The good news for retailers this Valentine’s Day is that consumer spending is on the rise. An annual Valentine’s Day survey, conducted by the National Retail Federation, suggests an 11% increase in spending on Valentine’s Day purchases. The expected total spending on all the romance is in the neighborhood of $15 billion dollars.

If you’re a retail store or restaurant owner, you should definitely be reaping some of those benefits from increased consumer spending.

And if you’re a retail store or restaurant owner, you should definitely be planning how you will attract those sales. Throwing a few paper hearts in the window is great, but come on: you can do better than that.

Even though we are less than one week to V-Day, you can still make the time count.

10 Last-Minute V-Day Marketing Ideas

1. Market to the ladies! Though men traditionally spend more on their Valentines than the other way around, women still comprise a large chunk of Valentine’s change, with the average female consumer expecting to spend around $80 on Valentine’s purchases this year. So clear out some of that lacey, heart-shaped stuff and put together some gift packages and product promotions that any red-blooded male would be happy to receive as a gift.

2. Put together a last-minute shopper’s package. Or several. There will be many who delay shopping until the last minute, and if you can present options that are thoughtful, creative, beautifully packaged, and good for several price points, you can get their business.

3. Hold extended hours on the weekend before Valentine’s Day. If you’re not usually open on the weekend, make an exception. Stay open late on Saturday night. Open up for a few hours on Sunday afternoon. Advertise your additional hours, of course, as a special time for Valentine’s shoppers.

4. Offer Early Bird Specials on V-Day itself. This year Valentine’s Day falls on a Monday; open up a couple of hours early for those wanting to grab a gift on their way to work. Put together a special discount for the Early Bird Shoppers. Have some piping hot coffee available, too. Donuts wouldn’t hurt.

5. Offer free delivery. Of course, not every business is set up for this, but if you are, then capitalize on it. Restaurants could offer pre-made romantic dinners to be delivered the day of (or a day ahead) with instructions on cooking or reheating as needed. Retail shops (beyond florists!) could offer beautiful wrapping and timely delivery of any Valentine’s gift purchased. It doesn’t have to be free, either.

6. Offer a custom shopping service. If you have some talented sales staff, offer to assist shoppers; uncertain or time-crunched spouses can call in with a price point, a few details about their significant other’s tastes, and then have you pick out, wrap (and deliver?) and charge them for a great, custom-selected gift.

7. Appeal to the rebels and creatives. Break out of the traditional Valentine’s Day flowers-candy-chocolates-dining gift list. What do you have that is quirky, funny, creative, off the cuff, special in a non-sappy way? There are plenty of people who are tired of the same old options. Give them something refreshing for a change.

8. Go with a red-and-white color theme. Help yourself think out of the box by promoting anything that fits into your red-and-white criteria as potential Valentine’s material. You could even offer a discount on any red or white items purchased between now and February 14th.

9. Offer an incentive with a future deal. Give a coupon towards 20% off future purchases with any purchase made for Valentine’s Day. Designate amounts if you want. Or make it for a specific product or service.

10. Extend your great offers through “Valentine’s Week.” Offer deals for the dudes in the doghouse (“Forgot Valentine’s Day? We can help!”) or the gals who didn’t get what they wanted (“Not loving your Valentine’s gift? Come pick out your own!”). Hey, when love is in the air, don’t just leave it hanging!

Image: Samantha Marx.

Improve Your Holiday Sales by Promoting your Holiday Sales Online

In this day of increasing e-commerce importance, Black Friday is now only half of the post-Thanksgiving shopping megathon. Cyber Monday is the other half, just one more (strong) indication that the masses aren’t just shopping in-store anymore. They are, most definitely, shopping online. As we near the Christmas deadline, the shopping averse, busy mommy in me has once again found myself leaning on e-commerce… With that in mind, I send my annual encouragement to make this the year that you enjoy the increased profits possible from delving into the online world of e-commerce sales…

It’s easier than ever before: You can attract the online shopping crowd even if you’re not selling online by promoting your holiday specials via your website, blog, Facebook page, and/or Twitter account. Any presence you have online is a great opportunity to let the crowds – local and beyond – about your holiday specials.

Do a Little Decorating

Customize your website, blog, or Facebook page with a little Christmas décor. Add a graphic or two, or simply put a big “Happy Holidays” or other seasonal greeting front and center where all the visitors will see it.

Tell Them Where to Go

Put up a graphic, tab, or link on the navigation bar to direct your online visitors to your holiday specials. If you’re using Facebook, you can add a special tab designated as “Holiday Deals” or anything along that line. You can even make that tab the default-landing page for the holiday shopping season.

Talk About It

Have a blog? Put up a post each day describing one of your holiday specials, your great product, your discounts, and why what you’re offering will be the perfect gift. Get customer testimonials and put them on your blog, website, and Facebook page.

Use Twitter

Be sure to promote your holiday specials with your Twitter account. Use Twitter hash tags like #holidayshopping, #holidaydeals, #cyberweek, #shopping, and #deals. Offer good deals and great products, and make sure people know about them.

Take notes and don’t let another year go by without having online shopping options for your business. These same ideas translate nicely to Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s & Father’s Day, etc. – so get out there and grow your business with online sales options!

Image by Medmoiselle T.

Collecting customer information is one of the best forms of marketing you have. It gives you the ability to get in touch with people who have already been to your brick-and-mortar store, who have experienced your services or products, who have, essentially, already begun building a relationship with you. And best of all? It’s free. You may pay out a little bit if you send postcards or a paper newsletter or flyer, but the cost is minimal compared to paying for a radio or newspaper ad. And if you start moving your customer interactions online, you can use this customer information to stay in contact with your customers and prospect list via email without any postage or printing cost. (More on e-mail marketing ideas.)

So what stops local business owners from regularly collecting customer information?

• They don’t think about it.
• They don’t want to be pushy.
• They don’t know how.

Start Thinking About It
If I offered you a way to get targeted marketing messages to your best customers for free, wouldn’t you be interested? That’s what collecting customer information is all about it. “Not thinking about it” is just a poor excuse, so here’s your free reminder to start thinking about and take advantage of a great marketing strategy. You don’t have to be pushy to ask if people want to be on your Preferred Customer List. You just ask, politely, and give them a quick and easy way to sign up. If you get a “No” in response, you don’t have to push it.

How to Collect the Information

• Step 1: Make it quick and easy.

Have a simple form handy, make lots and lots of copies, and leave it out in your retail space. Don’t make the form long; in fact, the shorter the better. Ask for the customer’s name, email address, and (perhaps) phone number or mailing address. The name and email address are the essentials, and you can just stick with those and get great results.

• Step 2: Make it beneficial for the customer.

Give your list a name – the Preferred Customer List or something along those lines – and give customers a clear, concise reason why they should join it. “For exclusive offers.” “For special discounts.” “For members-only events.”

• Step 3: Train your employees.

Create a short script and train every single employee to go through that script. It can be very short, and very simple: “Sir or Ma’am, would you like to sign up for our Preferred Customer List? We just need your email address, and you’ll get access to exclusive offers just for our Preferred Customers.” Teach your employees to have the form and a pen ready, and hold it out to the customer while they are asking the question. This small physical gesture makes it almost instinctive for the customer to reach forward. And no, employees shouldn’t be pushy either. If a customer declines, all that is needed is a polite response: “Well, maybe next time! Thanks for shopping with us!”

• Step 4: Be an Example.

Let your employees see you going through that script whenever you ring out a customer, answer a question, or call a customer about a special order. The script can easily be followed over the phone; you or your employee will just need to take the information verbally and write it down.

• Step 5: Be True to Your Word

If you’ve offered exclusive deals or special events, follow through. A weekly email is best, but at the least follow up with a monthly email offering a special deal, coupon, or event. Make sure the folks on your mailing list understand that it’s exclusive; that’s the value for them.

• Step 6: Get Feedback

Over time, your list will grow and you’ll have customers you get to know well. Use your list to get feedback on everything from your products to your store appearance to the kind of deals or events they would really like to see. Your customer list can quickly become a very valuable, informal method of market research; and the market is your ideal customer, so you know the information is good. (Here is a cool idea on WHAT to send to your e-mail list once you create it.)

The holidays are the perfect time to start collecting customer information, so get to it. Create that form and start asking. You’ll have a great way to follow up with all those new customers you get shopping for holiday specials.

Image by bulliver.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do a series on local business marketing planning for local or small enterprises. This is the sort of planning that you should be thinking about right now as the year winds down and another gets ready to launch:

1. What will you do differently in 2011?
2. What are your goals for 2011?
3. What is your unique strategy to connect with customers in 2011?
4. What media will you use to communicate with customers, vendors, prospects, employees, etc. in 2011?
5. What products/services, etc. will you offer in 2011? What will be different or the same from 2010?

And many more questions just like these? How do you answer those questions strategically – and literally – for your business, so that you get your new year off to a blazing start? It all boils down to your local business marketing plan for 2011. That’s what we’ll be unpacking in the next few weeks.

Why is this important?

A local business marketing plan is important because many of you would otherwise march into 2011 without a single strategic weapon in place. Things happen just like you plan them – and if you don’t plan or you plan to fail – you’ll get just that. Local business must PLAN for success – create a road map that will win – not unlike a military going into battle. Yes, sometimes things don’t work out precisely as planned – but at least you have the order of the plan that you can change and aren’t just marching blindly into battle. Your chances of success are increased exponentially with the careful attention to planning that you give – and the success will be sweet at the end when you win – and win big for your local business!

Here’s how this will work:

Some of the content will be available here on the blog. A LOT of it will be in written “lesson” format via our e-mail newsletter. Let’s just say that 2/3 of the content will arrive in your inbox. Once I’ve finished the series, I’ll compile it all into an e-book and teach a webinar on the topic of local business marketing plans around the first week of the year.

The first e-mail lesson will go out next Tuesday, so go ahead and sign-up for the e-mail newsletter now, so you don’t miss a thing. (Motivating hint: the first lesson is something you can accomplish in ten minutes even in the midst of the holiday bustle to position yourself for a successful planning session later when things slow down a bit.)

Sign up in the box on the top right side of the page… just click here… and happy 2011 planning!

Photo Credit: West Point Public Affairs

So you’ve decided to host a holiday event at your locally owned, brick-and-mortar retail or restaurant business. You’ve got a night picked, a theme, and you’re busy planning decorations, entertainment, food… and, of course, plenty of holiday specials to boost those end-of-year sales. You’re on the right path, but the one thing you don’t want to forget is promotion. If you don’t put some time and planning into promoting your big date, you might have a very small turn-out. And after all the work you’re putting in, you want a great response. Here’s how to get one:

First: Identify the specific reasons people will want to come to your holiday event.
You think it’s going to be fun, and you know you want to boost sales. But you can hardly invite the general public – or even your favorite customers – to a special night just to “help boost my sales.” So you need to figure out the appeal for your customers. Is it the great food? The holiday atmosphere? The amazing deals and one-night-only specials? The entertainment? The raffle with over-the-top prizes? The chance to support a charity (here are some ideas in these posts), be part of the community, or get a coupon or freebie by bringing a friend?

Second: Think about all the ways you can communicate with your customers.
Do you have a business website? That’s one way.
How about a business blog? There’s another way. (Here are some business blogging ideas if you need them.)
A Facebook page?
A Twitter account?
An email list?
Those are your online options.
How about the local newspaper? Are there any community or trade magazines? Do you advertise on radio? Do you have a mailing list of customers? An ad in a local newspaper can be relatively inexpensive and can be a great way to promote your event. You might also look into community calendars, both online and in local print publications. Many will put your event on the calendar for free.
You can create a postcard or invitation and mail it out; you can create brochures and hand them out. You can hang signs in the windows of your store.

Don’t forget simple word-of-mouth as well. Have your employees invite every customer who walks in the door. It’s even better if you can hand each customer a paper invitation or flyer, so they can take the information home. Offering a “reward” (such as a special discount, coupon, or freebie) for every friend a customer brings to the event is a great way to increase word-of-mouth.

Third: Partner with other local business owners.
Think about the other businesses in your area. Some may not be set up to adequately host their own holiday event; would they be interested in becoming an event partner? They can help sponsor the event, cut some of your costs, advertise their own products or services, and promote the event to their own customers. Many professionals such as lawyers, CPAs, and consultants, may work from a small office or from their own homes; hosting an event may not be feasible for them, but partnering with you can be a great option. You both benefit from the increased exposure and from the new prospects you will bring to each other.

Fourth: Do something every day to promote the date.
Invest some money in traditional advertising, if you can. Post daily updates and news about your event online. And make a few phone calls, personally inviting people to the event. Five phone calls each day can add up to quite a lot of responses when the event rolls around.

A well-planned, well-promoted, and well-executed holiday event will not only boost your end-of-year sales, it will also leave your customers with a delightful impression of you and your business. You’ll get a chance to mingle with customers new and old, build new relationships, and re-establish old ones. And that kind of investment will carry over well into the year to come.

Image by Smart Destinations.

Tis the season for a holiday marketing strategy. Want to sell more in your retail store or restaurant this year? Try these marketing tips for your holiday sales event, and we bet you’ll sell more stuff!!

Know what people like about the holiday seasons? It gives everyone the excuse to party a little bit more. Holiday events – complete with holiday food – are one of the things people like most about the winter holidays. From Halloween bonfires and chili fests to New Year’s Eve late-night bashes and appetizer buffets, the whole gamut of winter holidays gives us all plenty of opportunities to get together, celebrate, eat, and enjoy the season.

So why not use the natural inclination we all have to mingle and munch? Create a holiday event for your brick-and-mortar local store; invite your customers; promote it publicly; and then be a great host or hostess and watch sales happen.

Keys to a Successful Holiday Event

First, you’ve got to create some holiday spirit.
Don’t try to host a Christmas open house if the only decoration you have is a spindly wreath on the front door. Put up a Christmas tree, hang some lights… you know, deck the halls. Get a selection of Christmas music and make sure it’s playing throughout the party. Make the place smell Christmasy by burning cinnamon-scented candles or having a big bubbling pot of apple cider.

The point to remember is that if you’re going to invite your customers in to celebrate the holidays at your retail store or restaurant, you need to create a holiday-themed, celebratory atmosphere. Go all out.

Second, give people a reason to linger.
Food is a key ingredient in a successful event; have plenty of munchable items and a selection of drinks. Make it easy for people to munch, browse, and talk. Keep trays and drinks refilled.

If you’re hosting a holiday event in your restaurant, your food options increase exponentially. You can host a themed dinner, a dessert party, anything you want because you’re equipped with the kitchen and seating. If you’re a retail shop, set up a food area and a bar, hire a couple of servers, and make the food easy to eat (think finger food) so people won’t struggle with using a fork while balancing a plate and a cup.

Entertainment is always a good option as well. You can have party games, a live band, an old holiday movie showing on a big screen, a raffle, a dance floor, a stage for karaoke. It’s up to you and what will work for your space and resources. People don’t need expensive, fancy entertainment to have a good time.

Third, display your products prominently.
Don’t be shy about what you’re trying to sell. Create holiday specials and make big, beautiful displays to show them off. Make it easy for people to see what you’re offering. You might consider having a raffle or giveaway and let one of your holiday specials be the prize. Offer special, event-only discounts and deals. Go over the specials with all your employees so they can easily show them off to guests.

Use your online presence (website, blog, Facebook, Twitter) to promote your event. If you have an email list, send out a special invitation to your email customers. Put up signs in your store. Put an ad in the local paper. Invite the town and be sure they know what you’re offering: food, drink, entertainment, a fun night out. And, of course, some of the best deals of the holiday season.

Image by ms. Tea.

This week I have a very simple marketing tip of the week for you Make sure that in the rush of the holiday season and pushing out lots of marketing messages to meet those media deadlines that you make sure you match your marketing message with your call to action.

First off, why should the marketing message & call to action match? (And similarly, why is a call to action so critical to marketing?) Here are a few of the reasons:

1. You’ll get to your goal faster (and increase sales) by asking for what you want.

2. Your marketing will be more measurable – so if it’s not working you can quit wasting money and if it is, you’ll know where to focus.

3. Clear messages and action items are easier to share – which will expose your business virally to more new customers.

Case Study: Wrong Call to Action

We drove past a billboard last night that basically said “Losing Weight Can Start Online.”

And it displayed a phone number.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Match your marketing message with your call to action.

It’s a simple step-wise process to achieve this marketing tip:

1. Have a marketing strategy. (What is your goal? What do you want customers to do? How can you reach them and motivate them?)

2. Create a marketing message. (What marketing message will motivate folks to do what you want them to do? What can you say or offer that will inspire action?)

3. Insert a call to action. (Ask them to do what you want them to do. Don’t forget to actually HAVE a call to action – and make sure that the call to action makes sense with the message that you sent.)

Examples of Matching Messages & Calls to Actions

Marketing Message: Invitation to attend an event and RSVP for a chance to win!

Call to Action: RSVP online with an e-mail address (so even if they don’t show up, you have their contact information).

Marketing Message: Get updates on new merchandise & special offers

Call to Action: Link to sign-up for the e-mail list / URL for sign-up landing page

Marketing Message: Buy Gift Certificates for Christmas Gifts!

Call to Action: Buy Online or In-Store – include web site URL where gift certificates can be purchased and store physical address

Of course, what should have the billboard have done differently?

Of course, if weight loss starts online – then there should be a URL where I can start my weight loss. Not a phone number.

What marketing messages are you sending this holiday season? Do you have a strong and connected call to action in all of your marketing messages? What’s working well for you?

Photo By: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent)