|
|
|
 |
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
It
takes a Pro to Promote!
John Wannamaker, the Philadelphia merchant, once said, "I know that half of my advertising does not work. I just don't know which half it is". That is often the downfall to advertising. There have been a couple of comments to the effect of, "how did he get even half of it to work?" When it does work, you don't know what the successful components were, and when it doesn't work you don't know how to fix it. This is not to suggest you stop advertising. The purpose of this article and the upcoming seminar is to share with you, ideas that will allow your everyday business operation to benefit from the best form of advertising: promotion. Promotions are the events a business creates in an effort to separate himself or herself from the competition. A promotion may be as simple as the one which a business has for the three days before Thanksgiving each year. Tables of miscellaneous merchandise are displayed in the front of the business with signs denoting the merchandise as the composite of the "turkeys" (merchandise) the business is closing out. After a couple of years with newspaper, radio, and television ads, the retailer is able to diminish the amount of advertising and rely more on the tradition of the event to bring in the customers. There is another business that worked in conjunction with the area churches to promote church attendance and Sunday afternoon shopping. In a letter sent to each church, the dealer explained he would donate 10% of the Sunday afternoon purchases using these guidelines: Anyone that would bring the current Sunday church program to his store would have the total amount of his purchase written in the upper right hand corner of the program. The business collected the programs, and then made the appropriate donation to each church. Several of the churches went so far as to designate which church group was to receive the funds, and would have a spokesperson speak before the congregation on a Sunday morning urging the parishioners to shop that afternoon at the business. Imagine the scene, when the director of the children's choir stood before everyone on a Sunday morning. Her comments were to explain the funds from this promotion were going to be spent to purchase new children's choir robes. She even had one of the robes being modeled. Several times, she suggested everyone take their Sunday morning program and visit this particular business. No one can buy that type of advertising. Another business was asked by a local college to place an ad in the college basketball program. Looking at the previous year's edition, the business noticed there were no pictures of the cheerleaders in the program. To get the people attending a basketball game to notice the ad, all that was necessary was a photo showing the cheerleaders adorning the front of the business. The message could be simple: "Smith College knows basketball. We know .....". Each of our three examples demonstrate businesses having promoted themselves. Instead of the traditional media purchase, they have selected specific groups to target, and utilized methods which allow them to stand out from the clutter of traditional advertising. With a degree of creativity, and watching what other merchants do, you can easily get much better results than those that John Wannamaker did. |
|
This article is copyrighted by Tom Shay and Profits+Plus Seminars, who can be reached at: PO Box 1577, St. Petersburg, Fl. 33731. Phone 727-464-2182. It may be printed for an individual to read, but not duplicated or distributed without expressed written consent of the copyright owner.
|
 |
Profits+Plus
|