Broaden Your Retail Horizons with Shopping Mall Exposure!

Time magazine ran a piece on how shopping malls are changing in their regular section on the economy a couple of weeks ago. They report that many upscale malls are doing very well, but middle-of-the-road malls have lost tenants like crazy. They are filling their real estate with all kinds of businesses like ice rinks, museums, health clinics, and even churches. They also (though this isn’t new) fill empty spaces with temporary rentals. I got to thinking how this could be a trend that could benefit retailers eager to test the waters in other cities or other parts of town, as an example. But I also got excited about some of the marketing possibilities they migh offer. 

And because those spaces can be gotten very cheaply by mall standards, I also figured mall administration would be open to just about any ideas a retailer came up with.

Here are some ideas you could approach your local mall with:

~Go in with your local service organization or Chamber of Commerce to open a little carnival of booths focusing on local business of all kinds--services, retailers, etc.  You could hold holiday readings, seminars, etc. in it. And I can imagine the coverage you’d get in the local press with this idea—maybe even the national press that has business pages like USA Today.

~If there is a store window in a space that hasn’t been leased, rent it for the season to showcase your store that could well be located across town. If not, how about using it to promote a new vendor or a holiday event you'll be holding.

~On a smaller scale, ask the mall administration about their kiosk or cart programs where you can promote your store with coupons, gifts with purchases, etc. You'll find tons of ideas for these kinds of things  in my book A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques (http://budurl.com/RetailersGuide), will help you with these projects.

~Make your new well-trafficked space into a money making venture. Rent out space for readings, how-to demonstrations, children’s hours, poetry open mics, even to bloggers who want to increase their visibility. Relate each one to some line you carry in your store. And, of course use the space for your own events.

~How about a one-week or one-day rental. Say you have a kitchen supply store. How about a week of cooking demonstrations and before Mother’s Day. Enlist authors of cookbooks to promote with you by using their contact lists of readers and media moguls.

~Capitalize on any big promotion ideas you are already using. Once we had a huge Precious Moments event in our mall parking lot using a motorhome as a rolling museum for PM artwork including the figurines we sold. A centerpiece like this is bound to attract interest at any mall. BTW, you may have seen C-SPAN, CNN, etc use a similar idea a tradeshows.

Hint: My book A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques (http://budurl.com/RetailersGuide), will help you with these projects. It's also available (frugally!) in Amazon's Kindle store.

Note: Using mall space to promote your brick and mortar or online store can be done quite simply or on a large scale. If you have a big idea, start now for your 2013 promotion. And you may not want to wait for the December holiday season. Mall business is excellent around Valentine’s, Mother’s and Father’s Days, graduation time, etc. If you carry patriotic products, put your thinking cap on for a bash on the Fourth of July.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson's FRUGAL book for retailers is A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques launched at the National Stationery Show at Javits Center. Because she is the author of the multi award-winning how-to books for writers,The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success, retailers will also find essentials of writing for blogs, Web sites, and newsletters on this blog. She is the author of an award-winning novel, This Is the Place; and other fiction and poetry. She blogs on better writing at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog. Find her tweeting for retailers at @frugalretailing . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use this little green widget to let them know about it: