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Customer-Involving Signage Pulls People Into Shop

Kare Anderson Small Business Trends

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April 3, 2009

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“Since movement always attracts attention, add ...”

DAVID BAL

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Create eye-catching messages that attract rather than annoy possible customers. Here are some low-cost ways.

1. Since movement always attracts attention, add an outside banner or sign on a pole that moves with the wind. It will stand out from the static messages around it. Or install a window sign or display that turns, to show a different side, moves up and down, or changes color.

2. Become known for displaying a catchy saying in the same place. Make it visible to pedestrians or motorists so they get in the habit of looking for your new message. One day your sign might pose a question, the next day, display the answer. Pick themes related to your kind of product or service. A beauty salon, for example, could have hair-related advice and quotes plus sayings on beauty and women’s humor.

3. Aren’t we are all voyeurs? We like to eavesdrop or see each other in action, especially in fun, odd, inspiring, humorous or other human situations. Create your own “reality TV” show. Video local notables (the mayor, popular civic figures, well-known local authors, sports columnist, etc.) and other attention-getting people using or discussing your product/service.

Make a continuous feed video loop of the short video vignettes. Run them on a TV monitor that’s visible to those in the store and another monitor in the window, facing out with the sound piped out from above peoples’ heads - where vandals cannot damage the site where the sound is sent outside.

4. Create a variation of the Burma-Shave signs of America’s past. These were seen by people driving through long stretches of boring desert or other unchanging landscapes. The sequence of signs had progressive rhyming lines to pull people into the message.

A set of stores on a block could co-create a continuing set of signs, with messages about their stores in a continuing theme. Each side of the signs, set out perpendicular to their storefronts, could be read, sequence, by the passersby in their car or on foot, depending on the sign placement.

Adapt your selling to make prospects comfortable in these less-certain times. What kinds of online and on-location marketing will attract more shoppers, spending and buzz in this New Normal world?

Consider consumers’ desire for comfort, security, personal recognition and bragging rights. Speak to those largely unspoken needs in these ways:

1. “Time-Starved Culture”

Both bricks and mortar and “only online” stores could offer shoppers the opportunity to fill out an online shopping list of their gift recipients’ names and mailing addresses. . .

2. “Need to be Known in a Relationship-Diminished World”

...Then enable the customer to write a personal message to each of her/his intended gift recipients. . .

3. “Worried About Money”

. . . then offer, upfront, a “special savings” if your customer spends at least a certain level of money on the gift list (thus encouraging great per-customer spending, with less labor and marketing costs for the retailer)

4. “Seeking Value”

. . . or, rather than offer a “special savings,” cross-promote with another retailer who also reaches the same kind of customer and agree to give one of your gifts to their biggest spending customers (coming to your store to pick up the gift) in exchange for your cross-promoting partner to give a gift of the same value to your biggest spenders.

Thus the collaborating retailers gain a warmed-up introduction to each other’s most lucrative customers while offering their customers an enticing reason to spend more.

* * * * *

About the Author: Kare Anderson is an Emmy-winning former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of LikeABILITY, Make Yourself Memorable and SmartPartnering. A popular speaker on SmartPartnering and on how to be more frequently-quoted to become your kind of customers’ top- of-mind choice, she also publishes the SayitBetter newsletter, with 32,000 subscribers in 28 countries.

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Kare Anderson, Article, Customer Relations

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DAVID BAL 4 months ago

Since movement always attracts attention, add an outside banner or sign on a pole that moves with the wind. It will stand out from the static messages around it. Or install a window sign or display that turns, to show a different side, moves up and down, or changes color.

This is a great idea.

http://www.signsnowmillcreek.com