Advertising and Special Offers in a Shop Business

Last Updated: August 22, 2009

Marketing

There are many different forms of marketing, with a large number of potential benefits and costs. It is important to remember that the affects of most marketing projects will be different every time, and will depend on many factors, including the type of shop you run, as well as the budget, style, audience and other external influences.

The following are some common ways for using marketing to promote a shop:

Advertising

There are many different forms of advertising, from newspaper and magazine to radio and television adverts. The costs vary, but magazine and television advertising is usually considerably more expensive, but has much higher exposure.

If your shop is aimed at the local population (e.g. A corner shop) then there is little point in paying for exposure outside of the local area; making a local newspapers or possibly local radio the best option. However, in m any c ases, such a localised business may be better of with leaflets and other forms of promotion.

If your shop is aimed at a larger population (e.g. A sports equipment store) then there may be scope for advertising in related regional or national magazines, local radio or local newspapers.

Regional television advertising will normally only be of use to businesses that cover a wider area (e.g. One of only a few stores in a county), or have a chain of shops across a region; otherwise the costs will not be worth the exposure gained.

Special Offers and Promotions

One of the most common forms of marketing for shops is through special offers and promotions. This may include reduced prices; buy one get one free offers, vouchers, and similar schemes.

Prices can be reduced on any items, but by making changes to popular items or items that are already being advertised widely, you may be able to capitalise on the interest in those products.

“Vouchers and special offer details can be included with your leaflets and mail shots.”

Vouchers can provide extra special offers; a popular example is a ‘Money off next purchase’ voucher, which encourages visiting customers to return to your shop next time. Vouchers and details of special offers can be included with leaflets, mail shots and advertising that are sent to your potential customers, combining forms of promotion. This should hopefully have better results, and also help you to judge how successful your leaflets have been.

One special offer and pricing strategy used by many businesses is the ‘Loss Leader’; this involves reducing the price of one or two products to the point where you make only a little (if any) profit. The idea of this is to encourage people into your shop, where they will also buy other items which make up the lost profit.

For example:

1. A local shop providing a number of half price offers to encourage you to buy more of your shopping there.

2. Electrical stores offering cheap televisions, and making up the profit by encouraging you to buy accessories and insurance cover.

Running a loss leader scheme can be very risky if it is not planned carefully, but can be a successful way to encourage new customers.

The advantage of these forms of promotion is that they only cost you when people are buying from you, so if they are unsuccessful, it won’t have cost you too much.