Make Your Store the Go-to Place in the Community

This article is based off a NAMM U session at the 2015 NAMM Show. We've included a video of the session here.

Want to create high visibility for your company? Tell the community that there’s “always something going on” at your retail business? Then start by hosting events that bring people into your store.

​One of the “power truths” in marketing is that people want what others want. So, if your store becomes a place where people want to gather, others will want to come in and see what’s going on.

PART I: EVENT GUIDELINES
Here are five tips to help make hosting events easy, fun and, of course, profitable:

1. Make it easy. Take the inconvenience out of shopping by making it easier for customers to attend your events and to buy.

Consider the local events calendar, along with logistics, before you schedule your events. The annual Clemson-Carolina football game is not a good day for us to hold a big sale. Also, we don’t hold our annual ukulele circle on a hot afternoon in June—the event is attended by a large number of senior citizens. That said, the week before All-State Band auditions is a great time for us to hold a step-up instrument sale. Consider extended hours or an after-hours event. Make it convenient for your customers.

Anticipate parking or traffic issues. Our store is off a major road, but there’s also a back route to reach us. We always give out directions to the alternate route, so traffic and parking isn’t an obstacle for customers.

Have adequate staff and stock on hand. To avoid long checkout times and make shoppers happy, be well-staffed and well-stocked with add-ons, print music and accessories. We often feature partner manufacturer and publisher products at our events or shows in exchange for extra discounts or terms.

Have fliers ready. Coupons create urgency. Product information helps customers make educated decisions and feel better about spending money. Even a simple sheet, such as “How to Choose a Step-up Clarinet,” will give parents a level of comfort they won’t get by simply talking price.

2. Make it known. Invite local celebrities and media to your events, and consider having an emcee or special guest. Most local radio and TV stations have free community calendars online. Get your name out by offering to be interviewed as a local expert—music education is just one example of a good topic. Submitting a PR article is also a good way to generate interest in your store and is often more credible than advertising. I use paid advertising sparingly and am sure to track each ad with a call to action. (“Bring this ad into the store for …”) This way, I know if it’s worthwhile.

3. Make it pretty. Use signage, and make sure it’s consistent with your store’s brand and style to attract the customers you want. Decorate around major holidays, or create your own holiday. (See holidayinsights.com and daysoftheyear.com.) Make sure your store is always clean, especially your restrooms. (Women, who often control household discretionary spending, seem to notice restrooms, in particular.) Merchandise neatly and attractively, grouping related products together and putting impulse items near the cash register. Signage with features, advantages and benefits (FAB) can be effective in educating your customers and helping them make a decision to buy.

4. Make it profitable. Create a marketing timeline, so you can get started well in advance with PR, stocking inventory and event preparations. Invite and attract customers with a call to action, such as a manufacturer’s rebate or other promotion that has a short expiration date to create an urgency to buy. Consider older merchandise as loss leaders and priced to sell to bring customers into your store. As always, keep track of your margin—and balance—and turn to maximize your GMROI (gross margin return on investment). Get contact info from all event attendees using such incentives as free supplier door prizes to build your mailing list and keep expanding your customer base.

5. Make it replicable. Take notes as you go and immediately after your event. Don’t wait until next time—you’ll forget valuable lessons learned. Review what worked and what didn’t. Ask your staff and customers for honest input. Take photos of everything, keep them on file with your marketing plan, and use them when you send out your post-event press releases. Keep and use your mailing list—contact people and update every six months to maximize your store’s brand awareness without causing email overload. Learn from others in the music products industry whenever possible. Industry groups and conferences, such as NAMM, NASMD and RPMDA, are all great places to learn. Be creative when replicating events to avoid the ho-hum factor.
 

PART II: PROVEN EVENTS
Here are several events that have been very successful for my retail business, Musical Innovations:

Make Music Day—Come Uke With Us!
We held a ukulele circle in conjunction with international Make Music Day, which is June 21 every year. You can choose any instrument for your store’s event—guitars, drum circles, ukuleles, sing-along. NAMM provides a great promotional packet for this worldwide event.

• Partner with manufacturers for giveaways, special terms and discounts.

• Have plenty of handouts, chairs and instruments. If your goal is to attract new customers, they’ll need instruments.

• Don’t forget related accessories and print music.

• Download simple chord charts and familiar songs. Oldies and pop work best.

• Pair newbies with more experienced musicians, and bring in a local group to perform. We invited the YesterUkes, a local senior citizens ukulele club. Its members are now loyal customers, as are a dozen or so who were first-time visitors to our Make Music Day event. We sold 17 ukuleles in that one evening!

Back to School Bash—Business After Hours
Our chamber of commerce holds a series of business after-hours events, and we’ve made our after-hours event into a huge community block party. We hold it two weeks before school starts, when local customers are looking for student instruments, private lessons, and other music products and services.

• Partner with local community organizations, such as your chamber of commerce and local vendors. Sonic brings a hot dog bar and its Sonic Tater Tot character to events. The Mayor of Mauldin and several members of the chamber attend our events each year.

• Partner with manufacturers for giveaways, special terms and discounts.

• Partner with area schools—invite a local marching band or ensemble to perform. We had a marching band, strings teacher and her son, acoustic guitarist, and trombone choir all performing at different times throughout the evening.

• Donate a percentage of the profits to a local school music program.

Free String Change Day
Our local schools get little financial support from the school district. School instruments are often in disrepair and some stringed instruments haven’t had new strings in a decade or more. So, we held a Free String Change Day to help area teachers spruce up their school instruments, while they learned about our string division (S.C. Strings) and what our store can do to help their school music programs. We ended up selling more than enough instruments to first-time customers in the ensuing weeks to pay for the $1,500 in free strings we donated.

• Partner with manufacturers for giveaways, special terms and discounts.

• Provide refreshments—always.

• Have plenty of staff and replacement strings on hand. We required a teacher to be present to help change strings. This brought seven area string teachers to our store for the first time.

• The instruments had to be school-owned, and there was no limit to the number of strings the school could get changed for free—although we had a one-bass-per-school limit. This gave us the opportunity to identify repair needs and offer to repair or replace the instruments. It also gave teachers the opportunity to see the quality of our stringed instruments and how reasonable our prices are. We created a handout, Why Are We Doing This? It expressed our desire to support local string programs and outlined our rental and purchase options.

Piccolo Christmas
Have you heard of Tuba Christmas? The first one was held at New York City’s Rockefeller Center ice rink on December 22, 1974. Now think a few octaves higher, and you’ve got Musical Innovations Piccolo Christmas, held for the first time at Greenville’s Haywood Mall on December 7, 2013. You could do a similar annual event with a guitar ensemble, a Suzuki group, a New Horizons Band or even your in-store students. Performing downtown, in a mall or at another public venue will give you high visibility at a time when people are out to buy and willing to spend.

• Partner with suppliers. We got some alto and bass flutes on consignment (black nickel and gold frost to grab the audience’s eye) for our performers to demo and to give our audience some “eye candy.” We also ordered ensemble Christmas music, which we sold at a discount after the event. (Everyone wanted to buy the flute trio book!)

• Partner with in-store and area teachers. We had two local teachers bring their entire studios to our event, which let students play-test piccolos, harmony flutes and pro flutes—and have fun.

• Dress up! We wore Santa hats, but any eye-catching Christmas garb will do.

• Promote your store. We brought a big logo sign to display, handed out lesson fliers, talked with mall patrons and invited people walking by to sing along. We took photos, sent them to the local media for PR coverage and gave copies to the participants and their music teachers.

• Make it a day! We rehearsed for an hour in the morning at our store, then ate pizza before heading to the mall in plenty of time to find parking. We invited families to join us, so we had a built-in audience, which attracts a crowd.

Get Out and About
Finally, go where your customers are. Go anywhere and everywhere—but choose places that will bring you new customer relationships, not one-time sales opportunities. Partner with state and local organizations, schools, and anyone involved in music. We participate in events with the S.C. Flute Society, S.C. Trumpet Guild, S.C. Double Reed Society and S.C. American String Teachers Association. We set up at all-county, all-region and all-state band festivals and auditions; Christmas and spring concerts; and booster meetings—parents are there anyway, so a pro show combined with a booster meeting isn’t an extra night out.

Don’t neglect your state Music Educator Associations, even if you’re mostly a combo store. Schools are looking for curricula that will excite and engage children, such as Guitars in the Classroom. Newer schools have piano labs and even recording studios, and most schools have sound systems, both indoor and outdoor. Why wait until new customers come into your store when you can have a targeted audience in front of you?