actionable marketing guide

Dear ,

For those of you in the US (July 4) and Canada (July 1), I hope you enjoyed your holidays.

My husband and I spent the long weekend celebrating a family wedding in Madison, Wisconsin. Everyone there had fun and felt the couple’s love and joy.The date 7/1/17 was a palindrome meaning it’s the same forwards and backwards. To snag one of the three wedding timeslots at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens for July 1, 2017, the couple camped out overnight in March 2016.

Similarly, Amazon selected 7/11 as Prime Day. Basically it’s Amazon’s spin on Christmas  (or Cyber Monday) in July that runs for 30 hours. (BTW, if I were a marketer at 7/11 stores, I’d consider how to tap into this theme. Hey—it’s in the name!)

The hitch: You must be an Amazon Prime member. (Not an Amazon Prime member? Here’s a link to help you.)

Prime Day started in 2015 to celebrate Amazon’s 20^th Anniversary. When promotion yielded a big sales boost, the company continued it annually. 

From a marketing perspective, Prime Day’s continuation is no surprise. Once you have a high-performing promotion, you must keep it in your promotional calendar to maintain sales in the following year. Otherwise, you’ll have a sales gap.

The challenge is enhancing the products and promotions so they continue to drive profitable sales. Based on my experience, promotions tend to yield lower returns, over time since customers build expectations into their shopping habits. This means the sales bump is lower in subsequent years or seasons.

Actionable Marketing Promotional Tips:

• Continually test new promotions. Try new approaches to pricing and merchandising your product. Measure results in terms of sales and profits. Bear in mind most businesses must motivate shoppers about once a month.
  
  
• Keep low margin products full price. You aren’t in business to give product away. Last week I stopped at a craft store in Madison for locally dyed yarn. Even better I found a coupon online. Yet the coupon didn’t cover any sale or red tag products (aka: the yarn I wanted.)
  
  
• Track promotions over time. Are specific sales getting tired? What are your competitors doing?  Does time of year matter?
  
  
• Offer “eye-candy” at the register. Think like a supermarket: Put impulse purchases like candy and magazines at your checkout. Of course, make them relevant to your business. They don’t have to be expensive.

The promotional bottom line:

Consider how to create special events for your business to distinguish it and to drive sales during your “quiet” season.

Remember: while the summer may be a slow time for your business, consider how you can do other things that lay the groundwork to for the busier fall season.

For those of you focused on content marketing, I hope that you’ll join me in Cleveland for Content Marketing World this September. Use our promo code Heidi100 for additional savings.

Happy Marketing
Heidi.

Heidi Cohen
Actionable Marketing Guide

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• Heidi Cohen was one of the experts contributing to ReportGarden's roundup post: Growth Hacks From Top 30 Social Media Influencers