Creating Effective Local Promotions (part 1 of 2)

This is Part 1 of an article I wrote for 'The Science of Beauty', a national magazine for the salon industry. However the message applies to all businesses that promote locally.
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Creating Effective Local Promotions

The first thing you need to consider when planning a promotion in your local area is… Who is in your local area?

You need to have a clear image of whom you will be speaking to through your promotion. What type of person do you expect to attract?

Most salons service a distinct local area – usually within about a 5km to 7km radius from the salon. Have you actually mapped where your market is? The best way to do this is to review your client data and create a list of all clients by postcode. Then you can sort the postcodes (using a spreadsheet) and determine the actual geographic spread of clients.

Understand Who You Are Talking To

You might be surprised at the results. I have seen salons that have 80% of clients within a 5km radius. This has a huge impact on which marketing communication tactics you should use. There is no point promoting to people who live 10 or 15km away if they aren’t going to travel to your salon.

Once you know the geographic coverage of your local market area consider the demographic and socio-economic profile of the people living there.

Demographics means the age, lifestyle, family size etc of the local residents.

Socio-economic means the financial status of residents including what type of jobs they do and average household income.

If you’re new to your market area, or simply not sure about the different areas, why not hop in the car and take a drive around and see for yourself. You can also access census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics if you want even more detail (visit www.abs.gov.au).

Part of your assessment of the local area should also include a competitor analysis. Who are your competitors? How do they compare to you for presentation of the business, services offered, pricing etc? Know your enemy!

One of the main reasons you need to have an understanding of the demographics and socio-economic factors is that it can help you decide what you should be promoting - which services and products, and at which price-point.

What to Offer?

I’ve written before about not offering a discount. Why is it bad? Because discounts undermine the perceived value in your services and products. It also makes it harder to get new clients to re-book at full price.

The best thing to do is to think about the purpose of the promotion. Then you can decide what to offer.

* Is it to attract more first-time clients?
* Is it to promote a specific service/product?
* Is it to fill a gap in your booking schedule?

For example if your aim is to attract more clients for any/all of your services, then you would want to promote the most popular services. Give people something they want.

Create a Package – Promote Value

Then think about how you can create a package combining a number of these services and/or products. Don’t simply reduce the price on your popular services. That’s business suicide!

The idea of offering a package is two-fold. Firstly, it creates a high perceived value. In reality you may have more margin to play with on services than on products. So by making smart decisions about your package you can still make your offer profitable for you.

Secondly, offering a package makes it difficult, if not impossible, for your prospects to easily compare you to competitors. This way you don’t need to offer the lowest prices to get attention.

Keep the focus of your offer on ‘value’, not on ‘price’.
And be sure to include a reason to respond NOW. Consider using a limited time offer, or a limited quality offer. Be specific about the time frame or number.

Stay tuned for Part 2...