Business Builders
Retail Support Seminars
May 14
Techniques
for retaining and generating business
in
Rockbridge County

Your Goal
• Keep the customers you have
– Identify Them
– Reach Out to Them
– Give Them Special Incentives
Fact: Most customers are lost due to apathy

Your Goal
• Attract New Customers
– Locals:
• Push them to your door with Advertising and
promotion
• Keep your promises and build your brand
– Tourists:
• Your windows MUST invite
• You must WELCOME everyone

Business Builders
• Successful selling is a combination of
forces (outside) and factors (inside):
– Outside Forces
• The customers that come to Lexington
– What are they like? How can I appeal to them?
• The economic picture
– Do they have expendable income to spend on my goods or
services?
• The weather (even)

– Inside Factors
- What does my store, restaurant, business look like?
- Have I delineated sales items?
- Do I have any promotions in place?
- Is my sales staff appealing?

Marketing is the combination of
everything you do.

Push & Pull Marketing
• Retail marketing derives from a sound
strategy, as should any marketing effort.
– Push Marketing
• creating a stimulus through advertising, side walk
boards and windows to bring customers (push them)
to your business.
– Pull Marketing
• creating a stimulus in-store to bring customers (pull
them) into your store.

Push Marketing
• Traditional Methods:
– Advertising
• Broadcast • Print
Broadcast = TV and Radio
Print = newspaper, flyers, signage, outdoor
• Wireless
– A hot item that is growing beyond the young . . . Active
websites & internet advertising, blogs, twitter, facebook,
etc.

Push/Pull Combo Marketing
Guerrilla
– The term that has come to represent non-traditional
marketing.
All of the out of the box tactics you can think of to creatively
put a positive message in the minds of potential customers.

Pull Marketing
• These are things you can do yourself, at the
store level.
– Sales Promotion programs
– Signage, posters around town
– Coupons and price-off opportunities
– Referral (often the best kind)

Sales Promotion
– “Sales Promotion moves the product toward the
buyer, while traditional advertising moves the
buyer toward the product”*
* Source:
Albert W.
Frey,
Professor, Tuck School
of
Business-
Dartmouth

Sales Promotion
• What is Sales Promotion?
Sales promotion is often described as below
the line advertising, as opposed to media
advertising, or theme advertising.
– Both are funded by the same client’s
advertising and promotion budgets
– P&G does it, Dell does it, Pepsi does it, almost
everyone does it.

• Sales promotion is
the other half of the
job begun by
traditional advertising.
Note the coupons on the
right side of this ad.

We see them all the time
• Coupon ads
redeemable at the market-
Probably the most
common form of
sales promotion.
___________________________ that enables
A promotion is a device
your business to stimulate sales
on a one time or limited time basis.

Traditional
Advertising
creates IMAGE
______________
Promotion creates
a REASON

Two Criteria
• Sales Promotion always involves:
1. Money
(A Discount or Price Off)
2. Time
(A Limit on the offer)

Multiple Tactics
• There are different types of tactics utilized in
promotions:
– Sweepstakes/lotteries
– Collectibles
– Sampling
– Contests
– Price-Offs
– Coupons
– Premium Offers

Sales Promotion
…is big business
• There are 3 different types/categories of
Promotions:
– Consumer Promotions: $33 Billion
– Business to Business Promotions: $36 Billion
– Direct Mail Promotions: $41 Billion
– Total: $ 110 billion
(All of the above based on 2008 annual expenditures.)

Sales Promotion
• Some of the best, most frequently promoted
brands:
– Olay
– Oreo
– Pepsi
– Frito-lay
– Gatorade
– Dunkin Donuts
– Harry Potter

Concept Comparisons
The Basics
The essential characteristics are:
- The creative concept or the offer
- The vehicle or system for delivering it
- The fulfillment of the reward promised
Promotion is Advertising’s undervalued sister.

The Lycra/DuPont
Fibers Promotion
The Concept: Lycra
provides freedom of
movement in clothing
The vehicle: DuPont
sponsored advertising
and print material
The Reward: more sales
at the retail level
Their TA is
Fashion-conscious women.

No interest
for a year!
• Grand Home
Furnishings
Concept: buy now
Vehicle: ads/coupons
Reward: no interest
for a year

Price Elasticity
• Gerald Tellis, Professor at the University of
S. California, did a well regarded study that
involved a study of 367 brands.
– He found that high price elasticity was
Pervasive-and persuasive!
– For an average brand in his study, reduction of
price would boost sales by 1.67%, meaning that
a 10% price reduction (which is normal) would
boost sales by 17.6% -making it worth doing.

Pepsi/Grease Promotion
• Concept:
Get free tickets to
the new movie
• Vehicle: Pepsi
• Reward: The movie

Fast Food Promotions
• Concept: discounted meals
• Vehicle: come in to get it
• Reward:
hamburger or
a toy

Wheaties/General Mills Promotion
• General Mills’ Wheaties ran a 100th
Anniversary promotion-consumers
could Select and enter an amateur
athlete For the honor of going on
the box face.
The ballots were inside the boxes.

Bordens Promotion
• Borden Foods has a very popular
snack food, called Cracker Jack. We
designed a group of baseball cards,
contracts and membership
cards for selected baseball teams
-all offered through a coupon packed
into Cracker Jack boxes.

Pull With Promise

Sometimes the pitch
is less commercial
• Carnegie Hall new
members drive in 1990

Sales Promotion can utilize matches, towels, golf
balls, signs (Guerrilla) tactics effectively.

Push Promotion and
Positioning
• The Basics:
Good slogans

Evolution or Revolution
Enhancement of an
existing message is
the evolution of the brand.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
#1: Reach customers where THEY are
Let them know you are here.
Use the mail-send post cards, use creative hand outs
and use the internet to send out an offer.

Treasure Tree Outreach
Without a store front
Treasure Tree must
Push and Pull for
every sale

Treasure Tree Outreach
Everything
drives
the
Website

PUSH Sales
Development of
supportive
communications
enhances sales
opportunities.

PUSH your story
Tell your prospective
clients what you
do and position
your business to
their needs.

PUSH Value
Your customer
needs a reason
to do business
with you.
Value in product
builds the
brand

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 2: Attend Chamber of
Commerce meetings and
business programs regularly.
We all share the same problems, and we can all offer
support and generate new ideas to attract
customers.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 3: Learn more about your clients
and customers
If you don’t understand your target audience well, you
can’t possibly reach them.
Know: typical age, typical gender, typical spending
level, typical areas of interest.

PUSH your target market
Deb&Co. developed
a year round market
of holidays from
a Christmas
customer base.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 4: Advertise
Get your prospect’s attention.
• Let them know you care
• Let them know you will reward
them for coming to your Business

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
#5: Start a Referral Program
Ask your best customers to tell their friends to
come in, find out why you like my shop.
And, REWARD them both

LG&CC Push / Pull Campaign
Invitation
Expectation
Offer
The Win / Win
Invitation

The Expectation
All the amenities
of a metropolitan
club. . .

The Offer
Just like a
coupon,
the PULL
marketing
has an
absolute
time structure

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 6: Expand your horizons
Increase your universe of contacts – join
clubs, show up at events, show interest in
the lives, hobbies and opinions of your
customers.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 7: Start a
newsletter, a sales
info sheet.
Write about how your
company’s products
benefit your client’s
lifestyle. Daily Specials and full menu
Ask for E-mails and stay in regular sent out everyday… Started
contact with your clients in February, doubling the
size of the kitchen in May!

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 8: Become a public speaker.
Communications is vital.
Get the word out by your own effort.
Many groups need and want a speaker
each month.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 9: Plan and execute a Public
Relations Program.
Prepare press releases on your business,
special awards, special openings, trunk
shows, new products for the new season.

Ten Sure-Fire Techniques
for generating new business
# 10: Joint Ventures
You have common goals and problems with your
fellow retailers; share the marketplace, share
your problems, share the gains.
Do shared ad campaigns, shared customers,
shared costs.

Summary: The Positives
• Communication & Sales Promotion work in the
short term for the long term.
• They are a part of American Commerce, absorbing
almost as much revenue as mainstream advertising.
– “ Sales promotion moves the product toward the buyer -
while,
– Advertising moves the buyer toward the product.”
- Albert Frey, the Tuck School of business, Dartmouth

Summary: The Negatives
• There are three identifiable negatives to extended
sales promotions:
– 1. Promotions have limited long term effect-meaning
that after the promotion ends, prices return to earlier
levels and brand loyalty doesn’t happen (This is called
the “mortgaging effect”)
– 2. Promotions often fuel competitive retaliation,
meaning a price war could break out.
– 3. Promotions often devalue the image of the brand.