Christmas marketing plans

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J

Jill

CGF II, Certified Grumble Framer Level 2
Joined
Aug 23, 2002
Posts
211
Loc
Omro WI
So With the local Economy still in a slump, I was wondering what everyone has in the works to bring up the Christmas numbers. In talking with vendors it appears that we are all having some sort of down turn, so dose any one have any ideas they would like to share?

I choose to chair our city's Christmas festival, Reindeer (next to my store) Santa with gift bags, Craft fair at the local school, chili Cook off. Local artists showing in my gallery with open house.

One of my Clients won best in show at the state fair with an item I framed so she is my best advertisement at the moment.
I up dated my referral value program. Will do a christmas newsletter.

Dose anyone else have any ideas? Lets help each other out this year.
 
I am fortunate to be included in the malls advertising and promotional programs. (except that it includes opening at midnight the day after Thanksgiving) In addition I send out direct mailers and use door hangers with Holiday specials and a $25 off coupon. Crossing my fingers.
 
I was going to mail out holiday post cards offering 20% off anything in the store. This includes already discounted gallery art, photo frames, prints, photo frames, hand crafted items as well as framing. Well see how it goes.
 
Timely post:

The merchants in my area (a couple of blocks away from Main Street) where the Chamber of Commerce affection seems to end... are brainstorming a few projects, which include a real reindeer for the kids (the landlord would love that.....), Santa's Helpers, modeling, donations to charities, offers, email blasts, ads, block party and such.
 
Santa is coming to my shop on DECEMBER 5th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAH!!! ;) Brings lots of familes downtown! :D
 
We're just going to say the **** with it and go North Carolina to see the grandkids......closing Dec 20 thru 28th for the first time in history...most every small business in town expects a very bad season, and November is looking real bad right now..worse Nov in 13 years for us.
 
I'm in a shopping center with about 50 businesses, 40 of which are a member of a merchants association, which for about 6+ years I have designed the advertising for... so between coupon books and NBC commercials, I get to play with other's money to advertise. :D
 
I have a couple of suggestions...

I work for a small regional framing company that has about 20 stores and we are offering a discount that applies only if the customer buys a combo of custom frame and museum glass.

One way my company saves money is by buying moulding in bulk. We have a smaller selection but can offer much lower prices too. I know individual stores don't have this buying power, but is it possible to do it for your top ten selling frames and then you can either discount them some or simply keep all the profit by selling them at regular price. I've also heard that sometimes individual shops will join together when ordering materials to get better prices as a whole, but this does mean working with the competition.

This idea is gimmicky but can get people excited if you market it right. You could offer a raffle where everyone who spends a certain amount of money on an order can enter into a raffle for a gift card of a set amount for your store. And if they spend twice the set amount, then they get their name entered again and so on. Another variation is that with every puchase of such amount of money, you will put $5 to raffle and enter customers name (so the pot is based off of amount of sales) and winner can use that to next framing order. And the winner is announced on Christmas. This can motivate people to spend just a little bit more to be entered into the raffle. This is also a great way to get customer's mailing information.

I am not a frame shop owner so I only know so much about the costs. Sorry if these ideas aren't helpful.
 
I've got my holiday marketing plans in full swing:

- new ads ready to go in the local paper here in Mississippi
- starting 2 months of advertising in a newspaper in a nearby county in Alabama
- bought 50 radio spots, 15 seconds long, wishing everyone a happy holiday
- a month of TV commercials will start on the local NBC and FOX stations in another week
- next week I'll prep a direct mailer / gift certificate that I will send out to my top customers at the beginning of December
- after Thanksgiving, I'll be running a Draw-Your-Own-Discount sale up to Christmas, where they draw their discount out of a bowl for any item they want in the store
- donating to the local Navy League, will get recognition
- donating to Rotary, will get recognition
- will participate in an art auction at the local art museum, which will allow me to mingle with many of my customers
 
BlackCat, those are some excellent ideas. Thank you for the suggestions.
I'd say they are lucky to have you on the staff!

We had our Christmas Open House last weekend-with over a hundred customers in. All gift items were 20% off, and we gave away a $50.00 gift certificate. We also gave away a 40 glass ornaments as a gift with purchase. (We advertised to the first 25 customers, but we had extras, so we continued giving them out to people who made substantial purchases.)
It was advertised on the radio, in the newspaper and on our marquee sign. And I had it on Facebook, and we did the open house along with 4 other businesses, so we cross promoted.

We have 3 Christmas ads on a couple of radio stations currently (I also am the sponsor for "Focus on the Family" on the talk radio station).

I am decorating a section of the local Claudia House (owned by Linda Bloodworth Thomason) which will get a ton of traffic (5000 people will tour)and publicity for my store.

Of course, we kicked off the Qrt with a charity Event in Oct (National Art and Framing Month) for our local UCAN cancer assistance network. That of course, set us up in the position to invite those attending back in for Christmas shopping. Everyone who attended got a "Rewards Card" to use during Oct...

We'll have 2 or 3 more Christmas events on Saturdays between now and Christmas. Today we had a free ornament with a $25.00 gift purchase. I am working on live music for the first weekend in Dec.

We serve not only coffee, but hot Cider on Saturdays. Of course, it's been 75 degrees the past 2, but at least the smell is nice.

We are about to roll out a budget framing package--more details after we take care of that. It will be a choice of about 20 frames, 20 mats, reg glass and dry mounting for a set price. We've purchased the mouldings in box qnts and it will compete with the local "thrift" framing, which we have alot of around here and who have been chipping away at our base this year. I have decided to fight back on that score.

Right now, our 18 fully decorated Christmas Trees are drawing people in just to check out the pretties. Of course, it is primarily a way to get people in the doors, and then wow them with the framing. It works. And, it was a LOT of work-whew! What can I say? "When the going gets tough...."

I will tell you that we are staying busy, but we have been working like **** to stay that way.
 
SALE

I was thinking about have a store wide sale. :cry:


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Mailer out to top 250 customers $50 off any framing over $150. Val Pack to 60K homes in Nov and Dec. Shooting a TV commercial tomorrow morning and will be on approx 250 spots between Thanksgiving and Dec 23. A few newspaper ads, Google Ad Words, will send a few "member only" emails out with special offers, 500 coupons in shopping bags given away in our mall on Black Friday, a few in store promotions, and whatever "fly by the seat of your pants" ideas that come up
 
i plan on going thru tons of old moldings I adored and bought when they closed them out and ordering glorious beveled mirrors and doing a fabulous sparkly window filled with various sized mirrors and a few old things framed-- like a set of very Scandanavian cream painted architectural wood ornate tiles. Double framed in creamy chippy Roma with a silver beaded Larson Bolshoi sp? fillet-- and hanging them from wonderful long-long antique ribbons as a pair. I am excited and i will sell this stuff -- if i sell half of my window display-- i will be happy. Beauty still sells -- and if you have the guts to take the risk-- do it -- and make it beautiful--- it will sell-- the stink of fear is in the air--- the way beyond it is to appeal to people with money to spend -- and i intend on doing just that. We are loading up the walls of a local decorator who is opening his own business downtown and we will do the art on his walls--- we are so excited-- he will sell it because his customers spend money as well. follow the money ----
 
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