Category Archives: retail promotions

Great Retail Promotion Idea

Looking for a new promotion idea to use at the local festival, sidewalk sale or even in your store? Check out this “Grab Bag” idea featured by Bob Negen on the Whizbang! Training site. People like surprises and they like a good deal, and this promo idea has the best of both worlds. Plus, people are likely to spend more when them come into the store to cash in the $1-$10 gift certificate they won! Read on –

You know, a little bit of imagination can take you a long way.  Re-imagining, re-inventing an idea to make it your own is what having your own business is all about.  It’s one of the reasons we really liked this Tip sent in by a reader last week…

Sidewalk sales are coming up this month for many of you and we thought this idea from Shari Aussant could easily be transplanted from her local fair to your sidewalk.  It’s a fun, imaginative way to create excitement, increase sales, get rid of excess inventory, and boost the number of transactions per customer.

  
“Hi Bob –

Your Tip of the Week re: using gift certificates to increase traffic in the shop was fantastic! Our shop sponsored a table at a local fair and we were fresh out of ideas of what to do to create excitement.  The night before I re-read your email and listened again to the pod-cast and here is what we came up with;

We filled 500 grab bags with product that wasn’t moving.  Candles that were not the best, free samples given to us by our companies, hot chocolate packets, teas, all little items that we had sitting around.  For $1.00 customers could pick a gift bag and in 50 of the bags we hid plastic gift cards with random amounts ranging from $1 to $10 with one $50.  We also filled a retro bubble gumball machine with fun prizes and free samples for 50 cents a chance to win a $25 gift card.

The bubble gum machine brought in $325 and the Grab Bags brought in over $500.  We made our cost back of all the items given away, covered the cost of the table, staff, and gift cards.  We passed out hundreds of little $5 gift certs as well and the store which had a history of being quiet on festival days, ended up having a banner day with all the new customers that were coming in with the gift cards and mystery gift certificates.  The winners had to physically bring in the card for us to run it on the machine to see what dollar amount they won!  It was so fun and our table was the busiest one at the fair.  People were jumping when they got a card in their bag as well as with all the freebies they got.

Thanks so much for all of your great ideas, we are having such fun with your e-blasts!”

 – Shari Aussant  http://www.oldcompanystore.com/



Please let me know how this promotion idea works out for you! Sounds like fun!

Improve your Retail Sales, Promotions and In-Store Events

I know that a lot of stores and businesses are having all kinds of promotions and events right now so I want to talk about evaluating your events and how you could make them even better. Bob and Susan Negen of Whizbang! Training covered this topic splendidly recently so I’ll have them tell you about it. Take it way, Bob and Susan!

After EVERY promotion or event, big or small, have a Recap Meeting. This meeting is a chance to celebrate a job well done or talk about why something didn’t work as planned.It also gives you a chance to get everyone’s ideas on how to make the event better the next time around.These meetings are best when you have them right after you close, but you can wait until the next day if it works better. Don’t wait any longer than the following day. Wait too long and you’ll lose all the little impressions and fun, interesting ideas that are so important to continually improving your event.Here’s a quick list of things to things to make notes about in your meeting:

  • Sales: Planned vs. Actual
  • Cost of Event: Budgeted vs. Actual
  • Pre Event Planning: What worked, what didn’t, and what can we do better/differently next time?
  • The Event Itself: What worked, what didn’t, and what can we do differently/better next time?
  • After the Event: What worked, what didn’t, and what can we do better/differently next time?
  • Promoting/Marketing the Event: What worked, what didn’t, and what can we do better next time?
  • Other Thoughts/Comments/Ideas

Write everything down, put your notes in a file and you’ve got the beginnings of a bigger, better and more profitable event the next time around!