Whatever type of promotion your planning, think it thru and use all of your resources for a successful and profitable holiday season.

By Chet Pensak, Inform Business Systems

As the holiday season quickly approaches, store managers and marketing types are planning the holiday "event." It may be radio, TV, direct mail, email blasts or an in-store promotion. We plan each and every one of these strategies very carefully but too often we "sell them short" without ever realizing what we've done. Your radio strategy, tv strategy, direct mail strategy or in-store promotion strategy are NOT separate and apart from one another. Any one of them can stand alone but is more effective and successful if worked together.

Let's take the in-store promotion as an example. You can plan to give away a super travel mug for every new rental contract during the month of December and that may be a great promotional give-away for your market. But to being them into the store and merely hand one to every new contract signer is a total waste of your planning time and the dollars invested. You MUST bring you radio, tv, direct mail and any other program you might utilize into the game to help you get the word out to your community and your prospects….you've got to PROMOTE the promotion to make is successful and result in an increase in sales.

The holiday season traditionally brings about a lot of in store promotions. A very popular such promotion is the large 8 foot stocking full of toys or the giant stuffed bear with wagon full of toys. This promotion brings excitement into the store, gets you current customers . and their families involved and can bring additional publicity to your store. But don't just purchase a stocking and hang it in the store. You need to let your customers and your community know of your promotion to get them into the store. Send a holiday greeting to your customer base announcing the in-store promotion and add a coupon for a discount if brought into the store. Put out a holiday door hanger, with a coupon, announcing the in-store promo and distribute it into the best of your prospect neighborhoods. Use your radio and tv as well as newspaper ads to tie it all together. And above all, remember that once the drawing is made, your opportunity to sell your store is still not over. MAKE A BIG DEAL OF THE PRESENTATION TO THE DRAWING WINNER. Get out your digital camera, get the winner and his family together with the store staff and take a picture of the presentation. Then send it off to the newspapers with whom you advertise and suggest this might be a great human interest article for the holidays. 95% of the time you're going to get a free plug that may more than pay for your promotion.

This year, to encourage the promotional "tie together," Inform has 2 special offers for our customers using in-store promotions.
Offer 1: With the purchase of an 8 foot holiday stocking, you may also purchase 500 full color promotional door hangers for just $50. That's a 60% on the door hangers that will help you to promote your event.

Offer 2: If you prefer a direct mail, Inform will provide you with 500 custom imprinted stock postcards at our regular web price and you may purchase the in store promotion for just $49.95. There's a $60 savings there.

So whatever type of promotion your planning, think it thru and use all of your resources for a successful and profitable holiday season.