in selling and marketing its products, that they were willing to partner to sell the category, rather than to assume its dominant position allowed it to assert is clout.

These new insights then led to a wide variety of programs that were tested with its retail partners and validated in market.  They include:

• Supplementing big holiday events where spirits and liquor are traditionally purchased with more year-round marketing;
• Development of programs to educated and take away the intimidation factor, such as “Simply Cocktails” which is a display and merchandising area where consumers are given options in how much complexity they are willing to use in order to create a cocktail;
• Diageo has increased the tools available to retailers to help them succeed in this category.  For instance, they provide food pairing and cocktail suggestion ideas that many consumers seek before they begin a shopping trip and when they visit the retailers’ website.   Additionally, retailers have the option of customizing the displays or using their own nomenclature, and selecting merchandising modules that fit their store size.

So what have been the results?

• Diageo says that it’s seeing double digit growth in its brand sales;
• It also says that it’s growing overall category sales, which its retail partners no doubt care about more;
• Presumably, as reflected in more sales, consumers are realizing the benefits of these programs, and ultimately, when you make your consumers happy, they reward you with sales.

Marketing has been changing rapidly as consumers gain greater control of the messages they are willing to listen to, in their ability find the information that’s important to them, and then to spread ideas and information through social media and word of mouth. 

Are you learning from your target customers how you can connect with them in more valuable ways, and in doing so, being open to challenging your own orthodoxies? 

 

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” ~George Bernard Shaw et's Be Frank is a relatively new retail store in San Francisco's Marina district.  In an increasingly competitive retail hot dog environment in San Francisco, Let's Be Frank differentiates itself from the pack by selling grass-fed beef hot dogs and ingredients from locally produced suppliers, from vegetables to buns to ice cream sandwiches sold as dessert.  And like many forward thinking retailers, it's already established a social media marketing presence with a Twitter profile and a Facebook fan page. Let's Be Frank recently created a promotion to achieve a goal of reaching 1,000 Twitter followers with an announced prize of 2 free 3-day passes to the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park on August 28-30 which has a value of $450. Unfortunately, as of yet, the business has failed to achieve it's goals, and quite frankly, looks in danger of not doing so by the time the festival occurs as it has added only about 100 followers since the promo was announced on August 14. The great thing is, that Let's Be Frank has created a promotion that has significant value.  The bad thing is that it's execution is not accomplishing its objectives. If I were in charge of running the promotion, here are some additional tactics I would use to accelerate the acquisition of Twitter followers.  Almost all of these ideas extend the messaging to additional media at a very low financial cost.  They merely take some planning and some time & effort.

1. Give good content: To date, most of the tweets and Facebook posts have been very narrow in scope, falling into approximately three content buckets: a) product descriptions; b) "help us to 1000 flwrs;" and c) "Twofer Tuesday" promos.  Why not also provide much more of the wonderful story-telling that makes this company different from the other dozen or more hot dog retailers in San Francisco?  I'd start by reposting the great content found at the bottom of its homepage which includes stories about the farms it buys from, press  coverage and video features, and then work to develop additional stories about its founders, its employees, its customers and any and everything that make this company unique.  Favorable customer reviews and tweets are also good ideas.  These are all of the assets that make this company different and worth following, and as a person who is passionate about local and sustainable foods, I KNOW there is a ton of material to share;
2. Follow new people: One of the most simple tactics to increase your Twitter following is to start following others.  So far, Let's Be Frank is following only 68 friends and has added only about 30 since the promotion started.  Social media marketing works best when there is an open dialogue with your customers (for good and for bad).  Let's Be Frank could increase its relationship building by asking its 368 Facebook fans to share their Twitter handles.  Then it could seek out new followers by following people who live within 5 miles of its zipcode.  To accomplish this, it could use any of the many services that help you identify Twitter users within a geographic area such as Twellohood, LocalTweeps, or TwitterLocal (this article identifies 9 potential services to use);
3. Send a press release to SF food blogs about the promotion:  Grub Street San Francisco, Eater SF, Bay Area Bites, and SFoodie are all blogs that report on the San Francisco Bay Area food scene.  Even with the demise of printed newspapers, bloggers still have the same needs as news reporters, and that is to find newsworthy stories to publish.  A press release is the way you can help them do their jobs with greater ease and thereby increase the odds that you will be mentioned;
4. Put a huge ad about the promotion on its website:  If you have news to share, why wouldn't you share it on your homepage? Not only is it a way to keep your site content fresh and to give your visitors something to look forward to, but it's another missed opportunity to communicate your offer in a channel that you control.  Check out how Peet's Coffee is currently promoting its latest limited availability product offering;
5. Add its web url to its Facebook fan page: [this is the .5 idea] Let's Be Frank could facilitate visiting the corporate website by adding a link within its Facebook fan page, as it does in its Twitter profile.  This could be a little more important than normal, given that its Twitter name is @letsbefranksf and its home page is www.letsbefrankdogs.com (not exacly the same);
6. Send out an email newsletter announcing the promotion: When I first visited the Let's Be Frank website, I signed up to receive its newsletter.  To date, I've not received one.  An opt-in email list can be one of the greatest assets a retailer owns, if only it uses it wisely and to communicate its authentic story, news and increase value propositions (such as a chance to win $450 in concert tickets);
7. Pass out a slip of paper to every retail customer announcing the promotion:  I ate at the store yesterday, and while the store does have a whiteboard that said "follow us on twitter," I was never informed of the promotion or chance to win $450 in concert tickets either verbally, or in any active way.  Handing a simple sheet of paper (also called a bag stuffer) announcing the promotion with my change could help spread the word among walk-in customers;
8. Have a easel backed display near the cash register announcing the promotion:  A counter sign, usually placed near the cash register, can also draw in the attention of walk in customers;
9. Partner with the Outside Lands Facebook Fan page to announce the promotion:  I don't know whether this is feasible, but the festival has a Facebook fan page as well, with 13,654 fans!.  A request to share the promotion on the site could easily be accomplished with a quick email, or a guerrilla campaign where Let's Be Frank posts a note to the Outside Lands fan page without permission could expose thousands of interested people to a way it could potentially receive free tickets to the event.

With just some more planning, a few more hours of work and the foresight to create an integrated campaign across media, I believe that Let's Be Frank could have hit a home run with this promotion and easily achieved its goal of reaching 1,000 Twitter followers before August 28. In the meantime, I'm going to go do my part to increase my chances of winning by retweeting "help us to 1000 flwrs @letsbefranksf! Once there, we'll pick a random flwr for 2, 3-DAY PASSES to OUTSIDE LANDS-$450 value! Hurry!" What other tactics would you recommend to help Let's Be Frank achieve it's Twitter follower goals?

“Persuasion is the centerpiece of business activity.”
“Story Telling That Moves People,” Harvard Business Review, June 2003: 1

Hare Krishna "marketing"

Free sampling is an age old marketing tactic that often arises from the idea that a customer first needs to try a product to reduce the future risk of spending money to buy it.  McDonald’s is currently using this tactic to get its customers to try its new line of Mocha coffees (good through August 3rd by the way).

McDonalds Free Mocha Mondays Trial Campaign

But as Robert Cialdini points out in his classic book Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion, trial tactics may actually carry a much deeper psychological connection that can help you sell more product via the concept known as reciprocation.

In short, Cialdini describes reciprocation as follows:

The rule says that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us.  If a woman does us a favor, we should do her one in return; if a man sends us a birthday present, we should remember his birthday with a gift of our own; if a couple invites us to a party, we should be sure to invite them to one of ours.  By virtue of the reciprocity rule, then, we are obligated to the future repayment of favors, gifts, invitations, and the like.

Cialdini also goes on to describe how the rule is so powerful as a social construct that it can even create situations where the rule often produces a “’yes’ response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused” and where “people we might ordinarily dislike – unsavory or unwelcome sales operators, disagreeable acquaintances, representatives of strange or unpopular organizations – can greatly increase the chance that we will do what they wish merely by providing us a small favor prior to their requests.”

Think about this! Cialdini asserts that you can persuade somebody to do something you want despite your request being one that the person would otherwise normally refuse or may be from somebody the person may not or does not even like.

Which brings us to Cialdini’s observations and examples of the Hare Krishnas.  He describes how the Krishnas, an Eastern religious sect comprised of “devotees – often with shaved heads, and wearing ill-fitting robes, leg wrappings, beads and bells” successfully grew in the number of followers as well as in wealth and property in the United States during the 1970’s.  He sets the situation for the successful reciprocation tactics that helped this group amass wealth by stating “The average American considered the Krishnas weird, to say the least, and was reluctant to provide them money to support them.”

So what did the Krishnas do to overcome this negative bias?

The Krishnas’ resolution was brilliant.  They switched to a fund-raising tactic that made it unnecessary for target persons to have positive feelings towards fund raisers.  They began to employ a donation-request procedure that engaged the rule for reciprocation, which … is strong enough to overcome the factor of dislike for the requester.”

The … strategy … involves the solicitation of contributions in public places with much pedestrian traffic (airports are a favorite), but now, before a donation is requested, the target person is given a “gift” – a book (usually the Bhagavid Gita), the Back to Godhead magazine of the society, or, in the most cost-effective version, a flower.  The unsuspecting passerby who suddenly finds a flower pressed into his hands or pinned to his jacket is under no circumstances allowed to give it back, even if he asserts he does not want it.  “No, it is our gift for you,” says the solicitor, refusing to accept it.  Only after the Krishna member has thus brought the force of the reciprocation rule to bear on the situation is the target asked to provide a contribution to the society.   This benefactor-before-beggar strategy has been wildly successful for the Hare Krishna Society, producing large-scale economic gains and funding for the ownership of temples, businesses, houses, and property in 108 centers in the United States and overseas.”

The natural lesson here is for marketers who develop “free sample” programs.  Cialdini addresses this directly with the following:

As a marketing technique, the free sample has a long and effective history.  In most instances, a small amount of the relevant product is provided to potential customers for the stated purpose of allowing them to try it to see if they like it.  And certainly this is a legitimate desire of the manufacturer – to expose the public to the qualities of the product.  The beauty of the free sample, however, is that it is also a gift and, as such, can engage the reciprocity rule.  In true jujitsu fashion, the promoter who gives free samples can release the natural indebting force inherent in a gift while innocently appearing to have only the intention to inform.  A favorite place for free samples is the supermarket, where customers are frequently provided with small cubes of a certain variety of cheese or meat to try.  Many people find it difficult to accept a sample from the always-smiling attendant, return only the toothpick, and walk away.  Instead, they buy some of the product, even if they might not have liked it especially well.”

I suspect McDonald’s knows this all too well.  By offering free samples of its Mocha and Iced Mocha beverages within its stores, it’s highly likely that the taster will also buy additional food.  I also  suspect that Monday was selected as a day of the week where sales are normally not as strong as other days of the week.

At the end of the day, that is the role of the marketing manager: to persuade people to become customers and to buy your products and services.  I highly recommend that you read (or re-read) Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion to gain additional insights into how you can refine your persuasion skills.

P.S.  Reading about Krishnas at the airport always reminds me of this scene from the 1980 movie Airplane.  Enjoy!

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” ~G.K. Chesterton Once again, at least a half dozen retailers that I visited yesterday passed up the opportunity to completely surprise and delight me by offering me a discount, or even free item as a reward for my voting in a special California election yesterday. In California, after exercising my voting rights, I’m always given the above sticker to wear as an expression of my civic pride, and I almost always wear it on my shirt the rest of the day.  Had I walked into a retail store wearing this sticker, and been told “may I give you a complimentary cup of coffee for voting today (or free slice of pizza, or $2 off any purchase)” not only would I have been surprised and delighted and probably mentioned this act to a friend or two, but I would have begun to think that this company, this brand, cared about my activities in some real life and positive way. How is your business and brand demonstrating to your customers that you care about them more than just how often and how much they hand you money?  Caring is a powerful connecting attribute that you should consider showing far more often.  And it's pretty easy to do.

“If you want to stand out, don't be different; be outstanding.” ~ Meredith West This is a market.  It’s located at 22nd & Irving (surprise!). I suppose if I were going to land a small aircraft on this block, I’d be happy knowing where I was.  It’s kind of hard to tell from the photo, but the front of that building has got to be 25 feet tall and 50 feet wide.  But not even a store name is to be found.  From a distance, you may never even realize what kind of market it is (it's a grocery store by the way). Marketing communications should attempt to persuade customers to get closer to buying.  Excellent marketing communications gets customers to part with their money and actually make a purchase.  So instead of some generic street address that lacks persuasion, why not something like:? Neighborhood Grocer •    Organic Fruits & Vegetables •    Daily Roasted Chickens •    Hot Ready-to-Eat Lunches & Dinners I’m guessing it’s because that would be too difficult to pull off. What other products or services would make you stop and take notice of a neighborhood market? Aside from being conveniently located and carrying the right inventory, what would your dream market or grocery store do for you?  Maybe they would say ‘Hi Gary!’ every time you enter the store?  Maybe they would pick your orders and deliver in the neighborhood?  Maybe they would hold a soup recipe contest, invite neighborhood customers as judges to select their favorite, name the soup after the winner ("Sally Murphy's Mediterranean Soup") and hold a party to give free samples to anybody who shows up?