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Author: Phil Wrzesinski

Phil Wrzesinski is the National Sales Manager of HABA USA toy company, a Former Top-Level, Award-Winning Retailer, a Thought-Provoking Speaker, a Prolific Author, a 10-Handicap Golfer, an Entertaining Singer/Songwriter, and a Klutz Kid who enjoys anything to do with the water (including drinking it fermented with hops and barley), anything to do with helping local independent businesses thrive, and anything that puts a smile on peoples' faces.

Movie Ads, Placemats, Yellow Pages, and More

One thing I actually do miss about being in my retail store was all the ad sales reps with their crazy pitches. Sure, they were a distraction, but as a student of advertising I also saw them as a mental exercise to try to figure out if they were effective and how would I best be able to use them. Plus, I’ve never been one to shy away from a good distraction. (Squirrel!)

To wrap up our discussion of the different media for advertising, here are some of the more obscure or obsolete forms of advertising I’ve been pitched that someone might try to pitch you.

MOVIE SCREEN ADS

Upside: You have a captive audience sitting in the theater that cannot fast-forward and will be much more likely to watch your larger-than-life, powerful, heartfelt television ad.

Downside: You won’t get a lot of frequency. Many people don’t arrive early enough to see the ads. It costs you the same regardless of how many butts are in the seats.

Pro Tip: Watch the movie release schedule carefully. You’ll get far more viewers the weekend of April 27-29 this year than the weekends before or after. Plan your ads around the blockbuster releases.

 

 

PLACEMAT ADS

Upside:  Yeah, still working on that.

Downside: Passive ad, usually monochrome, covered by a plate, and not seen by the person who, if they had time to read the ads on the placemat would most likely be staring at their phone instead.

Pro Tip: This isn’t an advertisement. It is a “sponsorship”. If you want to donate to a worthy cause through placemat ads, then so be it. (If there isn’t a cause, spend your money elsewhere.)

 

PROGRAM ADS

Upside: People who arrive at an event early will read the program. They might even look at the ads. If it is a school program, they might even hold onto it a little while longer and show it to a relative.

Downside: Limited audience, passive ad, and usually black & white.

Pro Tip: This is most definitely a sponsorship more than an advertising media. If you want to support the program, place the ad. Put it in your sponsorship expense column, though. (Note: those sports posters with the boy’s wrestling program schedule are pretty much the exact same thing as a program.)

 

YEARBOOK ADS

Upside: People keep yearbooks for decades.

Downside: People don’t look at yearbook ads for decades.

Pro Tip: Like program ads, this is a sponsorship. Treat it accordingly.

 

YELLOW PAGES

When phone books were still being produced, you needed to have your free listing, but paying for anything more was never the best investment. Now they are promoting yellow pages online. Have you ever seen a yellow pages listing show up in the organic feed of your Google search? And if so, was it above the actual website for the company you were searching? No, me neither.

 

CLOSED-CIRCUIT TV:

Select businesses like your local coffee shop will place televisions in their shops that will run loops of ads for the customers. Nope, nope, and nope. Don’t place one of these in your store to annoy your customers. Don’t waste your money annoying someone else’s customers.

 

If any of you get a pitch for a newfangled advertising media that I haven’t yet covered, let me know.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I used to spend money on Yellow Pages. Took years to wean myself off and put that money to better use. It broke my heart to say no to high school kids selling yearbook ads because these kids were just learning how to be salespeople. Rejection can be tough. We had thirteen high school yearbooks in our county. I couldn’t afford to sponsor them all. I always tried to be polite and encouraging and thank the students for coming in.

PPS Sponsorships aren’t a bad thing. They just aren’t an effective form of advertising. If you’re going to do some sponsorship ads, at least put the effort in to make the ads sparkle. At least those few who see your ad will know you’re a top-notch business. I did some placemat and program ads over the years for causes I believed in such as Toys for Tots (our largest charity) and the high school boys swim team (of which my son, like me in my day, was one of the captains), but purely as a form of sponsorship. The picture above is a color business-card sized ad I had ready to go. I also had a slew of business-card sized ads optimized for black & white for sponsorship purposes shown below.

Mobile Marketing – Winning the Transactional Customer Today

I remember the first time someone pitched me the idea of mobile marketing—sending texts out to customers to convince them to come into the store. Two things stood out from that meeting. First, they gave me a stat that said there were 4.5 billion smartphones in use on the planet. Second, they showed up just shortly after I had read Seth Godin say, “What if you actually won the race to the bottom? Worse yet, what if you finished second?”

They lost me with the first statistic because it was a blatant attempt to overplay the significance of the smartphone. 4.5 billion phones? Sure, maybe that many had been produced and even sold, but to believe that 64% of the 7 billion people living on this planet were on a smartphone was just a little over-the-top. I wasn’t ready to jump to the conclusion that even 64% of Americans had smartphones. My mom and dad were still using flip phones at that time. My younger son did, too. My older son had an iPhone, but I was still on my Blackberry, barely touching the “smart” part of that phone. In an upper middle-class, tech-savvy, American family, only 50% of us had a smartphone back then*.

(There is a quick marketing lesson here. If your statistics seem too good to be true, you better justify them or don’t use them at all. Any strain to your credibility will kill the rest of your message.)

Image result for mobile marketingThere was a second statistic they gave me (by the way, I would link to these statistics if I could, but I can’t find evidence online to support them) that said 51% of smartphone users responded to coupon offers sent directly to their phones.

That number actually made sense to me. You and I have already talked about the two types of customers—Transactional and Relational.

Here’s a quick recap to jog your memory … Transactional Customers know exactly what they want and are on a hunt to find the best price. Relational Customers are looking for an expert they can trust to help them find the right item. We are both Transactional and Relational, depending on the category and product. About half the buyers will be Transactional and half will be Relational in any category, too. But Relational Customers will be more profitable to you and have more loyalty.

The 51% who responded to deals and discounts on their phone are likely to be Transactional Customers. I tend to lean more Relational. It would drive me crazy to get bombarded with texts like that all day.

That’s the key to understanding Mobile Marketing. It is a Direct Marketing offer that is most likely to be seen and used by a Transactional Customer. It isn’t a tool for Branding. It isn’t a tool for building relationships. (Transactional Customers have no loyalty to anything other than the discount or deal.) It is merely a tool for attracting the least profitable customers out there.

That doesn’t mean Mobile Marketing doesn’t have a place in your advertising toolbox. It can be incredibly effective for specific uses.

If you do have a deal-of-the-day and want to let your Transactional Customers know about it to help you move some inventory, Mobile Marketing can work well for you. If you have a restaurant and want to highlight today’s specials, Mobile Marketing can work well for that, too.

If you’re just throwing out coupons to anyone walking by your door, however, you’ll get traffic, but it won’t be that profitable and won’t have any long-term positive effect. In some cases, you’ll just be throwing money away.

Would I, as a Relational Customer, use a coupon sent via text when I walked into a store? Of course! But that’s just lost profits. I was already going in to buy something and was already willing to pay full price.

As with every form of advertising, there are pros and cons. There are ways it works and ways it doesn’t. Mobile marketing is one of those that has a specific use. If you know who you’re trying to attract and why you’re trying to attract them, then you can pick the media best suited for the task.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS *Even today I find it impossible to believe that 4.5 billion number (and by now I’m sure they are boasting some higher number). Some might argue that for every person not on a smartphone there is some guy on Wall Street who owns three phones. Okay, I get that. But do you want to pay to reach him three times?

Google AdWords – Wasted Money or Well Worth It?

On four different occasions I received coupons in the mail from Google. Each one was worth $10 to $25 to be used on Google AdWords. I started researching how to use AdWords. I learned about different search terms and how some terms will be more expensive than others.

For instance, the word “toys” was going to cost me far more per click than the word “crayola”. The more generic the search term, the higher the cost to get clicks.

Image result for google adwordsWait, let’s back up a moment. For those of you who have never used Google AdWords, here is how it works. You select a word or phrase you wish to use. If someone searches for that particular word or phrase, your name will appear in the paid section in the search (above the organic results) if—and this is the key—you agreed to spend as much per click to be one of the top three to five businesses who also chose that word.

Yes, it is a bidding war to get eyeballs to your link and clicks to your website. The more you are willing to pay-per-click, the more likely you’ll make it onto the page. That’s why it is important to pick the proper words. The more common the word appears in searches, the more businesses will pay to get on that page. The more obscure the word, the cheaper the pay-per-click.

In other words, Google AdWords is a game you play. You can pay more for the more common search words and fight the crowds trying to reach the masses, or you can choose cheaper words that might not get the overall traffic but can still draw people to your site. You have to find the right mix.

Oh, but it is far more complicated than that.

First, you have to choose the right words. Second, you have to write a short blurb—shorter than a tweet—that might actually convince someone to click on your paid link rather than the organic results. Finally, you have to have your AdWord link to a page that has the actual solution the searcher desires. Your account gets charged every time someone clicks, whether they spend ten minutes or ten seconds on your site.

Here is the truth about paid search results …

The only person who clicks on a paid search result is someone who has a problem and is looking for a clear-cut solution.

If you are considering using Google AdWords, you need to ask yourself the following questions …

  • Do I have a solution for a problem people are actively searching?
  • Is that solution on my website or can I create a web page with that solution?
  • Is my solution one that can be easily described in 96 characters or less?
  • Is my landing page optimized to convert traffic into sales/solutions?
  • Will I make enough money with my solutions to cover the cost of acquiring clicks?

Those are some tough questions. The last three are the heart of the matter. Not only do you have to have a solution, you have to have a landing page that the searchers go to that not only solves their problem but convinces them you are the best solution and gets them to buy from you right away.

In other words, this isn’t the place to put your Branding Dollars. This isn’t the place for building Top-of-Mind Awareness. This is the place for solving problems for customers desperate for a solution. If you can do that, you can drive a lot of traffic via Google AdWords.

If you’re going that route, here are some things to do:

  • First, work on the solution. Make sure your solution is simple, clear, easily understood, and exactly what customers will want.
  • Second, work on your landing page. You choose where the searcher lands when she clicks. You want her to land on the solution page. Make sure that page is optimized to be clear and simple and easy to navigate. She shouldn’t have to click more than once to know everything she needs to know. Take down as many barriers between the customer and the solution as possible.
  • Third, once you have your solution, figure out the most common words and phrases someone might type into a search bar if they are looking for that solution. The more exact you are, the more likely you’ll get the right people clicking. This, more than anything else, will help your conversion rate go way up.
  • Fourth, determine exactly how much you are willing to pay for each click. Google will give you a range of what to expect. Make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

The cool thing about Google AdWords is the analytics. They’ll tell you exactly how well your campaign is running. You’ll know how many people are clicking, what it is costing. You can figure out your conversion rate from there. (Conversion rate is simply the percentage of how many of those who click actually use your solution.) According to this article, the best ecommerce sites are converting over 6% of their pay-per-clicks. Your ROI, then, is to figure out what each conversion is worth to you, and whether you are getting the conversions you need for the money you spend.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is all about Direct Marketing. The return on your investment is in the strength of your solution and your ability to find the people with the right problem you can solve. Google AdWords is a powerful tool for that purpose, but only if you have a great solution people need.

Before you embark on Direct Marketing, though, please read this article from Roy H. Williams. It will help you understand a little more about the solutions you might want to offer.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I call them solutions instead of offers. That is the mentality you need to take if you are going to use PPC advertising effectively. The people searching aren’t looking for “offers”. They are looking for solutions. Make sure you give them one or your money will be wasted, and wasted quickly. The first $100 I spent on Google AdWords was gone in less than an hour at an average rate of about 33 cents per click. They all went to my home page where they stayed an average of less than eight seconds. There was no solution on that page. No conversion.

PPS A lot of businesses like mine (speakers, consultants, etc.) will use PPC advertising to get your email. The method of operation goes like this. You search for something. I offer you a free solution. You click on my link. I make you subscribe with your email before I give you your free solution. Then I bombard you with emails trying to convince you to sign up for my paid services. It is the tried and true method for many in my position. (Well, okay, I don’t know how “true” it is, but it is tried by several people.) It also isn’t me. I believe if my free content helps you, I’ll get enough paid business to keep doing what I do.

PPPS The analytics that Google offers in their AdWords program is one of the best tools out there. You can A/B test your solutions, your blurbs, your landing pages, your budget, and every other element of the campaign to see what works best. But if you don’t first have a great solution and know exactly what words people are using to search for that solution, nothing else will move the needle enough to make it worthwhile.

Yes You Can Buy Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Celebrity endorsements don’t work like they used to. Sure, some fanboys will buy a particular brand because their favorite star told them, but the general public knows these actors, athletes, and entertainers only promote the stuff they get paid to promote. We see right through the pay-to-say ploy and aren’t convinced to buy.

The idea behind celebrity endorsements, however, was a sound investment at one time because Word-of-Mouth advertising was and still is the best, most powerful form of advertising. You are far more likely to try a new brand or a new store or a new product because someone you know and trust told you than you are because that brand or store told you.

The majority of Americans see advertising as the hype that it is. According to an omnichannel retail study done by Euclid, only 53% of Baby Boomers are inspired by traditional advertising to try something new. Generation X is even more skeptical at 40%, and the Millennials are under 33%.

After spending the last two weeks trying to tell you how to use traditional advertising more effectively, I’ve just linked you to a study that says the majority of shoppers won’t believe your ads anyway. (Note: the real reason behind those paltry numbers is because Most Ads Suck and violate the six principles of effective advertising, but that’s a post for another day.)

As the trustworthiness of traditional advertising declines, shoppers are looking more to their friends and family for advice where to shop and what to buy. Word-of-Mouth.

The good news for you is that you can still buy Word-of-Mouth. That’s what celebrity endorsements really are—a company paying someone trusted and known to talk about their products. But I’m not advocating you buy that kind of Word-of-Mouth. The way you buy Word-of-Mouth effectively today can be done four ways:

  • By spending money on the design of your store to make it so fabulous and unexpected that people have to talk about it.
  • By spending money training your staff to the point that they exceed your customer’s expectations to the point your customer has to tell someone just to validate that it really happened.
  • By being so generous giving away the unexpected to your customers, that they have to brag to their friends..
  • By showing off products in your store so outrageous that people have to tell their friends what they saw.
32,000-piece Jigsaw Puzzle!

We sold jigsaw puzzles, over a million pieces worth of jigsaw puzzles a year. (I did the math once.) Mostly we sold 1,000-piece puzzles and 300-piece puzzles, but we showed on the shelf a 32,000-piece puzzle. The box alone weighed forty-two pounds and came with its own little handcart for hauling it away. The finished puzzle was over 17 feet long and over 6 feet tall. I spent $160 to put that puzzle on my shelf. I never expected to sell it. I never really wanted to sell it. In fact, I sold it three times and immediately ordered another one.

Why?

Because every week someone would take a selfie with that puzzle and post it on social media with #toyhouse. It was worth more to me for advertising than the profit from selling one every couple years.

 

I spent $200/board for three chalkboards on the outside of our building where customers could write their own answers to the questions posed on each board.

Why?

Because every time a scavenger hunt took place in the city of Jackson, one of the stops was to write something on that board.

 

I spent another few hundred dollars to create the mileage signpost outside our store.

Why?

Rarely a day went buy that someone didn’t take a picture of that sign with our logo conspicuously in the background. Those pictures invariably made their way onto social media.

I spent about a thousand dollars a year giving away helium balloons free to children of all ages. No questions asked. No purchase necessary.

Why?

Not only did it help with crying children who didn’t want to leave the store, it made it more likely that parents would bring their kids in the store, knowing they could get out the door with a free balloon (and on Saturdays with free popcorn). Many customers told me that was what they bragged to their friends when asked why they shopped at my store.

You can get your customers to talk about you to their friends and family. You just have to do something worth talking about. Spend the money to be fabulous, outrageous, unexpected, and over-the-top and then let your customers do all the advertising for you.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS You can read even more by downloading from the Free Resources section of my website the pdf Generating Word-of-Mouth.

PPS In 2009 Toy House was featured as “One of the 25 best independent stores in America” in the book Retail Superstars by George Whalin. Every single business in that book got there because of Word-of-Mouth. Whenever George traveled he asked everyone he met about their favorite places to shop. The stores he heard the most made it into the book. In other words, it was worth it for us to spend so much time and money trying to buy Word-of-Mouth. Oh yeah, and it worked, too!

PPPS Here are the links to the posts on the other forms of advertising … Television, Radio, Billboards, Newsprint, Magazines, Websites, Email, Direct Mail, Social Media

Direct Mail – Do the Math

I like numbers. I like math. I even like algebra when numbers start fraternizing with letters. (I draw the line at calculus, though. I don’t understand why numbers have to go all lumberjack on me.)

It is a good thing because there is a lot of math in Retail. Some of my favorite math, however, was not the pre-made formulas like calculating inventory turns or cash-to-current ratios. It was the math used to figure out if something was working or not.

One of those occasions was trying to figure out the results of a Direct Mail campaign we used to do at Toy House. For several years I sent out postcards around Halloween for $20 off purchases of $100 or more redeemable by the end of November. I used to send out that type of coupon five times a year, but realized I was training customers to wait for the next coupon. When a customer called me to ask when the next coupon was coming so that she could buy a new car seat, I knew I was heading in the wrong direction.

The front of our 2014 Postcard

We weaned our customers down to just the one postcard in November. Now I wanted to know how well it was working and whether it was worth the money.

I kept track of the number of coupons redeemed and the amount spent per coupon. I knew what I spent to produce and mail the postcards. Now I just had to do the math to see if the campaign was worthwhile.

Here is the math from the last Direct Mail campaign in 2014 …

Costs:

  • We produced 14,000 postcards @ .23 each = $3,220
  • We mailed 13,500 postcards to our mailing list @ .34 each = $4,590
  • We had 687 post cards redeemed (5.1%) x $20 discount each = $13,740

Total cost of promotion: $21,550

Revenue:

  • Average ticket (before $20 redeemed) was $117 = $80,379
  • Profit Margin was 48.7%
  • Gross Profit on coupon sale transactions: $39,144

Net Proceeds from campaign (after deducting costs): $17,594

The total sales of $80,379 represented about 29% of our sales for the month, so it was a significant portion of our business. The real question of the day, however, was how much of those sales did we get because of the coupon and how much was simply us just giving money away on sales we would have already had?

The better question was … “Do I have somewhere else I could spend $21,550 that will generate more than $39,144 in gross profit?”

The mailing was sent to our own in-house customer base of people already familiar with us, so it wasn’t like we were reaching new people. If all of those same people came in and spent only the average for non-coupon sales of $48 we would have been only slightly worse off (687 x $48 = $32,976, which equals $16,059 in net proceeds).

Once I did the math I knew that anything less than 5% return on my direct mail wasn’t worth the time and effort. We weren’t getting the return we needed. Plus, we were advertising for the short-term instead of the long-term. On top of that, we were training customers to wait for the next coupon.

That is the issue with Direct Mail.

On the plus side, you get to tailor a message specifically to the people on your mailing list, and you can do the math to see exactly how much money you made. The downside, however, is that it takes a fairly high response rate to make it worth your while. Unfortunately, response rates rarely get as high as what we were getting each November. (That 5.1% was our lowest. We had a high of 9.6% in 2007!)

We were getting those numbers, though, because we were sending the coupon to our own fan base during the peak shopping time of the year for toys. We never came close to those numbers with the coupons we used to send out at other times of the year.

According to this post on expected response, if you are using an outside mailing list, meaning people who don’t yet know you, your response is likely going to be between 1-2%

If I only had 1.5% response (202 of the 13,500 redeemed), my numbers would look like this:

  • Total cost = $11,850
  • Total sales = $23,634
  • Gross Profit = $11,510
  • Net Proceeds = -($340)-

With numbers like that, the math is pretty easy to understand.

Does Direct Mail have a spot in the world of advertising? Can it be effective? There is one more equation worth doing. What is the lifetime value of a customer? If finding new customers is difficult, but once you find them, they become a gold mine, then yes, Direct Mail can work.

You just have to do the math.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS What I found interesting was how our response rate went down over the years. Some might attribute that to the numbing of the deal. Our deal never changed so it became less appealing to some customers. Some might attribute the declining response to the aging out of our customer base. While we did cull our list for bad addresses, we didn’t track ages of the kids and grandkids of the people we sent the postcards. As birth-rates declined, our list became top-heavy with older customers. During the same time that our response was declining, however, our market share didn’t change. I think in many respects, since we were more hyper-focused on our Relational Customers, our list shifted more in that direction. Most importantly, since we were doing the math, we could see the diminishing returns and looked for better ways to spend our money.

PPS We used to mail out a complete newsletter with our coupon. The newsletter went out bulk mail rate to keep costs down. Unfortunately with bulk mail it doesn’t always get delivered in a timely fashion. When I switched to postcards I also switched to first class mail to make sure our postcards got out in time for customers to redeem. We still, however, had several customers who never got theirs or got it too late. That’s why we had a few extras printed above and beyond the mailing list.

PPPS Check out my take on other media including Television, Radio, Billboards, Newsprint, Magazines, Email, Social Media, and Websites

I Didn’t Steal a Bunch of Candy

I didn’t steal a bunch of candy. Oh, I could have. I bought some over-priced M&Ms at a candy shop on the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. The checkout was at the back of the store in the most awkward place. I had to walk up a ramp, stand in a line, then stand in the entry way to the nostalgic candy area near the back of the store to pay for my purchases.

I watched customer after customer walk away from the checkout with a decorative paper bag into which they could have tossed tens or even hundreds of dollars worth of loose candy from multiple displays on their way to the front of the store. I don’t think they did. I didn’t. But I could have.

Sure, the store had cameras near the front door. But with the crowd that was in that store on a Saturday afternoon, beating those cameras would have been a breeze worthy of the Windy City.

It wasn’t just the shoplifting aspect that bothered me with the layout of this particular store.

The registers were side by side, but the line to get to them was beside them, not in front of them. If someone was at the first register, by the time it was your turn, you had to scootch around them to get to the second register. If someone big, or a party of two or more was at the first register, you couldn’t even see the tiny little cashier at the open register.

The registers were also poorly placed in the doorway to a special section of nostalgic candy. You know Nostalgia is one of my Core Values. I was excited to enter that section. I was a lot less excited waiting for the gal at checkout with her stroller that was blocking my entry to the area.

I suppose if you’re in a large city like Chicago, catering to the tourist crowd, you can overcharge for your goods to offset your shrinkage and create a layout that frustrates the heck out of customers knowing that they likely won’t be back anyway.

If you’re not in this situation, you might want to plan your layout more carefully.

Put the cash-wrap where you can see everything and everyone in the store, but also close enough so that once people check out, they can easily leave. More importantly, plan the line of customers for checkout so that they don’t block other customers trying to shop. Best of all, make it easy and intuitive for customers to know where to go and what to do when they are ready to check out.

I know there is a train of thought that says you want a layout that gets people to the back of the store. Using your checkout as the lure, though, is not the best way to accomplish this, especially in a store that has a ton of traffic and sells easily-pocketed items.

This kid definitely wasn’t as enthralled with this candy shop.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS I will give them props on the centerpiece display. The giant lollipop tree pictured here was worthy of the stop and a good example of Over-the-Top-Design. They also had several choose-your-own-flavor stands for things like Jelly Bellies, M&Ms, and other candies. But then again, the last feeling of the experience is the lasting feeling of the experience. Don’t let your customers walk out unhappy, confused, frustrated, or befuddled.

Websites – The Silent Salesperson

Over the last few weeks I’ve given you my thoughts on how to use the different media types for advertising. So far we’ve covered Television, Radio, Billboards, Newsprint, Magazines, Email, and Social Media. All of these are choices. You don’t have to do all of them, or any of them, for that matter.

In fact, I would recommend that if you want to do any of the first five, you choose only one of them and do it incredibly well. You likely don’t have the budget to do more than one well.

Email and Social Media are more about time than money. If you have the time, do both.

There is one form of advertising, however, that I consider a must in today’s business climate—the website. You gotta have one.

Click on this picture to check out my sister’s web page for her art.

Whether your customer base prefers to shop online or shop in brick & mortar stores, he or she uses her smartphone or computer to look you up. You need to claim your business on Google so that you show up in their map app, but that only helps the people already looking for you in your area.

Your website is the tool that convinces people who don’t know you that you’re worth a visit.

First Rule of Websites

You don’t have to have eCommerce on your website to be successful.

Right now the buzz words in retail are phrases like “seamless omnichannel shopping” and BOPIS (Buy Online Pickup In Store). Those are important for big chains with multi-million dollar IT departments (and zero customer service training). If you have the means to do that, either through your industry partners, trade organizations, or your own team of coders, all the power to you. If you sell online through your own website, that’s a bonus. But it isn’t a requirement for having a successful website.

You can have a site that is purely informational, one that shows customers what you do, where you are, when you’re open, and (most importantly) what to expect when they visit. Just make sure you follow Rule #2 to the letter.

Second Rule of Websites

Every single page must have a clear and distinct purpose.

Before you create the content for a page, ask yourself why the page exists. Ask yourself who you expect to visit that page and how you expect they will find it. Ask yourself what is the single most important point you want that visitor to draw from the page. Ask yourself what action you want that visitor to take next after visiting that page. Your answers will shape the content and look of the page. The more clearly you define each page’s purpose, the more value you bring to your visitors.

When I was creating the Toy House website, my goal for the site overall was to drive traffic to the store. Phrases like, “when you visit …” peppered the site. But each page had its own goal in mind. For instance, our About Us page started with a series of “I Believe …” statements to show our Core Values and make an emotional connection with people who believe what we believe.

“The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.” -Simon Sinek, Start with Why, TEDx Puget Sound

Third Rule of Websites

Your website is your silent salesperson. Make it your best.

It is the first impression a customer has of your store. It is the first step in creating that relationship with your customer. You need to put your best foot forward.

If I told you that you could only have one salesperson working the floor today, would you pick your worst or your best person? If I told you that you could only have one person in charge of greeting all customers, would you have your worst or best greeter? If I told you that you could only have one person answering your phones today, would you pick your worst or best phone answering person?

You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression. Your website has to reflect the best of you and your business. Put the time, effort, and money into making the best impression you can.

Fourth Rule of Websites

Your hours, phone number, and address have to be prominent and easy to find.

If you want to drive traffic to the store, you have to let them know where and when. If your goal is strictly eCommerce, you can bury that information in the Contact Us section of your website. If your goal is to drive traffic to the store that info has to be everywhere. Don’t make your customer go look for it.

People browsing websites at home on their desktop the night before a shopping trip might take the extra steps to find that info. People browsing on their phones in the parking lot of their previous stop (or outside the school where they just dropped off their child) aren’t going to dive very deep to find the info they want.

Fifth Rule of Websites

It has to be compatible for mobile platforms.

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, the font will be too small for anyone to waste their time reading it. You will have lost most customers before they even began. Nowadays it is hard to find a web-designer who doesn’t make a mobile-friendly website, but if you have an old site on an old platform, you need to look at it on your phone, your friend’s phone, a tablet or two, and a desktop to see how it looks on those devices. If it isn’t clean, easy-to-read, and simple to navigate, it is time for you to upgrade.

Follow those five rules and your website will be a useful tool for your business. It is a necessary tool. Customers expect that you’ll have one. Since you’re going to make one, make it a useful tool, too.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Just to overwhelm you a little bit more in thinking about your website, here are some other things to consider …

  • Post a video tour on your website. People only do what they have already pictured themselves doing in their own mind. Give them a quick visual of your store (two minutes or less, or several short videos of each department, updated regularly).
  • Make sure your Core Values and beliefs are evident on every page of your site. Whoever is writing your content has to know and understand your values.
  • Turn your About Us page into an I Believe page. Let people know what you believe. Here is an example from Toy House. Here is one from LauraJoyWarrior. Here is one from PhilsForum.
  • If you draw from more than five miles away (or are in a hard-to-navigate part of town) include a map and directions.
  • Make any “click here” navigation buttons large, self-explanatory, and easy-to-find.
  • Make sure your website is listed and linked on every one of your vendor’s “where-to-buy” lists, on your Google business page, and everywhere else someone might find you. The more inbound links you have, the better you will do in the search engines.
  • Update your site regularly with new information, new pictures, new content. (Blogs and links to your emails are one easy way to do this.)
  • If your hours change with the seasons, make sure they are updated across every platform including Google, Facebook, and your website.

PPS When you are interviewing someone to create your website, ask about those rules above. If they don’t have a thoughtful answer or opinion about those topics (even if they disagree), they are likely a “template” designer who uses the same easy template to make something fast and cheap that looks like everyone else. If you want to look like everyone else, go right ahead. If you want to be a destination that stands out in the crowd, find someone who wants to make that happen for you.

Things You Should Know Better

I just got back from Chicago. Fabulous trip! I was hired to do a couple presentations for the Diamond Retailer Summit hosted by Diamond Comics Distributors. I did two talks—Selling in a Showrooming World and Main Street Marketing on a Shoestring Budget. I also got to do something new for me. I had a booth during their afternoon showcase. I have visited several booths over the years, but this was the first time I got to have a booth under the banner of Phil’s Forum.

My booth at the Diamond Retailer Summit, April 2018

I knew a little about having booths in big convention halls from my friends who own toy and baby product companies. I knew I wanted to have a booth I could carry in by myself, that wouldn’t take any special tools to build, and wouldn’t require electricity. We were in McCormick Place in Chicago and it wasn’t in my budget to pay for any “help.”

The McCormick Place website was helpful in giving me some basic information. I got my parking pass in advance so that I would have a guaranteed space in Lot A. I knew I was in the South Building, fourth floor, so I would have to take the sky bridge from parking to my building. All was good.

Until I got off the highway.

The signs leading to Lot A were all but nonexistent. I only saw one, vaguely over an area of road where several roads converged. I never knew if I was in the proper lane. I was about to turn around, thinking I had gone too far when the turn I made actually led me directly into the parking lot, surprise, surprise. One frustration down.

My signs for my booth weren’t heavy. A little awkward, but those fancier, lightweight, compact signs just weren’t in the budget. I made my way from the garage across the sky bridge into the South Building. It was dark. I was in the lobby of the building in front of the grand ballroom and rooms S101-S104. There were two big escalators, neither working. There were elevators at both ends of the lobby, neither working. There was a sign with a map of the different levels telling me I was in the South Building on Level 1, and showing that my room—S401—was also in the South Building on Level 4.

Nowhere on that sign did it give me any indication I needed to leave the South Building and go to the main entrance between the North & South Buildings to find a working elevator to get me to the 4th floor. Nowhere was there a sign to let me know that the 4th floor rooms were all the way in the back of the building, another quarter mile from where I was standing, lost, looking at their signs, or that I would have to either maneuver my signs up escalators or traverse a snaking path between the two buildings to get there. Nowhere was there any person at the bottom of the escalator from the sky bridge to direct traffic for people coming in from Lot A.

After finding a working elevator to get me to the fourth floor, I then hiked the snaking pathway between the North and South buildings until finally finding my way to room S401. (Did I mention my signs were not heavy, but awkward? By now they were feeling much heavier than when I started.)

Once I got to my room and stopped sweating, my day went infinitely better. The talks were home runs (at least that’s the immediate feedback I got.) The booth time was excellent. I met some fascinating people and may have some incredible new opportunities. The food was pretty yummy, too. All in all it was an awesome day!

Then I had to head back.

Not wanting to do the snaking pathway back along the fourth floor, I took the elevator at the back of the building down to the first floor. Rookie mistake. There are no signs anywhere that tell you the “first floor” at the back elevator is not the same “first floor” as the front elevator. Now I was lost deep in the bowels of the convention center. Fortunately, a friendly security guard directed me up a couple escalators that got me back to an area I recognized.

He admitted the signage was lacking greatly and what signage they did have was confusing. He assured me I wasn’t the first person who had made this mistake.

Let’s stop right there. “He assured me I wasn’t the first person who had made this mistake.”

If there is a “mistake” a customer has made interacting with your business, that’s a potential red flag for you. If it happens once, then it might be the customer’s fault. If it happens more than once, you have a problem you need to fix.

If multiple customers don’t know what to do or where to go, that’s on you, not them. Somewhere along the way, you haven’t made it clear what they need to do next.

This could be a problem on your website where the call-to-action isn’t clear on each page. This could be a problem with your checkout if people don’t know where to line up or put their merchandise. This could be a problem with your services if people don’t know how they work or what they have to do or where they have to go.

If you have this problem, might I suggest a sign or two? There should have been a clear sign at the bottom of the escalator from the sky bridge when I entered the South Building telling me where to go. If not that, there should have been a person stationed there to direct traffic. There should have been clear signage at the back elevator explaining that it did not lead to the same “first floor”. 

McCormick Place opened in 1960, expanded several times, and is the largest convention center in North America. This isn’t their first rodeo. They should know better by now. The security guard knew it. He shouldn’t be apologizing for mistakes made by someone else. Maybe he has complained before, but no one listened. Maybe he never bothered to complain because he figured no one would listen.

There are things you should know better, too. Make sure you are listening and actively looking for those “mistakes” that can be easily corrected.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Yes, I probably missed something along the way. I’m not perfect. But I do like to think of myself as somewhat observant. If I missed it (and I was looking for it), I’m sure others did, too. Here is the thing, though. If your customers are made to feel stupid—even if it is their own mistake—they won’t come back. If your customers are made to feel comfortable, they will come back. If your customers are made to feel wonderful, they’ll bring their friends back with them.

PPS I am ready for my next visit to McCormick Place. If you’re looking for a dynamic speaker who isn’t afraid to admit he got lost in a convention center, who likes to learn from his mistakes, and is willing to use what he has learned from all his mistakes over the years to help you succeed, give me a holler.

Shares, Comments, and Likes (How to Get Facebook to Work For You)

I remember when I first joined Facebook. I was connecting to friends I hadn’t seen in over twenty years. It was amazing! Reconnecting with old friends, conversing with current friends, and staying on top of who is celebrating a birthday today have made Facebook one of my pleasures. (I don’t call it a “guilty” pleasure because it is part of my life and also part of my business to understand how FB works for retailers—at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

I remember when we launched the Toy House page. The excitement from new likes was amazing. It was so new and shiny and free. I watched the numbers like a hawk to see what would move the needle the most.

The experts began predicting Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest to be the new darlings of advertising and that more typical media like Television and Radio would suffer. Heck, people wouldn’t even need a website if they had a Facebook page. That was the common thinking back then. It’s still the common thinking right now. And it is still wrong, and about to get worse*.

Oh, I’m not saying Facebook and other social media outlets aren’t effective as advertising platforms. They just aren’t as effective as they are made out to be. Let’s take a quick look at Facebook.

The upside to Facebook is two-fold:

  • You can connect to your current customer base and talk to them as often as you want for free.
  • You can pay to boost your posts or pay to advertise to reach more people relatively cheaply.

The downsides, however, will make you rethink your strategy.

  • Your free, organic reach is seriously throttled by the algorithms of Facebook because they would rather that you pay to get seen.
  • Even when you do pay, there is no way for you to guarantee the people you paid to reach actually saw your post.
  • Just like newsprint, Facebook posts are a passive form of media.

Think about all the businesses your friends convinced you to like. How often do they show up in your feed? Not very often. Yet you are constantly bombarded with “suggested posts.” Those are the boosted posts that make Mark Zuckerberg a gabillionaire.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a Facebook page or use other social media outlets. They serve a far greater purpose than simply an advertising platform. That was the first thing most businesses got wrong when they got onto Facebook (myself included). We used it the way we used all other forms of advertising—to talk at you.

They are called social media for a reason. They aren’t meant for talking at people. They are meant for engaging with people and having conversations. They are tools for getting feedback and insights from your fan base.

Your first goal with your Facebook page should be to get feedback, to hear from your customer base. Ask them questions. Engage with them. Listen to their insights.

336 Shares and over 24,000 Views!

When we were getting ready to launch our Birthday Club I asked the Toy House fans how long the club should last. Some stores stopped at 10 years old, others at 12. One of my customers suggested 40. That suggestion was all I needed to say “no limit”. In the summer of 2016 we had a woman celebrate her 94th birthday by ringing the bell and buying a couple decks of playing cards with her Birthday Gift Certificate.

Another of my favorite engagement posts was taking a picture of two competing items and asking the question, “Which do you prefer?” I did that with Barbie and Groovy Girl dolls, figuring Barbie would win hands down. Much to my surprise the first nine people said Groovy Girls. The tenth person said, “I was gonna say Barbie, but now I guess I better check out those Groovy Girls.”

Keys to Organic Reach

The best way to get past the algorithm that holds your posts back is engagement. If you have 1000 fans, your initial post will only go out to a tiny fraction of them, maybe 10-20 people. If they engage, Facebook will release your post to a few more fans. If they engage, you’ll reach even more, and so on. If none of the first 10-20 engage, your post is sunk. In the rock, paper, scissors hierarchy of Facebook, Shares beat Comments, Comments beat Likes, Likes beat yawns.

If you want to reach people on Facebook without paying for it, you need to post Shareworthy stuff. (credit Tim Miles for coining the word “shareworthy”) You need to post things people want to pass along. The Share is the gold currency because not only does it get your post released to more of your fans, it reaches people who aren’t your fans (yet) by reaching the friends of your fans who share.

People love to share:

  • Links to articles that are important to your fan base
  • Funny pictures & videos
  • Touching, heartfelt stories

If you want to reach people on Facebook without paying, you also need to get comments. People respond to:

  • Questions
  • Polls

If you want to reach people on Facebook without paying, you have to avoid certain triggers that throttle you back even more, like:

  • Dates and times
  • Exclamation Points!!!
  • Words like Sale, Deal, Discount, % Off, or Event
  • WORDS IN ALL CAPS

Yes, it is a game trying to figure out how to get more free, organic reach. In fact, one fun thing you can do is make it a game with your staff. Turn all of your team into Admins for your page, then hold a weekly contest. Allow everyone the opportunity to post twice per day whatever they think is appropriate for the business. At the end of the week give $20 to the person who got the most shares and $10 for the person who got the most comments. Do this for five weeks. It will cost you $150, but the research you’ll have will be priceless! It will also increase the number of fans you have dramatically.

Keys to Paid Reach

Whether you choose to boost a post or pay for an ad (here is a good link for the differences between those two options), the key to success is the same as any passive media like newsprint or magazines. You have to have a picture and headline interesting enough to grab people’s attention and compelling enough to make them want to click. Anything less and you’ve wasted your money.

Facebook and other social media platforms can be effective ways to reach customers if you make engagement your goal. The more people Share, Comment, and Like what you are posting, you’ll keep reaching more people. Otherwise, they are simply a digital form of the newspaper ad everyone seemed to ignore.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Twitter is even more about engagement and conversation than Facebook. Treat it that way. Pinterest is more about idea sharing. If you sell something used in a crafty way or for decorating, Pinterest can be a phenomenal way to share how to use your products. Find a clever way to include your logo and web address in each picture in an unobtrusive-yet-impossible-to-crop-out way.

PPS *Facebook is looking to remove organic business page posts from your newsfeed altogether, and put them into a separate tab buried deep in the lefthand column of your feed. They’ve already done that in some countries to “test” it. You only see your friends’ posts and paid posts. As a Facebook user, I don’t like that. I “liked” business pages so that I could hear from them. But FB doesn’t keep the stockholders happy that way. One way as a business to get around that problem is to make sure everyone on your team shares every post you make, even if they have to go find your page to do so. (Heck, you should be having them do that anyway.)

Don’t Ask these Illegal Questions in an Interview

I remember the first year I was in charge of hiring seasonal employees for Toy House. I was ill-prepared. I had done no research into how to interview a candidate. Heck, I had only sat through three job interviews in my life on the other side of the desk. I don’t think I asked any illegal questions. I don’t think I asked any insightful questions either.

Of the ten people I hired that first year, all on a yet-to-be-honed gut instinct, I found a couple good employees, six warm bodies that took up space, and two people we were better off letting go before we got busy. Not that great of a track record.

Hiring and the Potter's Wheel Book Cover
A Business Parable that will help you create a masterpiece of a staff.

Things changed a few years down the road when I had the epiphany that would lead to the book Hiring and the Potter’s Wheel: Turning Your Staff Into a Work of Art. The aha moment was when I realized I needed my candidates to show me who they were, not tell me what they might be.

I started asking questions that began with the phrase, “Tell me about a time when you …”

Actions speak louder than words. Ask your candidates to tell you what they have done, not what they think or believe, and you will get a more accurate description of who they are and what they will do for you.

Now that you know what to ask, Proven.com—a website for finding and hiring new employees—has put out the definitive list of illegal questions you cannot ask. These are illegal. You can get in trouble for asking them. Download the infographic and keep it right next to your list of “Tell me …” questions.

We all know it is illegal to ask, “What medications do you take?” but did you know you cannot ask, “How many kids do you have?” Being a toy store owner I probably made that mistake in an interview or two. I wish I had this list before that first round of interviews. I owed it to the candidates to be better prepared.

Now you have this info so that you can be better prepared. Believe me, it will help.

-Phil Wrzesinski
www.PhilsForum.com

PS Many of the books I read on hiring told me to “hire for experience.” As you already know, not all “retail experience” is the same. When you hire for character traits and core values, you’ll consistently find candidates that fit better with you and your store.