Retailing: Taking a Marketing Tip From Amazon

In the News: Publisher’s Weekly reports that Amazon will open its first staffed pick-up location on a college campus at Purdue University. They have co-branded with school stores like the University of California Davis and U Mass at Amherst in the past, but this is the first college “convenience spot.” I see this as a brilliant branding effort. As the concept continues to grow, it will give Amazon’s brand as a provider of books and other essentials to a massive book-reading audience, a young audience that will continue to be part of their clentele for a long, long time to come. What can we retailers learn from this marketing move? In terms of service? In terms of location? In terms of acquiring new customers from our most sought after demographic?

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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:

Saving Time and Work for Retailers AND Building Business with Marketing

 

I learn amazing things by reading advertising, especially the ones known as advertorials. Advertorials are usually written by experts in their fields and are sometimes a bit arcane, but they can make me rethink what I am doing with my books for retailers. You can find advertorials in your local newspaper of in respected magazines like Time. Most media marks them clearly as "advertising" but the headlines usually feel more like great nonfiction topics.

The one I found in December was in a slick magazine called BookBusiness. It was paid for by a short-run printing company called Canon Solutions America. In it they talk about book for niche markets and niche markets have always fascinated me. I write for two of them—writers and retailers.

My point is that this is not a topic that is new to me. But this article made me think. The author (unknown) said “ . . . today you can get the same book with a different cover based on your preference. That’s only going to increase.” The idea of the same book with only one tweak—the book cover—may be slightly overstated, but it fits with what I’ve always said about marketing when I encourage my retail clients and friends to read my The Frugal Book Promoter and just substitute the words “books” and “author” for whatever branch of retailing they're in. I tell them, “Marketing is marketing is marketing" and I know they'll learn to write knockout query letters, media releases, media kits and I know that can make a difference in their business.

So,  instead of encouraging them to adjust, I should probably go back and replace those words with something appropriate to almost any niche market instead of expecting my faithful readers to do it for themselves. That might be the ticket to having a whole series of books—very nearly like the Dummy books that have done so well. After making those tweaks, I could slap on a new cover and reword the title and suddenly my “marketing is marketing” mantra makes more sense (and is easier) for a whole range—a whole new niche-- of readers!

The idea sure fits with my advice to plan your marketing campaign so the work you can do can be recycled. We retailers are not islands. We can only do so much on our own. After that, it’s either get more mileage out of what we do or start outsourcing like crazy. Actually, I kind of like both ideas.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for retailers--some of them sponsored by Gift Shop magazine. She brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives to that series of books. Learn more about the whole series of books at http://howtodoitfrugally.com/retailers_books.htm.

Howard-Johnson is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics award for her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of 14 women of “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” and was given her community’s Diamond Award for Achievement in the Arts.

How Marketing, Free Art, and Retailing Dovetail

I received this artistic  freebie  in my e-mail box from my fave book cover designer Chaz DeSimone. It seemed as if he had my retail clients and friends in mind.  

Chaz designed  several of my book covers including Your Blog, Your Business (http://budurl.com/blogging4retailers). He does a series of  free Ampersand poster art each year for the sheer joy of giving and doing. This is one all my retail friends should look into for sure! It could be used on any marketing material or display advertising--in-store or otherwise.  Please do give Chaz credit, though--just another way of passing around the joy for 2014.  Here's what his e-mail said:



I hope you got everything you wanted for Christmas. But if it's the wrong size, color, or if you simply don't need another mug or pair of socks, there's always the Returns & Exchanges counter. At least you don't have to camp out overnight like Black Friday; in fact, your return can usually wait 30 days or more.
Here's a rendering of a typical Returns & Exchanges sign of the Art Deco Department Store era. Remember the smell of fresh popcorn at Sears?
(Personally, I don't usually return stuff--instead, I purchase a ton more Christmas decorations at 50% off for and even grander display--a la "Christmas Vacation"--the following year. )
http://amperart.com/index.php/2013/12/26/55-returns-exchanges/
...for a large detail view, notes about the artwork, and how all my half-price decorations irritate the neighbors.
Next week look for the last AmperArt edition of the year, the last of the Ad Slogan Series. Great tips on working with others to complete tasks and achieve goals, and how losing weight and feeling great is actually a lot of fun. Happy New Year!

Chaz DeSimone Graphic Design, 12228 Venice Blvd. #156, Los Angeles, CA 90066, USA

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PS: Please feel free to contact chaz at chaz@amperart.com with questions or to let him know you like his great attitude toward retailers. (-:

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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:

Gift Registires Not Just for Brides! Try Back to School!

In my A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion, I include gift registries as a kind of in-store promotion that shouldn't be neglected. But now the LA Times business section reports in their continuing retail column about a trend toward encouraging customers to use gift registries for back-to-school needs.

So, OK. I admit I didn't think to include this particular use of registries in that chapter! But now that I have my thinking cap on, what a concept this is.

It works for high school kids. Is Staples missing a bet? Is your store missing a bet? They need pens, computers, backbacks, etc. 

And sporting goods stores sells backbacks, no?  What else could parents and students add to the list from those stores that includes a top-of-the-line backback.

And what about college students going off to school. They'll need everything from linens to microwaves.  What's in your store you could suggest?

And, no, you don't need a big computerized system. You could do a display with back-to-school needs. Use signs to suggest your registry.  And when someone likes the idea, make up an index card file for your customer's wish list. Maybe offer free shipping to the college of their choice with orders over a certain amount.

And yeah, this could be done for your online store. If you have one, you're a tech wizard!

What other kinds of gift or essential-needs occasions could you tout to your customers with this simple kind of registry--the kind we used in the 80s?  Leave your ideas in the comments on this blog.  You may not think that's smart competition, but if you do, it's obvious you haven't read up on the value of cross promotion or the zen of great marketing in my retail books.  (-:

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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:

Is Your Marketing Mail Even Being Read?

You may remember how I warn authors in A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion (www.budurl.com/retailersguide) against using attachments when they e-mail, especially when contacting the media. Well, now Time magazine includes a warning on their roster page not to do so. It says, “Write to Us: Send an e-mail: letters@time.com. Please do not send attachments.”

I know many of you are still attaching because you attach in your e-mails to me. Often the attachment is short enough to fit nicely in the window of an e-mail, so there is no need.

In that award-winning book, I also tell you your job is to make it as easy as possible for your contacts to help you promote by using your name, title, articles, etc.? Putting your information in your e-mail rather than attaching makes it easier for them.

But more importantly, they will see what you have to say. Many media outlets block e-mail with attachments and/or won’t open or read them. Time is one of those that won’t. And the sad part is, you may not even know they didn't see your media release or pitch. Even sadder, that may discourage you from doing more marketing that will benefit your business.

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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:

Retailers Must Let Their Business Cards Evolve

Business Cards for the Age of Tech and You
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By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

The LA Times just headed an article "Business cards get filed under obsolete.'" I'm hoping none of my author friends read it, but just in case, here is my rant. They said that young people especially think that now we have e-mail (and, yes, I presume e-mail signatures!) business cards are redundant.

I remember back in the 70s (hippie days, remember?) when my husband and I opened our retail shops. We thought business cards were too, well—hoity toity. We were wrong then and whoever these "young people" are—well, they're wrong now.

Yes, more business is being done by e-mail. And yes we do have e-mail signatures (though most business correspondence I see doesn't do a good job with branding or information in their signatures. In fact they don't do as well as most business cards I see!).

Yes, people can easily punch details into their iPhones when they want to keep information. But business cards can be (should be as far as I'm concerned!) more than a way to exchange phone numbers. They should be mini advertisements. That phone number in someone's iPhone will not invite someone to a retailer's most recent event or help a customer visualize a retailer's storefront or logo. But a business card with  those images and maybe even a little award logo on it sure can. And it can do it more than once. It can remind people of you now and every time they run across that card in the future.

I am so convinced, I've included a little section on designing effective business cards and ideas for how to use them in A Retailer's Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotion(www.budurl.com/RetailersGuide). Here's but one quick example:

I spoke at a meeting for publicists  last month. There are usually 50 to 100 people at these meetings. What a shame if I let that kind of opportunity pass by just speaking and then saying "See you all later." Of course! Business cards! They will appear magically near each attendee's dinner plate. And yes, they have an image of my booksfor retailers with an endorsement from retail guru Randy Eller on them. And a USA Book News award-winner logo, too. And essential ordering information, of course.

I use business cards when I travel, too. They are crucial for those doing business in China, as an example, and yes people there still respect them enough to present them with both hands. People who think everyone lives and breathes by their smartphones are just as out of touch as those who ignore them in their marketing plans. Business cards are complementary to apps and other digital marketing, not an anachronism.

Some of you may remember when everyone thought that TV would make radio obsolete. It didn't. Radio just evolved. So will business cards. And in the meantime, I hope you won't let the opportunities they offer pass you by.

To for resources on business cards and you may want to subscribe to Reno Lovison's blog, www.businesscardtobusiness.com/blog.

----- 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:

Growing Retail: Branding Is Never Easy

The Trader Joe’s in my hometown is having growing pains. They have closed down one of their stores in a kind of nondescript strip mall and opening another with a lot of pizzazz. And they’re hoping that we won’t notice too much. Ahem.

The LA Times business page explains this: “…after decades cultivating an image as the cozy neighborhood grocer, the 14,670 square-foot store …highlights the conundrum facing the Monrovia company: how to maintain the eclectic, friendly vibe that has garnered it legions of faithful shoppers, while expanding at a brisk pace.”

Mmm. This sounds like a problem facing retailers and other business people in the 90s. But it happens now, too. In fact, I’d bet that most anyone in business will face it at some time. I remember when my husband and I moved one of our retail stores from one end of the mall to another because we were out of space. Some of our customers thought we were getting too fancy.

I remember the day I decided to write a little e-book for my UCLA students that turned out to be The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo ), now in its second edition. That’s a far cry from novelist and poet.

I remember when, after the success of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers, I decided to do a HowToDoItFrugally series of books for retailers (www.howtodoitfrugally.com/retailers_books.htm) because I had started speaking at national retail tradeshows and, heck, I needed handouts anyway, right?

As you can tell, I believe in taking opportunity when it steps up and plops itself in our laps. Having said that, once we’ve made the momentous decision to veer from our intended path or to grow, we need to immediately think about branding.

Here are some of the things that I think can help people or business in situations like this. Mind you, these are not the result of huge marketing studies. They’re all just seat-of-the-pants lessons learned from trial and error—though some are based on tried-and-true marketing principles.

1. Drag out your mission statement and paste it to your bulletin board (or make computer wallpaper out of it). You do have a mission statement don’t you? If not, write down the goals you’ve had since you started in your career path and use it instead (until you get your mission statement written.)

2.      Look at your idea for your new project. Write down the reasons you want to do it. Then write down the pluses and minuses—and weight them. This list will help you make better decisions for the entire project as well as the marketing of it.

3.      Now make a list of how you think your present customers (yes, readers, too!) will view these changes.

4.      Using the benefits you found for your present customers in the above list, plan a marketing/promotion campaign.

5.      Now make a list of the benefits you see for new customers your upcoming project will attract. Draw up a marketing campaign for these folks, too. I know it looks like double work but…

6.      Now see if you can find similarities between the two. That’s where you start. You can branch out to target the fringes of the two groups later.

These are general planning aids, but here is a Web site specific for you. Think very hard before you open a completely new Web site for your new project. Consider instead using one site with different sections for your projects. Think how there might be crossover between customers. Keep your branding similar (maybe colors from a similar palette), but not necessarily identical. Don’t expect too much in crossover sales, but don’t discard the possibility. New efforts need support from whatever quarter we can find them. If you decide against that, at least make links from one site to the other plentiful and obvious and give benefits (reasons) why customers on one site should click to another.

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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: