Every season is a chance to look at your business from a new perspective. New sales, new inventory, and new services are rolled out to entice customers to continue their loyal patronage. Heading into the fall and holiday seasons, making solid, well-thought-out decisions will be the difference between a successful, so-so, or fruitless fall.
Define Your Goals
Generally speaking, a campaign with one goal is a flat, uninspiring campaign that is not going to help you achieve your company-wide goals. Everything you do should accomplish multiple goals. Increase fourth-quarter revenue? Excellent. Enhance current customer conversion rates? Smashing. Sell more widgets in October 2020 than you did in October 2019? Bueno. Make a list of all the goals you would like to achieve if you could do everything all at once. Now group them, see which goals work together. Then decide: what’s most important to your growth this fall? Then create the campaign that has the biggest impact based on that answer.
Relationship Marketing & Email Data
Research consistently (and invariably) shows that it is easier to sell current customers than it is to attract new ones. Generally speaking, the success rate of selling current customers is 60-70%, while selling a new customer has a success rate of between 5-20%. There’s more. 80% of your future profits will come from 20% of your existing customers. On an annual basis, 65% of companies’ business comes from existing customers. It costs 5x as much to acquire a new customer as it does to retain an existing one. And finally, it takes 16x more to raise a new customer to the level of an existing customer.
The obvious upshot of all of this is you need to be collecting customer data at every opportunity. Your strategies – your business – depends on turning existing customers into consistent, loyal customers. Studies have also shown that customers are happy to give you their data in return for targeted marketing touchpoints.
Decide on Your Deals
What products are most important to your repeat customers? You should have sales data from fall/winter quarter of last year. If you weren’t open then, offering discounts – or free merch – for informational surveys is a great way to find out what your customers need. Offer deals that are irresistible: returning customers receive 25% off fall weather gear plus free shipping on orders over $100! Flash Sale – 48 hours only for bogo on all Halloween costumes! Whatever deal you decide on, make it an enticing one.
Create Engaging Graphics & Materials
Chances are when you created your logo you didn’t close your eyes and throw a dart at a wall full of graphics. You carefully created an image that defined your brand and captured its spirit. Do the same for your printed autumn marketing materials and signs as well. Engaging, colorful fall-themed materials are far more likely to bring in targeted recipients as well as foot and vehicle traffic than drab, poorly conceived or generic options. When your next great sale or promotion is artfully included, you have created the ultimate synergy of form and function.
Better Organization = Better Sales
At every level, the organization will enhance the effectiveness of every choice you make. This isn’t just about job titles and roles, however. A positive, supportive and creative company culture is the most important thing you can cultivate. Analyze your current culture, writing down every positive and negative. Then create solutions for eliminating the negatives and building even more positives. Consider profit sharing. Now define your goal: a positive, trust-building culture where employees are encouraged to take ownership of their performance and celebrate victories as well as accept responsibility for the… less than victorious moments. When employees aren’t afraid of failure, they are fearless in achieving the greatest heights of success.
Beef up Your Local Presence
Creating awareness in your community is vital. While the majority of your revenue will come from repeat customers, the majority of those repeat customers will come from your local community. According to Fundera Data and Reports, 97% of consumers searched online for local businesses and 73% of searchers trust local businesses more because of positive reviews. Combine that with these facts: 68% of consumers left a local business review when asked; 61% of consumers say they prefer local retailers who sell a unique product; 40% of consumers say they want to support local businesses; $68 out of ever $100 stays in the community when spent at a local business vs $43 spent at a non-local business like a national chain.
With these numbers, it’s clear that you need to expand your local footprint. Outdoor banners and flags create the perfect vehicle. They are two-sided, can include your web & email addresses as well as your phone number. Banners can include your local Google or Yelp rating to (e.g. 4.8 on Google Reviews!). The more potential customers see these, the more likely they are to stop. Vinyl banners have been proven to provide a significant increase in foot traffic and both banners and flags can be counted on for adding customers from passing traffic as well. If the combination of these two powerful marketing pieces increased sales by just 1 transaction per day, that’s 30 extra sales per month. Depending on your average sale amount, that can be a very significant number. Both banners and flags need to be consistent with your branding colors, graphics, and tone. Often, custom printers also provide design services as well.