All Systems

GrowPower Promotion

July/AuGuSt 2013

Power Promotion Best Practices Page 3

Promoting a Multi-Faceted Business Page 7

Bringing New- and Old-Fashioned Marketing Together Page 13

Build-a-Promotion Tool Kit Page 15

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3Building Your Brand | 2013

Introduction: It’s All about Visibility

Power Promotion Best Practices

01.It’s a familiar conundrum in business: everyone needs to sell, and no one wants to be sold to. Companies are most successful at closing the divide between those perspectives—and closing more sales in the process—when they master the art of customer-focused promotion.

The rules of engagement are simple. They begin with listening to the information customers offer—in conversation, in response to requests for input, and through their buying habits. This creates a base for an ongoing conversation that conveys value to customers on their terms. Sell the benefits, rather than the features, of your products or services, and focus promotions on customers’ needs. In that way, you’ll establish relationships built on loyalty to the company (as opposed to discounts, sales, and price promotions), so you can deliver the value that leads to recurring business.

It’s also essential to remember that successful promotion is bigger than any of its individual components. “You need to look at promotion as a totally integrated practice,” says John Jantsch, founder of Duct Tape Marketing. Promotion is not just store signage, direct mail, interaction on social media, and other marketing vehicles. It’s expressed in every point of contact.

“The key here is thinking about what drives people to talk and share,” says Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On (Simon & Schuster, 2013). Promotion can be something as simple as packaging restaurant deliveries in a distinctive, colorful bag that grabs people’s attention and serves as a kind of visual word-of-mouth. Stores that place merchandise in reusable bags achieve similar promotion when customers are seen toting the store’s logo long after they’ve brought their purchases home. “The easier it is for people to see that others are doing something, the more likely they’ll be to do it themselves.”

Visibility comes into play in other ways, too. Any small business with a storefront must make sure its signage is easy to see and understand. It should also incorporate graphic elements that direct customers to the company’s website and social media pages. Place print promotions where they’ll be most useful to customers: weekly circulars, sale and discount offers, and new product/service information at the entrance; mailing list sign-ups, social media invitations, and customer satisfaction surveys at the point of purchase. Make sure every employee understands your promotion objectives and keeps the focus on serving the customer when collecting data.

For the best response to your messages, promote value and relationships, not sales

Building your Brand | 2013

Profit from Rewarding Relationships

Don’t Promote—Engage

02.

03.

Another effective onsite strategy is use of loyalty rewards. “They can be very powerful. There are also ways in which they can be enhanced,” says Phil Barden, managing director of Decode Marketing and author of Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy (Wiley, 2013).

The book offers the example of a car wash that experimented with the way its loyalty cards were structured. One loyalty card offered a free car wash after eight paid visits. Another offered a free car wash after ten paid visits, but customers who received that card were given two free stamps at the outset—so the difference was purely psychological: customers in both groups had to get the card stamped eight times to qualify for the free wash.

“Objectively, the second was identical to the first, because you only had to buy another eight washes to get a free one. The dramatic thing was that the card that had the two stamps already stamped on it got a 70 percent sales increase versus the other group,” Barden says. “Not only that, but the people returned to the car wash more often over a longer period of time and rated the car wash as better than the other group. That cost the car wash nothing; there was no extra marketing effort, no extra promotional effort involved.”

Loyalty programs work not only when the payoff is discounts and freebies, but also when they offer anything that conveys a sense of privilege or preferred customer status. Depending on the business, that can mean private sales, advance notice of new products, access to a priority service hotline, or free white paper downloads. Whatever the benefit delivered, it should convey the message, “I will do the right thing by you because you are a loyal customer,” says Beth Smith, CEO and co-founder of Smith Browning Direct, Inc. and educational director for the Direct Marketing Association’s Direct Marketing Institute.

The status element has tremendous psychological appeal and can be used to a small company’s advantage in cultivating relationships with the greatest profit potential. “Not all customers are created equal. What do your best customers today look like? How would we find more of them? We’ve got to look at where your revenue comes from,” Smith says. Zeroing in on what’s most important to your best customers can help you build a base of similar customers who value how much you deliver, not how little you charge. “I love the concept of more value for money. If the best thing you can say about your product or service is that it’s on sale, you haven’t said a lot. Come up with an enticement that will motivate them to have an ongoing dialog with you.”

“People don’t really buy price. They buy the relationship, and they’re thrilled that they get the discount on top of it,” says Kevin Hogan, Psy.D, author of Invisible Influence: The Power to Persuade Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere (Wiley, 2013). “That’s the real approach. You want to be more valuable to the marketplace than anybody else. And it’s not just that you’re trying to be valuable. It’s that you actually care about the people you do business with. Keeping a customer is no more complicated than being a great relationship partner.”

Once you’ve determined which promotional messages are best at capturing your company’s strengths and resonating with its target audience, you can experiment with additional strategies for delivering your message. Promotions delivered via text, email, or social media are inexpensive and can help you refine your promotion details and language by providing you with instant response rate data. “You can

5Building Your Brand | 2013

Personalization: Online and On target04.

test headlines. You can test calls to action,” Jantsch says. That gives you the opportunity to “throw out the clunkers” before you translate the campaign to printed collaterals, which positions those materials to deliver a higher rate of return.

Online communication tools create new opportunities not just for message delivery, but also for customer engagement and interaction. Mark Rivard, who creates original and limited-edition skateboard art and teaches art education programs in schools, promotes Rivard Art and Rivard Art Education through websites, blog posts, and email. The combination gives him an interactive platform that includes a portfolio of his designs, news about his latest projects, and videos that give fans a stronger sense of connection to the artist and his work. On the social media side, his presence has evolved along with skateboarders’ preferences, starting with MySpace and moving on to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram as they gained popularity. Although Rivard Art remains a small business strongly rooted in its Minneapolis origins, this approach has helped his work gain an international following.

To be effective, however, electronic and online promotions must be managed well. Those that are managed poorly can work against the company’s interests and generate ill will among the targets they were intended to attract.

The smart, strategic approach begins with finding out what kinds of promotions your customers and clients want (and don’t want) to receive; how often they want to hear from you; and whether they prefer email, texts, or updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

It’s also important to know which device they use to read your messages so you can configure and optimize your website and other content to be read on computers, tablets, or smart phones in accordance with customer preferences.

Solicit customer input on these points so you can craft personalized messages that hit the bulls-eye in addressing their needs. “Personalization is a piece that’s still really missing,” Jantsch says. “There’s so much information out there that we all go searching for. Finding something that we participated in the creation of has a really strong pull.”

Finally, it’s essential to adhere to CAN-SPAM email regulations, which include making sure your distribution lists include only people who have opted in; responding promptly to requests for removal; and using subject lines that are not deceptive. For full details, refer to the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Business Center’s CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business at http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus61-can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business

Building your Brand | 2013

Put On Your Game Face06.That’s why any integrated promotion strategy must incorporate in-person contact. Whether at local Chamber of Commerce meetings, charity fundraisers, or in conversations with customers, every face-to-face interaction is a form of promotion. This component gives your company the opportunity to infuse its messages with an extra dash of personality and engage your customers in ways they didn’t anticipate—which again encourages positive word of mouth. “It’s about going above and beyond the call of duty in a surprising and delightful way that breaks the monotony of the expected experience,” Berger says.

Gail and Stacey Rogers achieve this by parking a creatively decorated 1956 Ford F100 pickup truck in front of their Chester, New Jersey shop, Toys with Love. The eye-catching vehicle looks like a toy and sends an immediate visual signal that communicates fun. Inside the store, employees keep that vibe going by using the toys and engaging customers to join them in play. Single-day sales got a nice bounce recently when employees stationed themselves beside the cash registers—prime real estate for impulse purchases—and spent the day inflating a new line of colorful balls.

“Sometimes, a great promotion just makes people go, ‘Oh—that’s clever,’ or ‘that’s fun,’ or ‘that surprised me,’ because those are really personality traits of the brand,” Jantsch says. “Everything that you do in promotion ought to speak from the voice of the brand.” By communicating promotions in that voice, you reinforce your company’s commitment to delivering the products and services your customers value most.

For Power Promotion, think Print05.Although communications seem to have gone completely electronic, there are times when print still offers a stronger promotion vehicle. Customers in some demographics may prefer browsing a print catalog to reviewing product information online. (Think beyond older customers here. For example, a company that sells children’s merchandise may find that parents prefer print catalogs that they can browse with their children to get time together away from the computer.) High-end and luxury items can show to better advantage when given an upscale print presentation. Clothing manufacturers often find print photography more reliably true to color that online images can be.

“I happen to be a firm believer in the use of print and direct mail,” Jantsch says. He points out that because people are deluged with email all day but get a smaller volume of mail than they used to, printed pieces can have a stronger chance of capturing and holding the reader’s attention. As a result, printed direct mail pieces offer “an opportunity that we haven’t seen for a long time: you actually have a place where you can stand out again in the mailbox.”

As with electronic messages, make sure your customers or clients opt in to receiving print materials so your mailings are well targeted and likely to generate the highest return on investment. And then once they’ve given you permission to contact them, make sure you provide information that they want and need. Maintaining that standard requires nothing more than keeping the lines of communication open, inviting their input, listening to what they have to say, and responding in accordance with what they value.

“Information makes you brilliant,” Smith says. “No matter what else you do in your job, have a genuine curiosity about your customers and figure out where you provide value to them. We get sparks of magic that come out of that. The more you’re interested in them and genuinely interested in their success, the more successful you’ll be.”

7Building Your Brand | 2013

Mark Rivard: Chairman of the BoardSkateboard artist combines art and education in a thriving businessMark Rivard always loved skateboarding and skiing. He bought his first skateboard in high school with allowance money saved over months. After a knee injury in 2004 required surgery and recuperation at his mother’s house, he needed something to distract him. He grabbed a permanent marker and began drawing the Minneapolis skyline on his skateboard. He showed a friend at a skate shop and, to Rivard’s surprise, the shop owner wanted to sell them. Within four months, Rivard worked his artistic magic on roughly 40 boards and was part of an art show at a local nightclub.

“From there, it just kind of grew and became something,” he says.

Growing a multifaceted businessThat “something” is Rivard Art and Rivard Art Education. The artist creates and manufactures one-of-a-kind and limited edition contemporary art-emblazoned skateboards that he sells in about seven Minneapolis skate shops. But his business also has other facets. He sells original artwork in galleries and, through Rivard Art Education, has been part of an ongoing art project with the manufacturers of Sharpie markers, where he visits schools and teaches students about art. The fact that his artistic medium—skateboards and markers—is something to which many students can relate, makes him a popular speaker. He also owns his own gallery.

The business has grown largely through contacts and word-of-mouth, and Rivard says that communicating with his audience has been an important part of that growth. And while he isn’t an aggressive self-promoter—no full-page ads or seasonal catalogs for this business yet—Rivard is effective at creating vehicles that keep in touch with his customers and fans. He does so through several key channels:

• Events. Rivard’s art shows and store events earned him a following early on. Like many small business owners, having an opportunity to network and speak to both customers and influencers made a big impact on his business. According to Bank of America’s November 2012 Small Business Report survey, 87 percent of SMBs find word-of-mouth to be among their most effective marketing methods, while 49 percent say networking works for them.

“I hand-draw all my boards. It’s not done on a computer. It’s art-based—not something a graphic designer can whip up by studying the current hot color,” he says. While the originals are one-of-a-kind, Rivard produces limited quantities of his designs—typically 50 to 400 boards—that are sold in various stores. He does meet-and-greets in stores, as well.

Rivard began using The UPS Store to ship his boards when he first started out in Breckenridge, Colorado. He was so happy with them that he sought out a UPS Store when he moved to Minneapolis. He still drives across town to the first uptown location he began using because he says the people are so friendly, and they have taken good care of his art.

“I sold a sculptural-style painting to a guy in Florida. I had no idea how to ship it. I took it in to them—it was extremely fragile. But they packed it up, and it arrived to the buyer without a scratch. He was happy; I was relieved,” he says.

Case Study

Building your Brand | 2013

• Website, blog, and email. This one-two-three integration gives Rivard an online presence, a place to show off his work, and a way to alert the audience when new content has been added. Having his business components showcased on his website led to a call from a high-profile marker manufacturer. This led to a national media campaign and a series of events in which Rivard was featured, which upped his fan base. His blog keeps his audience up-to-date on his latest projects, and he will occasionally do email blasts when he has something specific, like a new board design, to promote to his email list. On one of his websites, a video shows Rivard at work, enlightening his audience and fans about his process and how he creates his stunning skateboards.

• Social media. Social media plays a big role in Rivard’s marketing. Early on, he was active on MySpace when it was the most popular social network. Through MySpace, he learned about different art shows and was invited to participate in some, including a big art show in Detroit. That, and a show in New York, led to a solo show in Belgium. One opportunity led to another, and he ended up showing 30 of his hand-drawn boards and painting a large mural for Carhartt, a premier skateboard, snowboard, and bicycle brand, at one of its flagship stores.

By remaining visible, sharing his new pieces, and keeping in touch with fans and friends through various media, Rivard’s opportunities for new projects have continued to grow.

Today, Rivard has a robust Facebook page where he shares art and interacts with fans of his work. He regularly posts updates of new pieces and announcements of appearances and shows. He has successfully used Facebook’s Event page to hold online art auctions—participants comment on a piece of art with their bids within a set period of time. He uses Twitter and Instagram to post photos of his work and share interesting or amusing images. After all, one of the tenets of effective social media use is not to be overly promotional, so the occasional amusing animal photo shows his sense of humor. Rivard says social media platforms are perfect for artists because they allow image or video-sharing as well as one-on-one interaction that helps the audience better understand the artist.

Interactive outreachStudents of his Rivard Art Education classes have a way to follow him and learn about his new projects and art pieces. They can comment and interact with him via social media, keeping in touch. He can also keep up with his former students through these vehicles:

• Customer service. Of course, ensuring that his boards get to customers safely and on time is critical. Much of Rivard’s art is one-of-a-kind: If it doesn’t get to the customer, it simply can’t be replaced, which leads to a very disappointed customer and loss of revenue for his business. That’s where The UPS Store comes in.

When customers buy one of his boards or if he needs to send an order to a retail customer, he knows he can rely on the same UPS Store location in uptown Minneapolis he’s counted on for years. The team there acts as his reliable fulfillment center, he says.

“You have options. You have [promotion tools] like Facebook and Twitter. You have [partners] like The UPS Store to support you,” he says. Having a long-term reliable partner like The UPS Store, which can handle packing and shipping his boards helps Rivard focus on what he does best: Create and teach art.

On the art education side of the business, his one-on-one teaching is done with the goal of fostering a love of art in his students. By teaching them that art is accessible to them and not some lofty pursuit relegated to oil paints and museum walls, he brings a form of expression to students that they might not otherwise have had. In addition, inherent in Rivard’s youth-oriented medium is the message that art can be found anywhere—even on a skateboard.

• Giving back. Rivard is committed to art education. In addition to the speaking engagements and teaching he does, last year, he organized a large event called “The Virginia Project,” where he visited an extremely low-income school in Virginia where free or reduced-price lunch is the norm

9Building Your Brand | 2013

among the student body. Students were drawing on construction-paper cutouts of skateboards, when their teacher found out about Rivard and contacted him to come for a visit. He was so excited by the opportunity to bring his skateboard art to the children that he organized a large charitable event around his visit to the school.

Rivard raised funds to contribute skateboards and art supplies to the school and also to make a donation to the school’s art budget, which is only $200 per year for the entire student body. In a dramatic twist worthy of the movies, his car broke down while he was in transit to the school. While stuck in West Virginia, he envisioned the disappointment of his would-be students. He managed to get the car fixed and drove all night to get to the school, and was greeted by ecstatic kids who couldn’t wait to meet him.

“This is the kind of community where good things don’t happen often,” he recalls. “I spent a week down there, learning about the kids, spending time with them. We threw an art show in this little community where the high school is. It was incredible.”

Rivard is careful about plans for new projects and new growth, choosing to focus on teaching and designing new boards. As an artist, he’s keenly aware of keeping a personal touch with his students and customers. With partners like The UPS Store ready to help him save time and focus on the most important parts of his business, he’ll grow Rivard Art and Rivard Art Education in the same way he approaches his art: Carefully and creatively, via his own vision and passion.

Building your Brand | 2013

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11Building Your Brand | 2013

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SMALL BUSINESS: YOU’RE NOT ALONE OUT ThERE. Stacey and Gail, co-owners of Toys with Love, Inc., share

a passion for making kids happy. So when they need to spread the love, be it shipping a gift nationally or printing event mailers for

the whole town, they turn to their neighbors at The UPS Store®. Because while play is their business, The UPS Store experts

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13Building Your Brand | 2013

toys with love has successfully delivered fun and games for more than 26 years For mother-and-daughter team Gail and Stacey Rogers, running a business is literally fun and games. Their Chester, New Jersey toy shop, Toys with Love, has been staving off competition ranging from independent toy sellers to big-box retailers for 26 years, making them well-known throughout the Garden State. The duo is always on the lookout for fun, unusual, and educational toys, and they work long hours to ensure their whimsical store is bright, well-organized, and constantly introducing new items. One thing they do take seriously: Making it a place where people love to shop.

A service-oriented approach—which includes personalizing purchases with names or other requests, even on the busiest days—makes the business special. However, the Rogers are also savvy marketers, using the resources they have at their location along with a dash of creativity and, working with partners like The UPS Store to support their efforts, employing some good, old-fashioned marketing tactics.

Here are the steps they take to win the local promotion game:1. Limit price promotions. If you’re looking for deep discounts, you’re not going to find them at

every holiday. The Rogers hold two four-day sales per year, period. The spring sale typically falls before Easter, and they also do one in the fall. Customers line up in droves, especially because they discount gift certificates in addition to merchandise. That way, customers aren’t holding off their purchases regularly because they know another sale will crop up at any time.

2. Send postcards. Gail and Stacey regularly send inexpensive and easy postcards to announce their sales, new products, and other news. As they grew their mailing list, they always handled the postcard mailing in-house, enlisting employees to apply labels and postage to as many as 6,300 cards. A few years ago, they began working with their local UPS Store in Chester to print and mail the cards and were astonished at the money they saved. Employees were thrilled to free up time that would otherwise have been spent coordinating the mailing.

“The printer we used closed their business unexpectedly. The sale was in about three weeks, and I needed postcards fast. I called Don [from The UPS Store] on a whim, and he took care of everything. He was wonderful,” says Stacey.

3. Use the unexpected. The Rogers have a 1956 Ford F-100 pickup truck that they park in front of the store, decorating it with signs to promote Toys with Love. “It looks like a big toy, and it helps draw people’s attention,” says Stacey. She also recommends that business owners think beyond the norm when finding ways to promote their businesses. Business owners should find elements that reflect their brands, while interesting and delighting customers and prospects, she says.

4. Hit “send.” Email is an effective medium for Toys with Love, and the Rogers use the tool to keep their customers informed. For example, email reminders go out before holidays, reminding customers to shop for gifts and stock up on essentials. While some customers prefer getting the store’s postcards, others prefer email either because they read it more often or because they have concerns about the environment and the cost to the store. “We just have very considerate customers. I think if we are considerate of them, they are considerate of us,” she says.

5. Merchandise properly. Stacey has a background in art, so she’s heavily involved in merchandising products. While the store is 3,500 square feet and packed with merchandise, customers can usually find what they need easily. Layout includes sections for the youngest patrons (age 3 and under) to ensure their safety. There are also sections for ‘tween girls and

Child’s PlayCase Study

Building your Brand | 2013

departments for art and train enthusiasts. Games are organized according to age-appropriateness. This product segregation helps customers find exactly what they need, but doesn’t discourage them from browsing in other sections, too.

6. Go social. While many small businesses have been reluctant to embrace social media to promote themselves, the Rogers are ahead of the curve. Stacey posts photographs of popular items or new products, primarily using image-based media like Instagram and Pinterest, which are popular with young customers. She also dabbles in Twitter and Facebook. She’s still working on finding the most effective way to use them, but she’s happy with the results and visibility they have generated so far.

7. Promote in-store. In-store promotion opportunities are often overlooked, but not at Toys with Love. The Rogers partner with their local UPS Store to produce signage and posters to display within the store, informing customers of and directing them to various areas and products. The high-quality, whimsical signage has become a hallmark of the store’s décor. Employees are trained to play, showing customers the features and benefits of various toys. There are no electronic games here: Toys with Love focuses on hands-on, tactile toys that can teach children important skills and lessons, with an emphasis on fun. Free gift-wrapping is also an added incentive to shop at the store. Recently, staffers spent the day near the register, inflating a new line of bouncing balls, in sizes ranging from 4 to 24 inches in diameter. They made a fun impulse buy—and a nice bump in sales for the day.

8. Host events wisely. While the store will occasionally hire a silhouette artist or host some other small event, most of its space is filled with toys. Rather than try to host an event that might be crowded, leaving everyone unhappy, the store focuses more on its one-on-one service. However, they acknowledge that events can be important vehicles for businesses to build customer relationships, which they see during their semi-annual sales.

Beyond the store’s active and comprehensive marketing, perhaps the primary reason why the Rogers have been so successful is that they walk their talk. The store embodies a welcoming, whimsical environment with an emphasis on knowledgeable staff and personalized service. Employees truly like working for the store and never utter the dreaded words “Don’t touch.” In fact, the store doesn’t stock breakable toys, so children are free to play when they visit. The Rogers work with their local UPS Store to ensure toys that need to be shipped arrive safely and promptly. The UPS Store staff review shipping options with the Rogers and help them choose the best options for packaging, acting as an outsourced fulfillment department.

“We promote our business mainly from behind the counter,” says Gail, who was teaching nursery school when she opened the store. “We want people to come in and feel good about being here.”

15Building Your Brand | 2013

the uPS Store Every Door Direct Mail®

Stretch your marketing budget, and reach more potential customers than ever before

Need your marketing budget to go a long way? Try our Every Door Direct Mail Program. There’s no mailing list to buy or postage permit to worry about. Simply choose an area with the best prospects, and we’ll handle the logistics of having your direct mail advertising piece delivered to every address in that neighborhood.

• No names or addresses required on your part

• Chooseanywherefrom200–5,000addresses

• Wedesign,print,andmailit

To learn more, check out The UPS Store Printing Services: www.theupsstore.com/products-services/Pages/every-door-direct-mail.aspx

yOu’RE NOt AlONE. StOP IN, AND DO It All At tHE uPS StORE.

Stop by your local The UPS Store® to learn about everything we can do to help your business succeed. Visit The UPS Store online www.theupsstore.com to find a location near you.

Copyright © 2013 The UPS Store, Inc.

Mail. Print. Pack. Ship. Whew!