How to develop, plan and conduct a stimulating consumer demand campaign

Maria Gerasimenko -

CEO of Fashion Advisers and the first online school for fashion business Fashion Advisers School, expert in business management and development, business coach. Fashion business management experience - more than 12 years. Successfully defended 2 MBA dissertations (Mirbi International Higher School of Economics, Russia, Moscow, 2013) and London Metropolitan University (Great Britain, London, 2017)

Main areas of activity: strategic and anti-crisis management of the shoe business, assortment matrix management, development of motivation programs, conducting trainings in the field of management, service and sales. Clients include: Unichel, Tamaris, s'Oliver, Kotofey, Rieker, Sinta Gamma, Helly Hansen, Rusocks and others.

The strategy for the development, preparation, planning and conduct of actions can be compared with the creation of beads. A calendar year is a thread, stocks are beads that we string on a thread in the correct, beautiful order. In a year, a retail store must hold at least 20 shares, on average - 1 shares in two weeks. All actions must be planned in advance, preferably a year in advance.

Right on target

The right promotion has several criteria. The first criterion is its goal, which we must understand and determine before the action itself, for which purpose, in fact, it will be carried out. The goals are different: increase the average check, conversion, stimulate sales of a certain category of goods, strengthen the loyalty of regular customers, attract new customers or reduce inventory balances. There are many goals, but the bottom line is that if you hold an action without a specific goal, then its result will not be the one you expect from it.

Not a day anymore

After the goal is determined, it is necessary to determine the timing of the action. It is important to understand that a well-designed and planned action must have strict deadlines. The average duration of the campaign is within five days, ideally - 2-3 days. And most importantly: no matter how successful the promotion is for the store, it is impossible to renew it in any case. It can only be repeated after some time.

Why can’t the action be repeated right away? Yes, because customers will get messy: if customers understand that the promotion can be extended for 1-2 of the day, they will get the feeling that discounts are not some kind of strictly fixed time concept, but some kind of constant, spread out process. If we begin to pamper our customers - say, the buyer is one day late and begins to persuade the seller to give him a discount, and gets it in the end, then this will happen all the time. Now many retailers, especially small businesses, complain about this behavior of customers: people come, they say, "You have a promotion, and we also want a discount." In such cases, you must say the following: "Yes, indeed, the promotion was and has ended, and the discounts have ended." Otherwise, there is no point in holding a promotion if you can come to the store at any time and just get a special discount, not on a discount card, namely the one offered on the promotion. At the same time, sellers, refusing, should say anything to customers: that it is forbidden to extend discounts to managers, head office, etc. But the action should not be extended under any circumstances, under any pretext.

The mystery of the stock

In my practice, there was such a case: after one seminar at the exhibition, a listener, the owner of a shoe store, approached me and said the following: “I attended your seminar earlier, listened to how cool you are about the promotions, and decided to hold them in my store in science. I did everything in accordance with your recommendations, drew up a stock plan for the whole year, published it on the website, flyers ... ”You can’t continue further, because the finale is known: the stock plan did not work. The owner of the store told everything in advance to her customers, informing them of all the promotions for the year ahead - she completely revealed all the cards to them and herself crossed out all efforts.

Up to the day the action begins, no one should know anything about it, including your sellers. Otherwise, they will tell customers something like this: "You come in a week when we have a promotion." This is unacceptable. Nobody should know about the action, except for the marketers who prepare it. Sellers will learn about the promotion on the day the promotion begins.

People often ask: when to do SMS-mailing for the action? Answer: only on the first day of the promotion. Because if we do the newsletter in advance, we get an upset client: a person comes to the store and finds out what else is too early. There are those who say: “And I already want to buy with a stock,” and it is difficult to explain to the client that it is too early. Therefore, information is sent to customers on the first day of the promotion, in the morning - at 10-11 hours. The SMS reporting the action should be bright, short, encouraging to buy, with the obligatory indication of the terms of the action and its conditions.

Target Discounts

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Before choosing this or that format of the action, it is necessary to evaluate whether it will suit your store. If before any action was considered a luxury, today it is a mandatory flirt with the buyer. The usual discounts do not surprise anyone or interest anyone, so you need to be creative and creative with the development of the promotion. But creativity should be a measure, after all, an action is a marketing event, which should bring profit and not losses to the store.

The goal is a skeleton, on which you can further grow meat - string all the basic things that our action will consist of. For example: we want to increase the average bill, this is our goal, and therefore, we must encourage people to buy several items at a time. In this case, it is recommended to carry out the action “The second product as a gift” or “The first product with a discount of 10%, the second - 15%, the third - 20%”. Two or three product groups participate in such an action, discounts on which will be 10-20%. For a shoe store, these will be shoes, some kind of leather goods (purses, wallets, gloves), care products. It is very important to arrange the goods participating in the action, relative to the entrance area and the cash register so that the buyer, moving from the entrance in a circle, deep into the sales area towards the cash register, first sees your main and most expensive goods (shoes, bags), then secondary , less expensive goods and in the end - tertiary, cheap. We expose everything in order: shoes, bags, accessories and leather goods, shoe cosmetics. At the same time, discounts are made in such a way: for the most expensive and main product - 10%, for the average in significance and price - 15%, for the cheapest, for the connection - 20% (there may be a discount gap of 10-20-30%). To prevent this from happening: a girl acquires a pair of expensive boots, a small purse and a spray, but she gets the boots with the maximum discount, and the spray with the minimum. Stocks designed to increase the average check will make the buyer think and consider the benefits, and therefore buy more: buying more, he gets a little more benefit.

Attractive for buyers stocks in certain categories - categorical. For example: now the active season of spring boots has begun, and if we do not sell them now, then this product will have to be removed to the warehouse until the fall. Therefore, in the spring, stocks on the demi-season group of shoes and accessories will be effective, it makes sense to make a small category campaign on the boots. You can also hold “Ankle Boot Week” or “Ankle Boot Week”.

The assortment of a shoe store can be different, and if you start from an assortment in which there are three main groups - base, fashion and trend, then you can hold promotions for each of these groups. To sell trending models that will be relevant for only one season, as quickly as possible, discounts are made on special models.

If your goal is to increase the number of new customers and increase the loyalty of regular customers, the “Bring a friend and get a discount” campaign will be effective. It will allow you to expand your customer base and arouse positive emotions among customers that are directly related to your store.

Multipurpose Promotions

Shares can be multi-purpose - with different goals. The bottom line is that the client is not fed up with multi-purpose stocks. First we carry out the action “only for spring boots”, in two weeks - only on the brand “ABC”, then - “10% -20% -30%”, after some time - “pre-Sale for regular customers” - it is impossible to predict what and what discount will come next. This is the meaning of multi-purpose stocks.

Discounts are melting before our eyes

“Melting discounts” is a relatively new stock format for the Russian fashion market, which came from another retail that is not associated with either clothes or shoes. But he already shot well and showed his effectiveness. The principle is that on the first day of the promotion we give a discount, for example, 30% for everything, and then reduce it every day by 1%, hence the name of the discount: the discount decreases by 1% every day, it is melting before our eyes. The time period for “thawing discounts” can be from 2 weeks to 1 months. The first days, customers do not react very actively, and then they activate.

The main thing here is not to be confused - the discount should melt, and not increase. If the promotion is designed for a month, then once a week you will need to remind your customers about it, for example, on Thursday. In general, the most suitable days for holding promotions are from Thursday to Sunday, the hottest days are Friday and Saturday. Although now stores are opening in business centers, where there is a different work schedule, and this should be taken into account when holding promotions.

Emotion Games

Today, one can and should influence stocks on conversion and the average check in stores located in shopping centers. The crisis, the attendance of the shopping center has sharply decreased, as well as the number of purchases made in them, so the action is an effective way to attract a visitor and make a buyer out of him, stimulating and encouraging him to make a purchase. Many people can reason like this: “Why not buy, since I arrived at the shopping center, spent my precious time, a day off, went to this store, and even here I have the goods I need at a discount ?!” Perhaps the product is not of urgent need, but two motives work: the first one - “I will still need these shoes (autumn, winter, spring, summer), but I can just buy them at a discount, because then there will be no discounts and it’s not known whether I have money ”,“ I planned to buy it ”, the second -“ I spent my time on shops and would not want to leave it’s completely without a purchase, and here is such a profitable acquisition. ”

Buyers should be “loaded” with positive emotions from shopping - to carry out all kinds of activity events and promotions. Discounts and sales should be bright, for example, instead of 30%, you can make a breakdown of everything: 20, 25 and 30% for different goods. Print beautiful discount coupons, put them in a beautiful vase at the box office and invite customers to choose their own discount. So much for the promotion “Get your own discount!” An important point: it is not recommended to make a gap between the minimum and maximum discounts greater than 10%. Otherwise, conflicts and negativity cannot be avoided. Such an example: two friends come, one pulls out a discount of 50%, and the other only 10%. What's next? Resentment and spoiled mood.

Each action can and should be beautifully presented, and for this it is important to know your client well - how, what and what he wants. If you know your buyer well, then any of your promotions will be effective.

This article was published in the 136 issue of the print version of the magazine.