The Visa Avion Card has come out with some interesting TV ads. I wish I could find a copy online but no luck yet. It starts with beautiful animation of a business man with really really long legs, but then he grabs his kids and heads off on a trip. I said to myself “where’s the Mom? She probably planned the trip, researched the best resort for kids and made all the arrangements”. It struck me as odd, but I thought perhaps I wasn’t in the target audience and was being too sensitive. I commented to my husband, my fellow ad critic and I said “That was a really nice ad for RBC”. Then my husband pipes up “Yes, but where was the wife? That really bothered me.”
Is it just me, or did they miss the boat? True, perhaps the majority of business card decision makers might be male, but if they take their kids on trips, wouldn’t it be safer to show a complete family? Am I being too literal?
If you’re in retail, now’s the time to start planning a marketing activity for fall and Christmas (ikes!). It’s scary how early the big retailers start with the back to school and Christmas. It seems like a race to see who can do it first. The early birds get the sales because they are the only ones looking for worms. Do you have a plan yet for fall or Christmas to drive sales?
A local garden centre called Greengate inspired me with their smart marketing idea. Typically, in our city, the garden centres do about 30% of their annual business in one weekend (May long weekend). The garden centres are absolute mad houses and I am sure people get frustrated and leave without buying. Greengate sends out a direct mail piece with a special scan bar that will give you 10 - 25% off your purchase, but only for one day, which happens to be 2 weeks before the mad May long weekend. It gives people incentive to come sooner to get the discount and also extends their busy selling season. By planning ahead, they were able to create a profitable promotion right before their busiest time of the season, while the other gardening centres waited for the May long weekend.
My point here is, don’t wait until your busiest times of year to start thinking about what you could have done to maximize this key selling time. Plan ahead so you can do it right, both strategically and aesthetically so that your materials are on brand and not a compromise.
An annual marketing plan is the best solution for planning ahead. if you know when and where your marketing activities will be focused, you can plan ahead for success and not miss deadlines, or opportunities.
The Globe and Mail’s Business Incubator is a multimedia and interactive site providing a wealth of information for entrepreneurs. The Globe has assembled a blue-chip panel of business experts from the fields of finance, marketing, sales, academia, public relations and franchising, to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools and the insight to start and grow their business. In addition to a series of articles examining the challenges and opportunities every business faces in the early years, the site is currently providing the chance to win $100,000 in Cisco technology in the Business Incubator challenge, which closes on May 16.
Mother’s Day is coming up fast (May 11th to be exact). Not only is this a great opportunity sell Mother’s Day related gifts, but it’s also a wonderful opportunity to develop more loyal customers. Use Mother’s Day as a way to build up your customer database through a draw (for Mom of course). This idea works for Father’s Day too!
Consider this. Create a draw for a nice prize that Mom’s will appreciate (maid service, spa night, lunch at a nice café, you get the picture) and allow people to enter in your store or on your website) leading up to Mother’s Day. Make sure the prize is good. Right before Mother’s Day, make the draw and send Mother’s Day cards to every Mom that entered the draw and consider doing this every year if your business relies on Moms.
Make sure you include an “opt-in” box on your ballot of web form to ask permission to add them to your database. You need to get permission to send out anything to them. A good database is so important in developing your relationship with your customers and communicating with them on an on going basis.
If you do decide to use your database down the road, make sure you review it and check for duplicates or multiple people at the same address. Sunterra Market used to send their printed newsletter to us and 5 other people who no longer lived at our address. Such as waste of paper and the information in the newsletter could have easily been communicated through an e-newsletter.
I attended the Women of Influence luncheon yesterday. The keynote speaker was Caryn Lerner sharing her success at the helm of Holt Renfrew. Look out Calgary, apparently Holt’s is adding 60,000 square feet to the existing downtown location.
I guess there are still some people in Calgary with money to spend and Holt’s is confident this store will perform well for at least the next 8 years. Her speech was inspiring but I couldn’t help but think what a great marketing opportunity this event was. There were over 1,000 women there, all highly educated and ambitious. Take note if you want to target affluent women that don’t have time to leisurely peruse the newspaper. If you do decide to sponsor something like this, just don’t do what Bell did (one of the sponsors) and give away water bottles, chapstick and $25 gift certificates as prizes — come on now! The Bay donated a door prize of a $500 Jones New York wardrobe, Birks gave away a pearl bracelet and something nice for Caryn. Holt’s gave EVERYONE a very fancy home fragrance that is lovely. Queen’s MBA program also was a sponsor (of the whole tour) and was giving away executive training. I noticed Nancy from asknancy.ca was there, the founder of the new Calgary women’s network and I think she won a Bell chapstick…she seemed more embarrassed than impressed.
If you want to know when you, your company or a competitor is mentioned online, check out Google Alerts, a free service that monitors the Internet. Get timely updates on what people are saying as soon as Google crawls the site.
It’s extremely useful for monitoring your brand online and knowing what people are talking about. Good or bad, you need to know what people are saying so that you can gauge how you (or the competition) are doing. Get “as it happens”, daily or weekly updates in your in box.
If you didn’t get a chance to see all the Superbowl ads from this year. Here is a link. Some good, some not so good! One of the Bud Light ads is very racist and it amazes me that it got as far as it did. You don’t have to pay me $1,000,000 to flag something like that! Common sense is not so common these days.
