We're one week in to our March Madness Retail Tip of the Day series. Thank you for all the feedback and for your particpation. Keep the comments coming! CBCG wants to give you as many resources as we can to help your retail business prosper. For today's retail tip, we offer a list of additional resources where you can go to look to for answers that can help you and your business. The list is just the tip of the iceberg, but we find the people listed have great insights and they help us to help you even more with their wisdom and knowledge! Enjoy!  

Social Media:

Mari Smith - Facebook Guru/Expert who can simplify even the toughest new editions to the program

Chris Brogran - Author of Trust Agents, great writer on the how's/why's of Social Media

Marketing/PR:

Duct Tape Marketing - John Jantsch has lots of insights and information to help any size business

Seth Godin - Author of the Purple Cow. Thought leader on marketing and consumers

Helpareporter.com 3x daily newsletter where writers are looking for subject matter experts to comment for their articles. Want to get your store in the press more often? Sign up today for this great newsletter.

Retail Industry Websites/Blogs:

CBCG Retail Report (we certainly think this one is helpful, it's ours!)

National Retail Federation (NRF) - free daily newsletter gives you quick pulse of broad range of retail industry

MarketingProfs - Subscription based service that has numerous articles/white papers/seminars across every subject area

TopRank Online Marketing Blog- written by Lee Odden This one is all about blogs. From every angle. All the time.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. There are a variety of resources at your disposal to help you with your retail business! We're all here to assist you as you grow your sales and profits!

Is Your Marketing Hitting the Mark in 2010?

Retail 101-Marketing IS essential for a retailer to effectively communicate with its customers in order to sell more AND to make more profit. Marketing is the key to manage your businesses' reputation, to maximize the flow and liquidation of of inventory and to launch new brands and intiatives that will catapult your store to it's next level of success. So the question we ask today is how are you managing this most critical element of your businesses success thus far in 2010?

As we approach the mid way point of the year, now is a great time to revisit your annual marketing plan and to consider if you're getting the results you anticipated from the marketing plans set forth for your business. It's time to ask yourself these tough questions to determine if the plan needs to be refined for the second half of 2010.

Question #1: Do you target the right customers? Although many retailers "think" they know their customers, in many instances this is not the case. Customers continue to evolve and are more sophisticated every day. It's ok to acknowlege that not everyone may want your products, but it's critical to focus on the ones that do, and to find ways to "meet" new customers who want your products, but just haven't been introduced to your store yet!

Question #2: Do you understand your customers' needs? The biggest element of marketing is to understand what your customers - and potential customers - actually want. With so many tools available to survey customers today, it must be a part of your marketing efforts to check in periodically and make sure your product assortment is hitting the mark. Simply put, if you make mistakes in the inventory arena and you purchase products people don't want - and your sales will be minimal resulting in higher than expected markdowns- to say nothing of the disappointment your customers will experience by not finding what they really want.


Question #3: Do your potential customers know about your store? So you know what your customers want and you have stocked your shelves with the perfect selection of products, but ensuring your customers and prospects know about it remains the critical communication piece to your ultimate retail success. Many retailers use the wrong communication channels and fail to let their target audience know that the products they want are available in their store. Make sure you are speaking to your customers where they are actually listening. ie. Are your customers using social media sites like Facebook, You Tube and Twitter, but you're not communicating with them in these venues? It's a missed opportunity for your business!

Question #4: Do you communicate effectively with your target audience? The actual words you use in your marketing messages are crucial. Not just what you write, but the way your write them. Everyone knows that only benefits sell and not features - but extracting the benefits that are going to turn your prospects into paying customers is perhaps the hardest part of marketing. Reconsider the message you are sending to customers and what your "call to action" incents your customers to do and to drive store visits and ultimately sales.

Question #5: Are your projections too ambitious? Everyone thinks their new products will fly off the shelves, but in reality this is rarely the case. Your marketing plan (and inventory strategy) should show a realistic path to profitability that aligns your actual revenues and profits with your written plan. Analyze your financial plans, or have a trusted advisor review them, to determine how realistic they are and what adjustments may be required.

A thorough analysis on the first half of the year's marketing plan and its results will ensure that the second half of 2010 is more productive. Marketing planning is not a static activity. It requires careful monitoring and refinements to maximize return on marketing investments.

Keep us posted on your progress. We're committed to helping you succeed in 2010 and beyond!

Social Media: Attraction or Addiction?

Boston, MA - April 16, 2010 -Are you (or your customers) addicted to Facebook or Twitter?

As social media continues to grow, details are starting to surface about people's behaviors and consumption of information in the social space. As owners of retail businesses and marketers, when we learn more about the "how, when and where" of social users, we can better understand how to optimize our marketing efforts.

At CBCG, we're constantly on the look out for information about any retail marketing trends that can and will help you do business more effectively and efficiently. In fact, we've been talking about Social Media and how retailers can use it for the past 2 1/2 years. We feel its critically important that you start to leverage the power of this important marketing medium and begin to interact with your customers in this venue.

Last Friday, we found a great study that drills down on "how we act" and "what we want" in the world of social networking. It's from our friends at www.socialmediaexaminer.com If you're not following them, you should be. They've got great information.

Below is a link to the entire study. Particularly note how often people are checking their SM accounts. Think about how this opportunity to market your business in a 24/7 environment could help your business grow.

Click Here For Social Media Usage Study Results
Enjoy the study- and keep us posted on your social media usage!

Lynn Switanowski and the entire CBCG team

TV Still Relevant, But Social Media Takes Center Stage

CNBC hosted an advertising summit last week focused on how marketers connect with consumers. Lots of great dialogue about the future of marketing- and where consumers are spending their time today. Is TV dead as a marketing medium? Some interesting opinions were discussed-- Below is a recent blog post about the event- with some thoughts about the future of TV marketing. Let us know your thoughts.
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CNBC's Advertising Week summit on how marketers connect to consumers could have been called "No, really, we love TV!" The discussion was intended to be a free-roaming exploration about consumer passion, authenticity, and marketing challenges in a world that has little trust for business. But the gravitational pull of Facebook (whose COO Sheryl Sandberg was, appropriately enough, seated dead center) kept the conversation on social media.
The apparent subtext that TV might need to get its affairs in order wasn't lost on host Becky Quick, co-host of CNBC's "Squawk Box" show, who rhetorically asked more than once whether she would have a job next year.
"Television is still important," said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Guitar Hero. "People have to re-think how they advertise. At Guitar Hero we took 40% of our budget that used to be on TV and it moved to the Internet. Television is wonderful, but when you have incredible sites like Facebook, you have to be smart with what you do, where your consumer is and how to reach them all the time."
He said the change was hard to sell to a skeptical employee base at first. "Guitar Hero was very successful, so I had to sit there and make the case. But if you look at Guitar Hero 5, we have nearly a million fans on Facebook. Where else can you find a million people who say, 'I love your product -- please communicate with me?'"
Pam El, VP marketing at State Farm, was candid about her product's lack of luster compared to, well, Guitar Hero. "[Rosensweig] has the coolest product on the planet; Sheryl [Sandberg] has the coolest way for people to talk to each other, and David [Jones, global CEO of Havas Worldwide, also on the panel] is just cool. But here at State Farm, we sell insurance. It's not cool."
She said that while the company uses Facebook to generate some emotional energy with consumers, "more importantly, we are moving into the community, so you will see us in high school and sports arenas -- so we are not only shifting media out of TV but out of the traditional media period into grassroots sponsorships."
On TV, El said, State Farm is doing fewer 30-second ads and more product placement and integration. Online, she says, the real competition is not other insurance companies, but companies like Guitar Hero.
"Now we are going after younger adults and Hispanics, which makes it that much more challenging. We are using Lebron James in a lot of our commercials," she said, adding that the latest campaign directed at the Hispanic market centers on telenovelas, with branded integration with "Entertainment Tonight." El said State Farm is also doing a marketing campaign that centers around the theme of "being there," starring the likes of Denzel Washington talking about what it means to "be there" for his wife and kids.
David Jones, global CEO of Havas, said the holding company did a survey 18 months ago, wherein 86% of respondents felt companies should stand for more than profit. "One thing that will change post-Madoff and post-economic crisis is -- consumers are going to be passionate about businesses that are socially responsible," he said, adding that 80% of respondents to the company's 2008 survey said consumers should censure unethical companies.

Karl Greenberg, Sep 21, 2009 09:07 PM
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=113981