Weekly Specials

[IanF]

Weekly Special
At Paperkutz we are going to try running a weekly special to see if this will boost sales. Facebook link This is to see if offering new weekly specials like the big stores do will bring in more sales. These will be genuine price reductions and not a case of increasing the price so we can cut the price.
Has anyone tried this online and does it work?
Also here is the link direct to the special in the Paperkutz webstore

[mother]

Ian, we ran a quick competition (just one week) on our facebook fanpage once, to increase our number of fans. We had just under 100 fans, and by the end of the competition we had 130. These are small numbers, I know, but the point is that our existing fans participated more on our page than they usually would, and they invited others to join. We kept it really simple: you had to post a comment, and the comment with the most likes would win. In my opinion it was definitely successful. So yes, giveaways on your facebook fanpage do create activity on your page, but I can't offer an answer on whether or not it generates sales (we don't sell online).

[IanF]

Mother
We have given away mousepads to our facebook fans but did not get any sales. So now we are trying a direct approach inspired by the weekly pamphlets we get to see if that increases sales.

[Pap_sak]

Hi Ian

Do you not sell to wholesalers? I couldn't see anything on the website, but wouldn't it be something to get into? Your margins would be less...but you would make it up on quantity.

Just a thought if you not doing it already...and if you are then you need a "wholesalers click here button".

[IanF]

Papsak
We do offer wholesale prices when asked, just almost everyone says they are a reseller. What we do is send genuine resellers a discount code to use if they buy over R300 per order. We get a lot of calls from husbands saying they want to setup their wife as a reseller, half the time they are just looking for a discount.

[Dave A]

Cupcake wrappers this week. Not really in the market for that just at the moment.

The question to my mind with this approach is will this special trigger a buying decision that you wouldn't have got otherwise? If you look at retailing specials, the classic approach is to get them into your store using a special on something most people will buy so that they do the rest of their shopping in your store that week (or month).

Maybe if you combined this with a targetted prospecting campaign to catering suppliers in this instance, and continue linking your specials to associated verticals prospecting campaigns, you might get better results with this strategy.

[IanF]

Dave the thinking is to get them to look weekly and maybe the special won't grab them but something else in the store will. Also we will soon start offering acrylic goods, we have just done the test cuts for samples and need to finalize the pricing. The mirror acrylic stuff looks good. To my surprise we did sell 15 dozen of the wrappers on special in one order.

[Dave A]

It certainly looks like a great special for a good product, so I wouldn't be surprised in the least if it triggered a sale from someone who is in the market for the product. It just seemd so niche, though.

The question I found me asking myself was - if it isn't up my alley, would I come back to check on next week's special?
Without prompting?

Or after checking for three weeks and finding each week I didn't have a fit?
Would I keep coming back?

If I wanted something else you provided, would I wait until it came on special?

I'm not trying to be critical of what you are doing. I am very interested in everyone's view on the subject though, as I'm well aware I might be miles off-track here.

[AndyD]

I think you're getting into the realms of the difference between a product that's on promotion and a weekly special.

[IanF]

The guys who buy are told what to buy by their better halves, we will keep this going to see if it does make a difference to sales.
I see the big online stores, like Kalahari, do have specials on an ongoing basis I wonder what the thinking is behind that.