Advertising is somewhat of a mystery isn't it? It's almost universally accepted that it's something that has to be done and yet when one tries to evaluate advertising's success, well that becomes a little more difficult.
I had a thought I wanted to share with you that makes a lot of sense to me and I thought I'd put it out there to see what you think. Advertising is most effective when it is timely! Makes sense doesn't it? In fact, it might seem to be too fundamental to be discussed, but hear (read) me out.
Let's say that it begins to snow (not so far out of the question for our region now) and you want to advertise your new shipment of rocket power snow shovels. If you advertise in the paper, you have to call your paper guy or gal. They have to work up an ad arrange it into the next issue, the issue has to be printed and then delivered. By the time the advertisement arrives, the snow may be over...it may be balmy outside and here you are, looking goofy because you have an advertisement for rocket powered snow shovels. Basically the same rules apply to radio or television. Because you can't just instantly react and communicate is perhaps one reason these traditional forms of communication are not as successful as they once were.
Now consider one of the new types of communication. Email blasts are something that if you aren't using you should be. I love the sign in a popular print store I frequent that says something like "send mailers...they won't end up in a spam box". Well, no, they'll end up in a wastebasket. The truth of the matter is that no matter what you send, some of it will fail to connect, that's just advertising. The difference then is the initial cost and the timeliness of your message.
Consider my example of the rocket powered snow shovels. It starts to snow, you instruct Buford, your designated email blaster guy to send out an email telling people you have RPS shovels. He prepares the ad, clicks the send button and instantly people will know you have super-duper snow shovels. Now really...how cool is that? But wait, the cools doesn't stop there. If we build the website that hosts your email campaign you will know how many messages you sent and even how many were actually opened...try that with traditional advertising.
You know what else? An optimized Website from Discovery-Based Retail is not expensive! We design, build, host and maintain high-quality SEO (search engine optimized sites capable of supporting your blog and your newsletter for only $139 per month. Unlike some who build sites and then deserts their customers, we will be there to make changes on a regular basis, teach you how to further your sites effectiveness and maximize your bang for your buck. We will build in the scripting that will keep you spam compliant and will work behind the scenes to maintain your email data base.
You really should react to this today. Want to see examples of some of our sites? Here you go.
www.portersbuildingcenters.com
Give us a call and let's discuss how a site can help you. (888) 292-6531
In phase I, I discussed the elements of retail store design and how they affected shopping behavior. Now that you have a better idea of your store type and the elements that go into creating an effective retail store design, you can begin to further develop your retail store. The tools needed for this next phase are retail merchandising, retail marketing, and of course your store employees.
Retail merchandising is the next step towards developing your retail store environment. The stores design layout will guide your customer traffic using strategic placement of the department categories. Along the way shoppers are exposed to many different products. The arrangement and placement of these products are vital to a profitable store. Merchandise placement at eye level will drive the sales of that product dramatically. For this reason, your most profitable or high priced versions of those products should be placed at eye level. Utilizing just this one aspect of retail merchandising will give your store a distinct advantage over its competition. Merchandise placement can give your store a competitive leg up, but don't forget that the merchandising still has to be visually appealing, organized and properly stocked. These details in your retail merchandising have great impact on your stores profitability.
The marketing of your retail store will naturally be geared to serve its retail store type. An upscale retail store for example will offer more high end products choices and provide exclusive brand names. Marketing these products along with upscale services will draw that stores preferred customer type into the store. This stores marketing plan should include an attractive well developed logo, branded colors, employee uniforms, custom colored shopping carts, print advertising in the best local publications and sponsorship of a well known local event, such as a golf tournament. This stores marketing plan should constantly communicate to their customer base where ever they spend time. What customer type should you market to, and where do they hang out?
Your store employees are a critical part of your business. They provide customer service, product knowledge, and a personality to your store. That is why you should make every effort to constantly improve their customer service skills and product knowledge education. Making a practice of investing in your employees will engage them by appealing to the most basic of human needs...self improvement. Educating and coaching your employees will undoubtedly increase their knowledge level and result in better customer service, loyalty, confidence and sales ability.
Whether you are building a new retail store or making improvements to an existing one, perfecting each of the core elements of your store is paramount to your success. Good retail store design, retail customer service, employee training, retail marketing and strong retail merchandising are the foundation blocks of your business and will determine your stores future
