“What’s been working” was a common theme for both Mastermind meetings in August. Marketers discussed event marketing and building relationships with retail customers and contractors, while General Managers discussed niche products. Read on to find out more!
Key Takeaways
From event ideas to event promotions that have worked well in the past, we think you’ll get some ideas from this Marketing Mastermind. Then, in our General Managers Mastermind, we talked about specific products flying off the shelves. Do you want to learn more about what those products are? Keep reading!
Marketing Mastermind Takeaways:
Events can be time-consuming (and possibly costly!), so it’s important to bring as much foot traffic as possible.
Our innovators came up with a list of promotion ideas we think you’ll love:
- Utilize in-store TVs
- Blast your email subscribers
- In-store chalkboards near high-traffic areas
- Physical handouts at the register
- Local radio and newspaper promotion
- Boost your Facebook event
- Run social ads
- Sharing your Facebook event with local Facebook groups
- Reaching out to your local chamber to send out event invites
- Posting multiple posts on the event and engaging with the audience
- Utilizing giveaways to get people to share and invite people to the event
- Direct mailers using a giveaway (make them fill out the back of the postcard and bring it in-store for a giveaway entry)
- Invite local pet shelters to your events! They’ll bring adoptable dogs and puppies and drive traffic – who doesn’t love puppies!?
Tips for Efficient Events
Now that you have ideas for promoting your event, let’s talk about some tips to make it less time-consuming and more impactful!
One suggestion was to partner with local non-profits to manage the food (allow them to accept donations), and as a bonus, they’ll likely share the event on their social media channels (cross-promotion and free promotion, at that!) That way, you don’t have to worry about pulling one of your store employees to handle the food aspect.
Reinventing the wheel is exhausting, and leaning on your fellow innovators is key to making an event successful! Chances are, there’s someone who has thrown the same event and learned some lessons along the way. Use your network and Hardware Innovators to ask questions, provide support, and share key insights.
Event Ideas You Might Not Have Thought Of:
Ladies Night
Ladies Night can be a big foot traffic event. These events can weigh heavily on resources and the wallet, so it’s important to track performance. Sending out direct mailers and using coupons with barcodes can help you track purchase data to see how many guests are participating and shopping.
Tips to consider when hosting a Ladies Night:
- Run a promotion similar to the bucket sale (20% OFF)
- Offer swag bags to the first 100 ladies in the door. (They will camp out for this!)
- Invite massage therapists for a free 15-minute massage.
- Serve wine (of course).
Ladies’ events are a great opportunity for ladies to learn more about power tools. DIY projects and having vendors available to answer questions and demo products are great ways to introduce otherwise intimidating products.
When’s the best time to host one of these events? One Innovator recommends hosting the event the week before Thanksgiving. Everyone’s thinking about gifts to buy their spouses and themselves!
Bonus Tip?: Invite your local firemen (to raise money, of course) to do a runway event! We’ve heard this has been effective in the past.
National Tradesman Night
You can make it an invite-only event and invite the top guys in B2B (you might even want to invite the B2B folks you haven’t heard from in a while to re-engage with your store). Utilize your B2B newsletter list and send invites that way. Most B2B events can be sponsored (making the upfront cost minimal). Think of it as a tradeshow, with drinks and food provided. You can even invite GM and Ace B2B folks to provide local support. Our Innovators also recommend bringing a lot of swag and passing it out! Things like hoodies and high-viz t-shirts with your logo and turn your contractors into walking billboards.
Got the Case of Dine-N-Dash?
One innovator mentioned having issues with people dining and dashing at their grilling events. Are you running into the same issue? One recommendation was to serve appetizer-size food so they have to stick around for longer and peruse your store. What ideas do you have to prevent this?
Bonus Marketing Idea
This is non-related to events, but this came up in discussion, and we had to share it again!
Think outside of the box, like creating a billboard (these are effective in small towns, and utilizing humor makes a big difference). Here are some billboard examples that have been effective in bringing in foot traffic from Livingston Ace Hardware:
Helpful Resources:
- Mailchimp is a great place to collect emails and send out newsletter
- Capture giveaway signups with Gravity Forms/Survey Monkey
- Ace-ing Social – Facebook Group
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General Managers Mastermind Takeaways:
The topic for our General Managers Mastermind was what’s hot and what’s not! We opened the discussion by sharing some product categories that are working.
One of our Innovators brought in frozen pies and has been selling 100 frozen pies a week! These pies were a $20 add-on sale that that store didn’t have before. Sometimes, thinking outside of the box brings in unexpected revenue!
Another Hardware Innovator found success with local artists. Local craft shows can be a great place to find products from local artists. Buy a handful of options and bring them in-store. You might find that you’re having a hard time keeping them on the shelves.
Another innovator recommends dedicating a space specifically for artists to promote their names. The artists stock the inventory, and our Innovator only takes a small percentage of the sale. If customers really like the work, you can progress to stocking inventory from the artist. It’s a great way to try out new products while also helping build the business for these artists.
Another hot-selling product was MRCOOL! It’s a mini-split system that’s considered “self-install” and has been very successful. Big-ticket items like $2,000-$3,000. MRCOOL also sell well online.
When it comes to thinking outside of the box, selling a “done-for-you” cleaning kit has been popular. Things like a bucket, mop, broom, rags, etc. It goes above and beyond to make your customers thankful that they didn’t have to run across the whole store to pick up what they needed! You might even find that it affects your bottom line!
Giftware has also been wildly successful for one of our Innovators. Wind chimes, lawn decor, etc., have grown over 50% in the last several years. ($130,000 in revenue YTD) It’s right at the store’s entrance, grabbing people’s attention.
The last tip was to take inventory of items on an Excel sheet that sold before suddenly stopped selling so you can track what’s working and what’s not working and monitor it seasonally.
Do you have any products that have been selling out? We’d love to hear about them!
Does the idea of a monthly meet-up with other retail hardware stores sound valuable to you? Would you like to share resources, ask questions, and participate with your peers on-demand through an exclusive Slack channel?
Email us at hello@hardwareinnovators.com to get access to the Slack Channel! The best part? It’s 100% free and puts you in touch with hardware store general managers and marketers to ask questions and get immediate feedback from what worked at other hardware stores!
Join Us on September 18th for our Next Mastermind
For September, we’ll have two groups that meet: marketing and GMS.
Need help signing up? Send us an email: hello@hardwareinnovators.com
Are You On Board?
Does the idea of a monthly meet-up with other hardware stores sound valuable to you? Are you interested in sharing resources, asking questions, and participating with your peers on-demand with an exclusive slack channel?