What forms of promotion have been most effective for your store?

Newspaper advertising has been extremely effective, largely because we've been able to work in partnership with the local paper to develop contests and work out mutually beneficial deals. I measure the success of a particular medium by the response I get. We don't ask people when they come in, but very often they'll tell us that they've read about it in the paper. We try to tie our advertising to something specific — a product, offer, deal or contest — so their response is to come in, send in a ballot or join a mailing list. How do I measure one paper against the other? We were featured in two local papers on the same day with the same amount of coverage, so we were able to find out which paper reached more people by asking, “Which paper did you see us in?” We've found it's better to advertise in a weekly supplement — something that has staying power and hangs around for a couple of days — than to advertise in something ephemeral, like radio or the daily paper. We also started to go into more lasting special interest publications. When our product is featured in a targeted publication like a gardening magazine, that seems to draw the largest number of people.

Promoting a gift store has three primary objectives: Increase bottom line profits, attract new customers and build and maintain a positive image of the business. Independent gift stores don't have big budgets for advertising, so we have to be creative and kind to our customer. We have been most successful developing an extensive email list within the store. We offer free sundaes for mothers on Mother's Day and free giveaways for kids (ask your suppliers). Even a one-time coupon for 40 percent off any one item was successful when we wanted to attract customers in selected areas. Handouts work great: contact your vendors to help out. We always carry free ice cream cards to hand out outside the store. We link our promotion to some sort of yardstick — why have it if we don't know the results? We keep emails and returned postcards brought in for redemption, and analyze the numbers to see if sales increased. We ask our customers, and listen for comments such as, “We haven't been here for a while, what a great store.” We also ask customers where they're from, to identify our store's shopping radius and try to expand on it.

The thing that's been the best for us is in-store seminars. They've been really good because it's immediately measurable. We charge for customers to attend, and then we give them a little gift certificate they can spend that evening, so we're able to track how well we did this seminar versus last, or this seminar versus a year ago. We've got the customers in the store, so we can serve them some refreshments and teach them things. They get excited when they walk away knowing something new. We've done everything from table etiquette to how to pull a party together in 24 hours. We also do seasonal launches for holiday, telling people about trends in the market and what they can be doing in their own home. We did wedding planning showers and how to put together a planner in a three ring binder, with the end result of trying to get bridal registries. It's a captive audience.