Hey, it’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we are going to explore six different types of promotions and special events and how you can use them to build the sales in your store.

So before we get into the six type of events, I wanna share some exciting news with you. On January third, we are doing a full day, event called Power Promotions. And we’re gonna share a hundred ideas for promotions with you. And at the end of the day, not only will your mind be filled with possibilities, and you will be inspired But through the course of the day, you’re going to fill out your promotions calendar. So at the end of that day, you will have a promotions calendar for your entire year.

This is a tremendous opportunity.

In Black Friday, through Cyber Monday, you get a chance to save seventy one percent, seven hundred dollars.

So this is gonna be an amazing event that can change the course of your business, and you can get a great discount on it right now. Click below and sign up. Alright. So having said that, here are the types of promotions that we’re going to be exploring in the Power promotions event.

So the first kind of promotion is sales and a sale.

Excuse me.

A sale almost always has a store wide discount associated with it. Everything goes on sale, sidewalk sales, clearance sales, overstock sales. Let’s just say you’re swimming in. We call it choking on it. You have too much inventory. And you need to reduce that inventory level to free up some space and to free up some cash.

You have a store wide sale.

A super, super, popular, sale that we developed, that I developed when I owned the Mackinaw Kite Company that lots of people are using with great success right now is the holiday preview sale. Where you put your entire store on sale before the holidays to get people into your store to get this thing that I call holiday share. Right? If somebody’s gonna spend a hundred dollars on their gifts this holiday, you wanna get as many of those holiday dollars as you can and a sale done well is a great way to do that. So sales are an incredibly important part of your promotions calendar.

But you can’t have too many sales. If you have too many sales, what happens is your customers learn to wait you out.

And this is something I learned the hard way when I was in retail. You know, whenever we would have any kind of promotion, we would feel nervous that people wouldn’t come if we didn’t have twenty percent off store wide. And so what happened was, as I just mentioned, we trained our people to wait us out. And then one day, we just had to bite the bullet, take a deep breath, gulp, and have a promotion without the store wide sale.

Guess what? People came anyway. It was the beginning of a beautiful new relationship with promotion. So number one is sales.

The second kind of promotion is what we call specials.

And a special is when an item or a category, although I like items way better than categories goes on sale. Typically at a deep discount.

You know, so in the grocery store, they call them loss leaders, but an item, but a special is a way for you to drive traffic by taking a discount on one item. This is why you need a deep discount.

So what are some examples of specials, an item special. If you’re overstocked in one item, you can put that one item on sale to reduce your inventory levels just on that item. If you go to a trade show, you can create a whole series of, specials just by the things that you find. So you’re walking around the show. You find ten things that you absolutely love, and you create a promotion around those ten things, whether you drip them one at a time, or you offer them all at once, but those become trade show specials.

A really popular special that, so many people in our community are doing, and that I would encourage you to do also is the twelve days of Christmas.

Special. And what happens in that twelve days of Christmas special as we teach it anyway is every day one item is put on sale at a deep discount, typically fifty to seventy five percent off. And that item drives traffic because people wanna get that item on sale at that great price. But then, of course, when they’re in your store, your tremendous merchandise mix, your highly skilled sales tree team turns that traffic into more sales.

So people are buying more than just the item that is on special.

So what do we have? We have sales We have specials.

The third kind of promotion is off-site.

And off sites are a tremendous way for you to build your business. Because it’s a great way for you to get new customers in addition to selling more merchandise.

So examples of off-site promotions would be consumer shows. So if you’re a garden center, every town in America has a lawn and home and garden show. If you have a quilt store, there are quilt shows that happened regularly all across the country. So find a niche that or find a show that fits your mix and then go in and do that show. Make sure that you are getting email addresses that you are building a list Make sure you are giving away gift certificates that drive people back into your store and, of course, sell your goods.

Fares, festivals, you can do your own off sites. More and more, we’re seeing people do creating their own off-site events. More and more people I know are creating an mobile unit that they go out and they go into different neighborhoods. They take their mobile unit to a fair or a festival. But the point of an off-site is rather than waiting for people to go to you, you go to them.

So off sites are the third type of promotion.

The fourth type of promotion is a value added promotion.

Gift with purchase, many makeovers, photo opportunities, photos with Santa photos with, Easter buddy. Photos with Feddy Freddie Crewger.

I don’t know. But you see, the what happens with the value at an event is you’re not trying to draw people in with a discount, either store wide or as a special, but you’re drawing people in because you’re giving them something of value.

And value added are a great way for you to, you know, really build that emotional bank account.

That we’ve talked about.

The fifth type of, promotion is cause marketing.

And cause marketing is when you work with a local nonprofit organization And when they send their cost their supporters into your stores and they identify themselves, as the supporter of the organization, you give a percentage of the sale back to the organization.

We absolutely love love love love love cause marketing. Here’s a couple examples of cause marketing. One is a one time event.

So, a local organization approaches you about, ask asking for a donation.

You say, look. I’m I’m sorry. We no longer give cash donations, but let’s figure out a way we can make a lot of money for your organization.

How about this? We’ll have an after hours party You’re responsible for driving traffic. We won’t go into all the logistics of it right now, but they get their supporters into your store for this after hours party. And then a percentage of all the sales generated at that party go back to the organization.

So you’re generating goodwill.

You’re acquiring new customers, and, of course, you’re making sales.

Another way to do it, and this can be incredibly effective, is to have what we call a multi partner cause marketing event.

So Maureen Doron from Skirt in Pennsylvania does this with incredible effectiveness.

She has partnered with I believe nine of the local schools in her community And they all, for the period of, I believe, ten days, they all drive their supporters into skirt And then the skirt gives a percentage of the sales back to the schools. Now here’s where it gets really fun and interesting. When people come in and shop at skirt, they have to choose where their donation goes. So if Indy goes into skirt, and she wants to support Saint John’s Lutheran church, she has to designate that.

And then twenty percent of her sale goes to Saint John’s Luther in church. But then what’s, Maureen does so beautifully is she has made it a competition. So every day on social media, the leader board comes up. And so, these are competitive organizations.

And that each organization has her own captain. She’s got lots and lots of the logistics all dialed in. But what happens is that it just builds on itself and it builds on itself and it builds on itself. When people get competitive, They really work hard to get lots of people into the store shopping. It is a great promotion for Maureen every year. And I guarantee you that if you start doing a multi partner, cause marketing event, it will be one of the highlights of your promotional year.

So the final kind, that’s the fifth type of promotion.

The final type of promotion is events.

And this is things like classes and clubs and clinics.

And trunk shows and parties and customer appreciation events. All of these events are things that drive people into your store. And when they’re in your store, you have an opportunity to sell them something.

So do you see what how valuable a calendar filled with all of the different types of promotions can be for your business. You don’t wanna have just sales. You don’t wanna have just item sales. You don’t wanna have just cause marketing.

If you do just one of these, you’re going to start to wear them out. They’re gonna get fatigue about that type of promotion. But if you have a a thoughtful built out calendar that sprinkles all of the different types of promotions and make them different sizes. All of a sudden, you will really, really see your customer loyalty grow.

You will find yourself getting new customer and most importantly, having a robust calendar will have a huge impact on your sales.

So if you want to build out a great promotional calendar, I really want to encourage you.

Black Friday through Cyber Monday, seventy one percent off Power Promotions. You’re gonna get over a hundred great ideas for promotions. Don’t miss this event. Sign up today.

I’m Bob Negen, and we’ll see you tomorrow. We can even leave that in. Let’s leave that in. I’m Bob Lager.

We won’t see you tomorrow. We’ll see you next week.