If you’ve decided you need to do some promotion, you could be offered a bewildering array of choices, with an interesting range of price tags! Take a step back from the situation: the first decision must be ‘what are you trying to achieve?’ We all want more sales, but that’s not a sufficient answer to this question. More sales from which section of your customer base? If you take a proper look at your customers, you may find they fall into certain categories, according to their purchasing.

Market analysis is necessary to making the most of your sales opportunities. This is a worthwhile exercise and can be revealing about your sales, profitability, and customer knowledge. As a beginning, try classing customers using your invoices. Take same-size samples from different periods in the year, as trade fluctuates. How many customers are large firms, medium-sized or individual traders? Who is buying which types of products and in what quantities? When are their buying peaks and troughs, and are their requirements static across the year?

Stock questions

Now look at your stock and tie the information together. Do you find yourself with overstocks of one specification while you run out of others? If you run out, you’re losing sales to a competitor – in today’s fickle world will you get that customer back? If you find yourself with stock persistently left over, then you’re not maximising yield from your sales space. Knowledge isn’t just power – it’s profitability.

Now that you know your customers more intimately, look again at what you want to achieve. More sales might be a priority, but what else affects your sales? Reputation is viewed increasingly as a valuable asset. Why do people buy from you – have you ever asked? Do they buy for your service – is it swift and competent? Is it your convenient location and/or easy parking? You may have a good knowledge of timber and customers buy more for that reason than for price. You won’t know unless you ask a representative selection of customers – make sure you ask them about your competition too!

Using your information, prioritise your needs and set objectives for your promotion campaign. You may want to give yourself an edge over the competition by establishing with customers your depth of expertise. You may want to project quick service and competitive price. Such objectives must be realistic and measurable. You can measure an increase of customer numbers, of goods sold, an upsurge in technical questions, or run a survey to monitor attitude changes.

Having decided your message, the most valuable audience and how results will be measured, look at the techniques available. Public relations can create a climate of interest in your company through relationship activities and media coverage. Advertising can then move in to capitalise on that interest. How does your key audience receive its messages? This will give you a clue to the best vehicles for your message. Budget is also an issue to consider.

Newsletters

Using the example of expertise, a small budget might allow for challenging customers to a prize quiz on the best types of timber for particular uses. You’d need a simple A4-size handout on the trade counter which you can give out at the point of sale or send in the post. A medium-sized budget might fund a regular newsletter or education leaflets to send in the post (direct mail).

A large company could run workshops on the premises to pass on their knowledge for specialist sectors of their customer base. Create the interest by spreading the word, either personally, through press releases, direct mail, or by advertising in publications such as TTJ.

You may have other ‘news’ associated with your message. News must fulfil a purpose for its reader, and that judgement applied by journalists across the media, from TV to TTJ. Be objective: is your ‘news’ really likely to be of interest to the audience? Has your quiz revealed a dearth of know-ledge about timber among builders? A piece stating your customers think you’re wonderful is not ‘news’ – to anyone else but you!
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Steps to Promotion