January.

For retailers, it’s cold not just outside, but indoors when it comes to moving the stock off the shelves. After the Christmas-buying sprees, most shoppers are back at home cooling their heels while retailers try to entice them back out to buy. The one stand-by many local store owners turn to is holding big sales, and they’re finding that in a tough economy it’s necessary to offer deeper and deeper discounts to get folks back and willing to buy. It’s great to have warm bodies in your store again, but it’s not great if your sale ends up making you no profit due to all that deep discounting.

So what’s the method of success that allows you to get the customers back and still make a profit? Is there a way to get both?

There are several methods you can employ to attract business and still maintain a profit margin. See which one of these (or more than one) will work best in your restaurant, retail store, or service-based business and give it a go.

Know Your Bottom Line, and Sell Just Above

This is the method to use with that inventory that needs to move out the door, not with that great new batch of products that just came in for Spring. Calculate your bottom dollar on these items: how low can you go and still make something, even if it’s a small something? Then make your strategy to sell many of these items, each bringing in that small amount of profit, and you’ll end up with a good amount of profit when all is said and done. Plus you’ll have cleared your store of excess, aging inventory.

Create a Loss-Leader

Grocery stores use the loss-leader method just about every week; their circulars advertise a deal that’s “too good to pass up” for their shoppers. In many cases, the grocery stores are taking a loss on this item, but they know that just getting the customers in the store is worth that small loss. How many times have you gone to the grocery store and bought just one item? Most of us don’t shop for groceries that way, and why not? Because in the process of locating and purchasing the loss-leader item, we’re unable to ignore the displays of other great merchandise – some also discounted, some not – that we have to walk past and around to find our goal. Use the same strategy in your store; advertise a huge discount on a popular item, set up a great display for it, and put it smack in the middle of many other great displays with enticing offers of their own.

Offer Package Deals

Another angle on the loss-leader strategy is to offer package deals and discounts; this method allows you to package your items of choice together, being sure that one of them is a cheaper item for you to purchase, which gives you greater wiggle room for a discount. You can offer a greater discount on a combined package, knowing that your combined investment in all the package items is still well below the discounted package price. You might even use a “buy one of these, get one of these other things” free method to sell a costlier item without a discount while taking the “loss” on your cheaper, freebie item. It’s the same method beauty product companies’ use when they offer a “special gift” with a purchase.

Add Value that Doesn’t Cost You Cash

What can you offer your customers that doesn’t come with any cash cost to you? Look beyond the basic inventory, and think about subscriptions, memberships, special discount or dining clubs, consultations, or other perks that offer a huge incentive for customers thinking about a purchase. The value is still there for the customer, who would otherwise have to pay to get the subscription or membership or consultation; but the value-added item isn’t costing you cash that you can’t afford to lose. Use these value-added items to upsell; offer them as freebies or part of a package, which allows you to give your customers an increased value for the same cost without decreasing your profit margin.

What method sounds best for your business?

Image by Alan Cleaver2000.

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On Thursday, Facebook announced major changes to the platform that we all know – and hardly love. Through the wonders of modern technology (thank you, C Spire), I watched the entire presentation through streaming video, from my car, while Andy drove. An hour or so later, my summary and comments went to the media in the following statement. To begin what will certainly be a lengthy discussion on this blog of the money-making possibilities for a variety of businesses with the new Facebook platform, I wanted to share this release with you.

Chapman Comments on Facebook Overhaul

September 22, 2011 – Today, changes were announced in the last few hours by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg. Below is a summary and extemporaneous comments from The Gibbes Company’s Director of New Media Marianna Chapman.

Today, Facebook announced major changes that in the words of their CEO Mark Zuckerburg will “reinvent industries.”
Among those that will be transformed by today’s announcement are music, video, media, and businesses selling lifestyle brands, products or experiences… that’s a pretty broad range of reinvention!

Facebook’s announcement today centered around two major changes and a third change that I believe is the most transformational of all for business. Today’s announcement will forever change the way that life is shared and how content spreads virally throughout the social web.

Most importantly for business, I believe, is the introduction of “verbs” to the open graph. Last year, Facebook introduced nouns to the open graph, allowing users to “like” a variety of people, places, things, experiences, etc. Many businesses have experienced the benefit of the “like” button as it has driven personal preferences for brands, products and experiences virally over the past year.

Now, verbs are added. Developers will be able to add any verb they wish to the open graph and insert those reactions into the open graph in a variety of ways. For example, the possibilities include the addition of a “want,” “ate,” “cooked,” “read,” “listened” or “watched” buttons that operate similarly to the current “like” button. For business purposes, this allows marketers to personalize more specifically how users engage with products, brands and experiences in a way that boosts social sharing – and thus the exponential power of their marketing machine when used strategically.

Beyond this development, two major interface changes were announced.

Beginning immediately for developers in beta format, and then rolling out to all users over the next few weeks, Facebook will introduce the Facebook Timeline. The Facebook Timeline will entirely replace the current personal Profile for Facebook users. Facebook calls this Profile replacement a way to present the “story of your life.” This new format looks to me a lot like a “Tumblr style” blog presentation of all the various types of experiences in your life including photos, videos, wall posts and comments, travel, and interactions with all of life among other things.

Next, canvas apps will allow for “frictionless experiences” with apps, and therefore products, brands and experiences, on Facebook. Think of it like the demise of the pop-up box and the birth of more real-time web-based social sharing… That’s a mouthful! But the interface looks fantastic, and the development options for business are mind-boggling. Facebook will immediately introduce music, video and news apps with the launch of Timeline.

These Facebook developments present a fundamental leap forward in the power of Facebook for viral marketing as well as the overall power of social sharing on the greater web.

Want to talk about this more?

Contact me directly at mchapman at gibbes dot net, or let’s chat in the comments. I welcome your thoughts and this discussion is just getting started to be sure!

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It’s time to consider using video to market your business. It doesn’t matter what size business you have, video is now an affordable and most importantly, effective, tool that can improve sales significantly. The following statistics about marketing with online video using video sharing sites should make you think twice about ignoring this powerful marketing tool:

“Video in email marketing increases click-through rates by 96%.” – Implix 2010 Email Marketing Trends Survey

“Press releases that include video components receive 500% increase in views.” – Eloqua, April 2010

I found these stats over on Pixability’s web site that say that sites with video receive…

• 30% more clicks
• 18% more calls
• 30% more store visits
• 24% more purchases than those without video

In July 2011, a Pew Research Center study said that 71% of adults watch online video like YouTube or Vimeo videos. According to this study, rural and minority Internet users are no less likely to watch online video than suburban or city dwellers. Men and women are also equally likely to use video-sharing sites. Also of interest, parents use video-sharing sites more than non-parents. Some 81% of parents in the Pew study reported using video-sharing sites compared to 61% of the non-parents.

Mobile use is on the rise, too… It seems that 34% of cell phone users in the United States have shot video with their phone, 26% have watched video on their phone and 22% have posted videos or photos online… all from their mobile phone.

YouTube viewership has grown from 8 million views a day at the end of 2005 to 3 billion views a day in 2011, according to YouTube.

All of this on the heels of Forrester Research’s stunning announcement in 2009 stating “You are 53x more likely to appear on Page 1 of Google’s search results if you have video on your web site.”

Now. That is shocking.

Why aren’t you using video in your marketing? What is holding you back? Ask your questions or share your roadblocks, and I’ll try to answer your questions in future posts on this blog.

Photo Credit: Mike Jennings

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I subscribe to lots of online, big box and chain restaurant e-mail newsletters. Why? Because it helps me keep a pulse on the offers and strategies that you local folks are competing with, so I can help you stay on the cutting edge and out maneuver those slow turning big box battleships.

Today I want to use an example from a Boden e-mail newsletter – a company that I think does a very nice job with strategy, offer composition and color psychology in their e-mail marketing efforts.

Win from the Start

All those complicated matters aside, note this one liner found at the top of their e-mails:

Apply this Idea Today

You can do this, too. No matter what e-mail marketing software you use, there is a “click here to read this online” or some one liner similar to that as a default setting on your e-mail marketing software – and included in every e-mail you send – whether from Constant Contact, aWeber, MyEmma, Blue Sky Factory or the like…

Instead of the default message, try updating the message every time you send an e-mail to match the content of your message. Many smartphones don’t automatically load images on such e-mails, and many e-mails go to the smartphone first. Try structuring your next e-mail to include a beefier “can’t see this message?” one liner that includes the offer. I also like that the “click here to view online” element of this sentence is earlier in the sentence rather than later. And I also like that the one liner is short enough to just be literally ONE LINE in the visual display of the e-mail on my computer screen.

Keep it simple but make the offer and ask for the sale right away, and watch your click-thru rates and conversions climb.

Happy e-mailing!

Photo credits: Boden USA (http://www.bodenusa.com)

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