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Advertising strategies
Letters to Chuck
Advertising strategies
Chuck, Comments on your advertising article: You are never going to get $2000 worth of income on $1000 worth of advertising... unless you’re announcing your going-out-of-business sale. Many of us have done very little or no advertising because we never get results. We go almost all year with no advertising... then the sales rep comes in and has a deal on a 4 x 5 ad for the Thanksgiving issue, you run it and you get no measurable results. So next time you say, forget it... advertising doesn’t work! Well, why then do big corporations spend millions???? Advertising does work, but advertising alone isn’t enough. You have to do a complete package... a complete marketing plan. If you do spend a ton on advertising and then people come in, you’d better not disappoint them. You have to give them an experience. If they don’t say “Wow” as they leave, they won’t be back. So, as part of the marketing plan, you have to be ready when they do come in. Then, very importantly, as part of that marketing plan you have to choose your target market. If you advertise a sale, you’ll get value buyers. They’re out for deals and almost don’t care what they buy, as long as it’s a steal. Then there are serious comparison shoppers, who will bring in a manila folder filled with Internet printouts. I won’t even talk to these people. When I have to, I plead ignorant to everything. They’re going to buy on the Internet and they want to get free information from you before they buy. Then when you’re their buddy, they buy the item on the Internet anyway and bring it to their buddy to make sure they get a good deal. Any jeweler out there trying to beat the Internet with these people, might do it for a while, but soon it will be time to pay the rent and their profit margin is so low, they can’t even afford the ad for their going out sale. The third group wants something exclusive and unique. Price is way down their list of important factors. They need romancing and they need to be impressed when they come into your store. They don’t want to see journey pieces in your cases because they don’t want what everyone else has. If they see it on TV, they don’t want it. They want their woman to have the brightest and the best and they want others to be impressed when they see it on her. Most importantly, they want people to be impressed when they tell where they got that item. I went through the entire E-Myth program and basically became a business consultant... just for my own store. It wasn’t outlandishly expensive to make the changes. My gross income doubled and my net went up by five times. I get results from my advertising now. People come in and mention “I sing your jingle all the time.” They say they wanted to see what I look like in person. I advertise at the same level - 5% of gross all year around. I don’t have to increase it at Christmas. There’s a lot more to it... you have to choose the type of media that group will respond to, and you have to choose the type of ad. You have to follow up the sale with Thank yous and reminders. You have to provide all sorts of after sale services such as free polishing and rhodiuming. You have to keep great records so when they call back a year later for a matching wedding band, you know what they bought, when and you can look up the model number of the engagement ring and order the band in minutes. I could go on and on, but I have to do my morning bookkeeping and get ready for Monday. Hopefully this will fuel some ideas for your next article. John P. Kuehn Fine Jewelers Morgantown, WV 20th Century solutions don’t work By Fred Heddinger It’s been a while since I have heard of anyone commuting in a horse and buggy - and they were Amish. As Chuck Koehler pointed out in his column in the January issue of SJN, twentieth century advertising solutions do not work today. That is not surprising. A lot has changed in the last ten years. The good news is there are still ways to succeed as an independent jeweler in the twenty-first century. The secret lies in the ongoing conversation between the jeweler and the jeweler’s best customers. New technology, while creating on-line competition for brick-and-mortar retailers, also provides tools which allow independent jewelers to mine their most important asset - their customer list. The focus in the twentieth century was building store traffic by using traditional advertising techniques. In order to be successful in the twenty-first century, the independent jeweler must turn the focus to exhaustively mining, and diligently building, the store’s customer list. This process takes place every time you have a point of contact with your customer. It includes: 1) When the customer visits your store. 2) When the customer visits your web site. 3) When you talk to the customer on the telephone. 4) When you visit the customer’s mailbox. 5) When you visit the customer’s computer. Each of these contact points allows the jeweler to build a closer relationship with the customer and to more deeply embed the store’s brand into the mind of the customer. In order to get maximum benefit out of this relationship, it is essential to collect and manage a great deal of information about each customer. Digital technology allows that information to be organized and accessed to produce powerful, influential customer communications. To be successful with this approach, the jeweler must replace the old paradigm of buying and selling product to a group of potential buyers. The Wal-Marts and Kay’s of the world have enormous advantages over the independent jeweler if the game is played under these old ground-rules. The new paradigm for the independent jeweler should be to act as a life-style enhancer for a well-defined group of clients. Whether it is providing a wedding set, a family keepsake or contemporary designer pieces, the independent jeweler must be seen by the client as a trusted partner for a product category. There are two absolute requirements for operating successfully under this new structure. The first is to have a comprehensive plan for collecting, storing and using information about your good customers. This plan must include serious attention to at least these five areas of activity: 1) Associates must be trained on how to build appropriate relationships with clients and how to collect the detailed client information which forms the basis for the program. 2) An electronic/digital communication system must be in place. Whether you communicate with your client by telephone, e-mail or mailbox, your ability to personalize that communication will depend on your ability to access personal information in a usable form. 3) Branding (or re-branding) your store is critical to making the client conversation effective. Your client should know who you are and what you are. 4) You must identify your very best clients and invite them to partner with you in planning the growth of your business. Since these clients are the life’s blood of your store, getting their input in how you can better serve them in the future is very important. 5) In order to properly serve your client base, you must have the ability to obtain special-order product quickly and have early access to new lines and new suppliers. Therefore, a great deal of attention must be given to building supplier relationships. Regardless of how vitally important your customer list is, or how well you use it, it is obvious you cannot build the future of your business solely on that list of names. That brings us to the second requirement for success: You must intentionally grow both your general customer list and, more importantly, your list of “very best clients”. That growth can be accomplished by judiciously using some of the more traditional advertising and public relations techniques. The old way of advertising was to drive as much “foot traffic” as possible into the store by running broad advertising programs, then qualifying their likelihood of becoming a good customer once they got to the store. In the new paradigm, the prospective customers should be pre-qualified as much as possible, so that even the first communication with them can begin to develop the long-term relationship. Television, newspaper, most magazines, catalogs and outdoor boards are media not well-suited to functioning in the new paradigm. However, by using appropriate demographic profiling, direct mail can be powerfully helpful. Even radio, if done properly, may also be helpful in some environments. In addition, your current best customers can be recruited to help grow your “best clients” list. This not only can increase your list, but it can make your current customers feel like members of your team. The important thing for the independent jeweler to remember is that, even though the solutions of the last century don’t work, all is not lost. We still have an approach which will allow the independent jeweler to experience business growth and assure the long-term health of the business enterprise. Fred Heddinger is the owner of Jeweler’s Marketing Source. He can be reached at 770-579-8444 or 770-778-7115. Dear Chuck, I read with interest and a chuckle your article in MAJN. I can relate! The $4800 I spent this past December on media promotion of a special event resulted in ZERO new bodies through the door. Past and regular customers came in and made purchases for Christmas. They probably would have been in regardless. I feel that if I had put the money on the floor and lit a match to it we would at least have gotten some heat out of the expenditure. As you point out a great deal of media advertising does not pay off in results as it did in the past. My budget for this promotion was split between newspaper and TV. The only benefit was in some possible residual way keeping our name out there. After moving our location in early 2006 and spending a lot on telling the community of our move, I had done minimal media advertising for most of 2007untill December's promotion. I have been in this business 40 years, our firm over 100. In 2008 I plan to try new avenues of marketing to new faces. Some include getting our current customers to recommend us to others not familiar with our store. I have signed on with a local group who contacts individuals who move into this area from somewhere else. These people need to find doctors, plumbers, dentists, barbers, attorneys, and yes jewelers. For a very reasonable cost I can present myself to these needy individuals and inform them what we can offer. Most of us can find some method of identifying these new residents. Cost to reach these is quite reasonable and probably more effective. Thanks, Peter Vander Zanden Vander Zanden Diamond Jewelers Green Bay, WI | ||||||||||||||||||
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