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Gimmicks and Sales
By Bizbox
"Small businesses are always searching for ways to differentiate themselves. But with fewer people out buying, some of the businesses are doing whatever they think will draw in customers." So says this entertaining recent New York Times story on the "special events" and other cool gimmicks that small retailers around the country are increasingly resorting to during this unmerry holiday shopping season.
Some of these events have to do with what the store sells, such as the Albuquerque, N.M. lingerie shop planning a men's night (sex, indeed, does sell). Others do so only obliquely, like the San Francisco futon shop that decided to host comedy shows...with, naturally, for-sale futons provided for specators' sitting pleasure. Some stores are starting Facebook groups and reaching out to customers via the Internet in other ways.
What all the gimmicks have in common is that they build buzz and, at their best, physically get customers either at the company's retail site or in the store itself. Once they're there, the thinking goes, they're bound to buy, so you must get them there at all costs.
And yet, it's also at less of the costs. Part of the advantage of using such things as marketing is that it's a lot cheaper than more traditional forms of marketing--chief among them, advertising. We could link to about five articles a week telling you that economic downtimes are precisely the time not only not to cut your marketing budget, but in fact to raise. But we don't, because you're probably cutting costs across the board and we think it would be fairly difficult for an entrepreneur who is liquidating inventory and has just laid off a fifth of his employees simultaneously to give an outside firm yet more money than usual to place ads. These events are the perfect compromise: you are increasing your marketing without increasing your osts (by too much--these events aren't free to put on)
The other thing these events and event-type marketing ploys do is give you that crucial leg-up on the retail outlets of big corporations, who very likely are able to undersell you. This ability, in turn, has never been more important to consumers. In other words, right now the average customer needs an extremely good reason to shop at a small retailer instead of a big one. We can't think of a better one--can you?--than the warm, personal service they receive and feeling they get when they patronize a community store as opposed to a national chain. And we can't think of a better way to remind them of this difference than to convey your hospitality and sense of fun through one of these events.
So get at it! The more creative, the better.
Oh, and a tip: free food always gets the masses coming.
Comments (0)December 9, 2008 9:32 AM
