7 Competencies for Every Local Store Marketer

Whenever I talk to franchise partners, we almost always slip into a discussion of tactics. This is fine because we share ideas and best practices, coming up with new ideas or making old ones better.

It's sometimes difficult, however, to get across the solution to a problem because the franchise partner isn't familiar with some of the basic competencies of retailing in general or food service in particular.

For example, a franchisee of a regional chain added a new cheesecake to his menu but was disappointed in its sales. His analysis: his customers weren't interested. Upon further review, however, it was clear that this person stuck the cheesecake into his dessert case and expected that customers would flock to it. Truth is, they didn't even know it was there.

So this example is for a new product offering, but the following seven skills are critical to making nearly any sustained marketing effort or promotion work. Use them in concert with one another and discover what multiple impressions of the same message can do for trial, frequency, and ticket average.

[Note: The following items are for food service, but the principles are essentially the same for other retailers. Well, except for catering of course.]

Merchandising
Mass sells mass. It's what grocery stores, department stores and general retailers know that food service franchisees don't really grasp. If you want to sell something, prominently display a lot of it.

Email
Advice on email newsletters abounds online, but most of them deal with getting messages read or getting them through spam filters. A local store marketer knows that she needs the message to accomplish a goal and she needs a metric to see if that goal was achieved. "Members Only" offers (for a specific day or daypart) are great at both driving trial and measuring results.

Bounce-backs
One of the most effective, and least used, arrows in your quiver. Give a morning customer a discount for the afternoon. Give an evening customer a discount for the morning. Introduce new products, promote different dayparts, encourage multiple item transactions, increase party size. Best of all, these are people who already like you. Use for frequency and ticket average.

Events
External events are opportunities to take the energy and personality of your store out to a specific target audience. Better than any ad at telling people who you are and what you do, events can be as involved as selling product off-site or as simple as giving out door prizes and coupons.

Sampling
If your product is good, put it in people's mouths. A picture is worth a thousand words, but samples are worth 10,000. Sample at an external event and include a coupon for immediate response and presto, new customers. Sample in-store with a bounce-back and ticket average and frequency of visit should rise.

Catering
If you view catering only as large sales on a path to profitability you're missing half the point. Catering jobs are also marketing opportunities. Generally you sell catering to an existing customer (rarely do they find you from the Yellow Pages), but you serve catering to many more people, many of whom have never tried your product. Take samples, hand out menus, coupon for higher tickets.

Fishbowl
If you don't have a fishbowl to collect business cards, get one. Not only do they help build your email list, but they are also introductions to key job titles (HR, training director), complementary businesses (pharm reps), and hard to get into buildings (corporate headquarters where guerrilla marketing tactics are difficult). Also use them to promote new products.

So, in our cheesecake example, the owner could have done much more:

1. Dedicated a shelf in his dessert case to the new flavor (with signage to highlight his merchandising)
2. Emailed his current customers saying "New! Raspberry Cheesecake!"
3. Provided bounce-backs to his morning customers (giving them a reason to come back at night)
4. Sampled the new flavor in-store and at external events
5. Given a couple of complimentary slices to each catering job
6. Called two names per day from his fishbowl "Hey, you've won a slice of cheesecake. Come on in." (Increasing frequency and, most likely, party size - s/he would likely bring a friend.)

All tactics work better when you use them together. It's why we call it a marketing mix.