Mark Fletcher shares his retail marketing tip of the week – celebrating your business birthday!
Business birthdays are important – for you and for your customers. Embrace the opportunity for a celebration, but be sure to not make it all about making more money. Take some time to embrace the achievement and love it.
Here are my tips for celebrating the birthday of any small retail business:
- Setup a photo board.
Use this as a marketing tool to invite customer engagement. Let’s say your business is six years old: ask customers to bring a photo showing them when they were six.
- Setup a noticeboard.
Let’s say your business has been around for twenty years. Headline the board with: “We want a list of twenty things you love about this town!”
- Recognise local heroes.
Host an after drinks night in your shop and take a moment to acknowledge and thank local heroes. The number of people you acknowledge should be the number of years you have been in business.
- Hand out flyers.
The flyers should list X amount of hidden gems of your region (where X is the number of years you have been in business). The flyer is your birthday gift to your customers.
- Have cake.
Everyone loves cake. If for no other reason than you get to eat cake, buy a birthday cake!
- Party favour bags.
Give every customer shopping in your store on your birthday, a bag of treats and favours you have chosen to celebrate your big day.
- The Happy Birthday discount.
Offer a big discount to any customer who comes in on the day (or through the week if you wish) and sings, at full voice, Happy Birthday. Sure there is a sales element here – but it is sure to be a lot of fun.
- Say thank you.
In your front window, create a stunning and personal display saying thank you to the town. Do it visually, creatively and with a full heart.
A key aspect of these ideas is to subtly remind people that your business is stable, involved in the local community and can be trusted.
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