\nLike\n it or not, winter can be a slow time for a lot of businesses. Days are \nshort, cold and wet; people don\u2019t want to be out and about when they \ncan be warm and dry. Peoples \u2018essentials\u2019 spending goes up too, as they \nuse more power and eat more food during this time. All of this means \nthat there is less money to be spent and less time where they may spend \nit. So as a non-essential business how can you get people to spend it \nwith you? More importantly is how to do it without costing you so much \nthat you spend more than what you make in the increased sales<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are a few smart marketing tips that you can apply to your business right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n varies from business to business but most business can find something \nthat can work in the winter months. For instance a landscaping company \ncan have a \u2018prune back the trees in your garden before they become a \nsource of winter storm damage\u2019 while a beauty company can offer a \u2019beat \nthe winter blues with a pampering facials\u2019. See how both examples build \non the idea that there things you need do in the winter months to \nprevent having to do more work or to make you feel better. This is the \ncornerstone of any good winter marketing plan, people feel lazy and have\n the winter blues, so anything that helps them stay lazy and feel better\n will always be a winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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his\n is a point that I tend to harp on but it\u2019s an important one. If you \nlook at the companies that constantly advertise, The Warehouse group of \ncompanies for example, they build their marketing around a theme and run\n with it for several promotions. A good example is the school holidays \nwhere they promote before the holidays some items to help keep the kids \ndistracted , and at the end of the holidays the stuff that you need for \nwhen they are back at school. This can work for any business with some \nthought. Using our landscaping company example again, you have tree \npruning to prevent storm damage, but you can also have clean guttering \nso they don\u2019t get clogged by leaves and flood the roof, aerate the lawn \nso that doesn\u2019t become muddy during winter, mulch\/fertilize the garden \nto help it survive the winter months and great regrowth in spring, and \nso on. Each of these is a separate promotional idea but runs along the \ntheme of preventing problems and making customers life easier in the \nfuture months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Since\n your winter income may be limited at this time, you want to spend what \nmarketing dollars you have effectively. For this you have to decide how \nyou will market your business to people. In real terms you will be \nspending about the same money for both methods. What it boils down to as\n how many people are going to respond to it. If you look at the flyers \nthat turn up in your mailbox you will see that they are very wide in the\n range of specials they offer, the scattershot approach as I call it, \ntrusting that by offering so many options that there will be high number\n of people will take it up. You can do that for smaller businesses too, \njust offer a percentage discount on a category instead of a discount on \none special item. The other option is to spend the money of targeting \ncustomers who you know are more likely take up an offer of a speciality \nitem. The easiest way of doing this is looking at the sales patterns of \nyour existing customers and giving them offers of services that have a \nhistory of making use of. You can also do this to a degree for getting \nnew customers. There are several mail distribution \/ marketing companies\n that have sociometric data of the population so you can request mailing\n lists of households that fit certain criteria based on income, family \ndata, etc. While you do have to pay a premium for the service, it does \nminimise the physical marketing costs and you can make it more effective\n by being able to personalise it a degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Have\n clients that you haven\u2019t seen in awhile, then why not get them to \ninteract with you again by giving them a \u2018we miss you\u2019 promotion. It \ncould as broad as a simple gift voucher giving them $x to spend on \nanything in store (with a minimum spend requirement). If you have \nrecords of what the customer has previously spent on then use that to \ntailor an offer that you know they will want to take advantage of. The \nimportant thing is to get them to think about your company again and \nwhat you can do for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Now\n this one can be a bit challenging. Sending out free gifts can be \nexpensive, not just the cost of the gift but shipping\/posting it in a \nway that it doesn\u2019t get damaged and arrives in a timely fashion. You can\n run foul of various laws depending what you send. A good way of working\n with this is talking to the rep\u2019s of the company you buy supplies from \nand see what samples you can get from them. Often they will supply them \nat no or little cost and you then only have to worry about the \ndistribution. A good example is a beauty clinic where they can get \nsample packs of a beauty product from a supplier and use that as part of\n a promotion to get people into their clinic. Even if you run a business\n doesn\u2019t use a lot a products you can do some fun gift promotions to get\n people thinking about your services. The landscape company might send \nout a small packet of grass seeds with the note that the customer will \nhave buy a lot more it if they want to have a green lawn in spring, \nunless they call the landscapers right now to prep their lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A\n walkabout is where you have someone walk around a set of streets \ndropping of a promotional item or flyer to each address. The great thing\n about it is that you can use it as way of talking to potential \ncustomers to find out if your services will suit them and why they \nshould use you. The best thing is that you are not \u2018cold calling\u2019 them \nto sell something, as that puts most people off, instead you are \ndropping off a gift or promo item and just chatting where in the end you\n can learn a lot about the \u2018customer\u2019 which will help you target your \nfuture marketing more effectively. If you have employees who are under \nutilised during the winter months, make do this to help them get new \nbusiness, and even give them rewards for getting new clients so they do \nthe job properly.
Naturally there are more things you can do to beat\n the winter sales slump and we can show you how. Just book a time with \nus and we can discuss options that fit your budget and time constraints,\n so call us at Copy Express today.\n\n<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like it or not, winter can be a slow time for a lot of businesses. Days are short, cold and wet; people don\u2019t want to be out and about when they can be warm and dry. Peoples \u2018essentials\u2019 spending goes up too, as they use more power and eat more food during this time. All … Continue reading “Stop the winters sales slump with smart marketing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}