Can Flash Deals work for Independent Retailers?

The following post is about online selling of Keurig Coffee Makers, and that Flash Deals do work and are here to stay! 

Alpine Ace Hardware, with stores in Aspen, Carbondale, Clifton and Redlands, Colorado recently demonstrated that there is a new way for retailers to put their foot into direct selling on their websites.  The concept is called a flash deal and is a part of the growing concept called social commerce.

An example: Alpine Ace rolled out the sale of 5 coffee makers each for two of their stores, and sold all 10 in two hours! 

The offer was extremely aggressive but it did demonstrate that social commerce and flash deals do work, that they get the customers attention and they get customers into the store!  You can check out Alpine’s current deal that is being offered through a local marketing website, www.CommunityFootsteps.com.

Social commerce is selling products and/or services online, in a limited quantity or limited time basis, with aggressive pricing or discounts.  The items need to be promoted via all interactive marketing channels, email, web posting and especially, Facebook and Twitter.  The customer purchases the deal online through the social commerce site (e.g. Community Footsteps) and prints out a voucher, then comes to the store to redeem the voucher and hopefully, buys more products or services!

It’s kind of like owning your own Groupon service and keeping the margins!

You will be hearing more about this on a regular basis as I feel it is the most important new best practice for 2012!  If you are interested in talking about this, drop me a line at pat@footstepsmarketing.com.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race!

Congratulations!  Your efforts and investment in online marketing and advertising are paying off.  We discussed at the beginning of FootSteps that a “crawl, walk, run….” approach.  Most of your are now “running!“  A quick quiz, what do the following hardware store locations have in common?

* Granby, CO (resort town, small community)
* Redlands Mesa, CO (retirement community)
* Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX (Metro, Suburban Metro)
* Bozeman, MT (small, resort community, college town)
* Ann Arbor, MI (mid-size city, college town)
* Raleigh, NC (mid-size city, professionally minded, college town)

Answer:  ALL stores in these communities increased web traffic  by more than 50% over the last twelve months!

Some specifics, by various markets, comparing 2010 to 2011:

• Alpine Hardware (Aspen, Carbondale, CO):  Small communities, resort oriented market, customer website visits increased 50% from 6,000 to almost 7000
• Raleigh Ace (Raleigh, NC):  Two stores, mid-market community, “college town,” customer website visits increased 100% from 4,700 to almost 9,000
• Jabo’s Ace Hardware (Surrounding Dallas, TX):  Three large, metro, suburban stores, customer website visits increased 50% from 6,700 to almost 9,260
• Woodlands Ace Hardware (Woodlands, TX):  One store, Suburban Houston, professional, affluent community, customer website visits increased 53% from 2,110 to 7260

These statistics are more the norm than the exception across 60 FootSteps Marketing managed sites.  What are these retailers doing to have get these results:

* Paying Attention to online marketing and doing a little bit every month
-  2 Email Promotions per month (average customer open rate: 20%)
- Changing small amount of content on a monthly, keeping the site current
- Investing in Search Marketing programs, Directory Listing services

Congrats to those who are doing so well.  We will keep everyone posted on their results and do whatever we can to support your online marketing.

Thanks, Pat

(Patrick Curry, President, FootSteps Marketing)