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MARKETING Re
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Bigger, Badder, Better!

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ATTACK OF THE KILLER

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MARKETING TACTICS!

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A few years back, marketing super-guru Tom Feltenstein in 401 Killer Marketing
Tactics rewrote the book on high-impact marketing that works. Fast-forward to
today and new technologies, more sophisticated consumers/competitors, and a
whole new media landscape have changed all the rules. In response, Feltenstein

M
has upped his game, and in 501 Killer Marketing Tactics, he delivers even MORE
sure-fire marketing strategies and tactics that let you outwit, outthink, and outsell
the other guy.

marketing
Based on case studies of clients ranging from small nonprofits to giants like Coca-
Cola and McDonald’s, this book delivers tips and tricks on a range of hot topics:

tactics
• Planning the Battle—and Choosing the Right Tactics
• eMarketing, Digital Media/Social Networking
• Grand Opening/Reopening and Holidays
• Four Walls Marketing

T
• Direct Mail and Ads, Coupons and Tear-outs,

to increase sales,

Event Tie-ins, and Gift Certificates
• Marketing Measurement

maximize profits, and

No matter what your budget is, you can still wage cutting-edge marketing and pro-
motional campaigns that get the word out about your business, cement the loyalty of
your existing customers—and win more new customers than you can handle.

stomp your
Tom Feltenstein (West Palm Beach, FL) is founder and CEO of Power Marketing Academy, a
consulting firm that educates Fortune 500 companies and other businesses. Fel e Includes
All-New
t
Visit Tom at tomfeltenstein.com Tactics on
nst
competition
USD $21.95
ISBN 978-0-07-174063-0
Digital and
MHID 0-07-174063-5 Social
e in
5 2 1 9 5>
Media

9 780071 740630
To Fel e e

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01(001-142)_ch1-12:feltenstein 6/15/10 12:35 PM Page 1

Planning the Battle—

1 The Basics

Without promotion, something terrible happens—nothing!

—P. T. BARNUM, circus impresario

This book is a working manual of promotional ideas and programs for

your business, based on the guiding principle that everything you need
in order to grow your business is within your four walls and your neigh-
borhood. This is a gold mine of tactics (the building blocks of the mar-
keting plan of any organization) that when selected, assembled, and
tailored by you, will help you meet your specific objectives. They work
best when they are executed consistently as part of an overall plan of
action that is intended to last from several months to a year. I strongly
recommend that you develop a firm marketing plan before you begin
your promotional activities.
When I sit down to speak with new clients, they are often surprised
when I start off my marketing discussion by talking about their internal
customers, better known as their employees. Employees’ lives are
enriched when they sense commitment and caring from those whom
they work for and with. When their work is fulfilling, they become your
partners in business. Without the support and buy-in of your employees,
all the slick advertising and creative promotional ideas in the world will
never achieve the results you seek.

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2 ✹ 501 Killer Marketing Tactics

Your internal customers should be involved in your total marketing

effort, not simply by doing what you want them to do the way you want
them to do it, but by soliciting their input on the tactics you want to
implement. A truly devoted employee is one who honestly believes in
the company and is faithful to its mission and its products or services.
This book includes ideas dedicated to helping you partner with, moti-
vate, and reward your staff in order to achieve maximum results.
The tactics in this book are based on decades of successful promo-
tion planning experience. They are targeted to specific audiences made
up of the members of your community you should be trying to reach:
those within your local trading area, or roughly a 10-minute drive from
your front door. Whether you serve food or install carpeting, sell cars or
fix teeth, run a hospital or run a pet shop; whether you’re big or small,
independent or part of a chain; whether you’re in the suburbs, a shop-
ping mall, a downtown, or a hotel, you’ll find tactics that you can either
use off the shelf or adapt to fit your own situation and budget.
Avoid trying to shoehorn a tactic into an insufficient budget. For
example, suggestions for print or radio advertising are to be used only if
your budget can sustain an effective media schedule. If a tactic involves
four weeks of advertising and you can afford only one, it might be better
to choose a different tactic that costs less.
As you plan your activities, be sure to record all materials needed, the
steps necessary to undertake the promotion, and the costs involved. Main-
tain a precise promotional calendar to help keep you current, properly
budgeted, and on schedule.
Promotions should be exciting, enjoyable experiences for your
customers, your staff, and you. Keep this goal foremost in your mind.
Your own enthusiasm and showmanship will add an air of electricity that
will buoy your staff, reenergize your existing customers, and attract new
customers.
01(001-142)_ch1-12:feltenstein 6/15/10 12:35 PM Page 3

How to Choose the

2 Right Tactics

At the beginning of most of the promotions and tactics in this book is a

statement of the objective. This is the short- or long-term effect that the
tactic is designed to achieve. Once you have created your marketing plan
and decided upon your objectives, you should then choose from among
the appropriate tactics.
In alphabetical order, here are some objectives to consider:

✹ Awareness. This is the first step in bringing in new customers. The

potential customer must know or be reminded of your existence, your
location, your product or service, your price range, and what makes
you different from the competition.
✹ Building a mailing list. This involves collecting the names and
addresses of all customers who walk through your door. You will
use this list time and again to implement many promotional activi-
ties. Do everything you can to collect this information, and main-
tain and update it continually.
✹ Community goodwill. This is the creation of a positive image of
your business or organization in your community. No matter how
large or small your business or organization may be, you put out an

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4 ✹ 501 Killer Marketing Tactics

image that reflects on you positively or negatively. Promotions

aimed at community involvement show your genuine caring
and sharing.
✹ Excitement. These are promotions that make you stand out from
the crowd. Exciting promotions will create a loyal customer base.
✹ Frequency. These are promotions geared toward establishing your
business as the place to go in your category. Bringing in new cus-
tomers and keeping the old ones is important, but once you have
gained customers’ loyalty, the goal is to keep them coming back as
often as possible.
✹ Generating PR. Public relations, also called publicity, is an effective
and inexpensive way to get your message out by getting the media
(radio, television, newspapers, magazines, Web sites) interested
enough in what you are doing to tell their audiences about it. Once
you’ve been noticed the first time, it becomes easier to get press
attention for future promotions.
✹ Generating traffic. These promotions are designed to attract people
into your operation. People may be coming in simply to pick up an
entry blank for a contest, but it’s likely that they will make some
purchase as a result, either then or later.
✹ Image. This involves the perception the public has of your business.
Is it a fun place to take the kids, a special occasion destination, a
place the community can count on for special events, a business
that makes customers feel like family? The image you have estab-
lished in the community should drive the promotions you choose.
If you want to change your image, choosing the proper promotions
can make it easy.
✹ Increasing sales. These are promotions that are designed specifically
to build a higher check (and a higher profit) per customer through
the suggestive selling of add-ons or selling up to higher-priced prod-
ucts or services. Many of the staff incentives you will find in this
book are also designed to increase sales.
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How to Choose the Right Tactics ✹ 5

✹ Keeping staff busy. These are promotions that are designed to help
you face slow periods. They keep your staff busy and build business
during down times. Most important, they prevent you from having
to lay off employees. The knowledge that you are working to help
your staff keep their jobs will create staff loyalty and goodwill.
✹ Promoting activity during slow periods. These promotions are differ-
ent from those described under “Keeping staff busy” in that they
aim to build your normal and usual business during off times rather
than to expand your activities and services. They can also keep your
staff busy!
✹ Staff incentives. The attitudes and actions of your employees will be
the first (and possibly last) impression that customers get. A harmo-
nious, exciting, and pleasant working environment, in which indi-
viduals’ needs are paramount, will keep your business running
smoothly and leave you and your management with time to imple-
ment other promotional activities.
✹ Stimulating trial. These promotions are designed to get people to
try you out. Customers who already know about you may not have
been motivated to try you. Promotions that are designed to stimu-
late trial offer something that is special enough to give potential
customers the push they need.
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Ten Steps before

3 Launching Any
Promotional Tactic

You could open this book to any page, pick a tactic, and give it a try. How-
ever, that’s not making marketing a way of life, and it won’t get you to
use these promotional tactics in the most effective manner.
There are a number of steps you should go through, even if you think
you already know what you’re doing, to ensure success each and every
time. In doing so, you may be surprised by what you will learn about your
business, the people you’ve hired to work for you, and your role and per-
ception in the community.

✹ Determine objectives. Is your goal to stimulate trial purchases by new

customers or to stimulate more frequent purchases by current cus-
tomers? Are you aiming to increase your average transaction, enhance
your image, boost employee productivity or morale, stimulate com-
munity awareness, or a combination of these? These are all important
goals, but you need to determine which ones you want to achieve first,
second, and so on, and which are most easily and effectively executed.
✹ Be specific. If your objective is to get new customers to try you out,
what is a reasonable goal—an increase in new customers of 5 per-
cent, 10 percent, or 15 percent? Would it be reasonable to shoot for

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8 ✹ 501 Killer Marketing Tactics

an increase in customer frequency from three purchases a month to

four? If your objective is to increase your average sale, what is a rea-
sonable increase based on your current pricing? If your objective is
employee morale, how much can you reduce employee turnover by
running this promotion?
✹ Be realistic in your goals. Success is rarely achieved in one fell
swoop. Remember, this is a way of life. Each incremental improve-
ment builds on the last. If you get too ambitious, you and your staff
will quickly become frustrated and disappointed, and you will be
less enthusiastic next time. Set your goals high enough to make a
difference and low enough to have the best chance of success.
✹ Set your strategy. Once you’ve established your objectives and
selected some tactics, you must decide how to make those tactics
successful. What can you afford, and how can you maximize your
results?
✹ Consider various aspects. Consider such aspects as timing; frequency;
capitalizing on local events; seasonal population variations; competi-
tive challenges that call for extra effort; variable costs of materials,
labor, and real estate; and other factors that are unique to your situa-
tion.
✹ Create a plan. Create a carefully thought-out plan for each promo-
tion, and make sure that each promotion is slotted into its proper
place in your long-term objectives.
✹ Zero in on your target. What type of customer does your business
attract—upscale, blue-collar, families, singles, ethnic groups? Ide-
ally, the group or groups that are predominant in your neighbor-
hood (within a 10-minute drive of your front door) should be most
attracted to your concept. Once you’ve zeroed in on your target
audience, review your tactical options and pick those that would
most appeal to that audience and would be the most appropriate.
✹ Calculate your payout. Almost every promotional tactic that is
intended to increase sales should have a measurable result and pro-
duce a profit. You should know how many new customers you need
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Ten Steps before Launching Any Promotional Tactic ✹ 9

in order to cover the costs of your promotion. How many of those

new customers must you convert to regular customers to consider
the promotion a success? If you do your homework ahead of time,
you’ll be able to tell how realistic your objectives are and what, if
any, adjustments are necessary for next time.
Improving employee morale or improving the image of your busi-
ness is more difficult, but not impossible, to measure. Ask yourself,
or your bookkeeper or accountant, “What does it cost us to hire and
train a new employee?” or “How much traffic will an improved image
generate?” In most cases, you can find a way to track the results of a
promotion.
Remember, if you can measure it, you can manage it. Or, as Yogi
Berra once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might
end up someplace else!”
✹ Check the calendar. You shouldn’t be mailing announcements
today for a promotion that starts tomorrow. You don’t need New
Year’s noisemakers delivered in January. Leave extra time to make
sure that each element of your promotion is in place in time. Leave
time for creating, producing, and implementing each element.
Make a promotion calendar or schedule showing each phase, and
pad the time a little to allow for the inevitable changes and delays.
✹ Refine your products and services. Be sure that the service or prod-
uct you offer is right for your target customers—that you’re offer-
ing the right varieties, with the most customer appeal, the right
pricing, and the right presentation. Keep track of what is most
popular, what’s producing the most sales, and what’s producing
the largest profit margin.
Compare what you know with what your competitors are offering.
Survey your customers by questionnaire or one-on-one conversations.
Take the temperature of your market, and be a good listener by leav-
ing your ego and your preconceived ideas out of it.
✹ Polish the brass. Go a step beyond your regular maintenance pro-
cedures. Make sure that your selling, operating, and customer areas
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10 ✹ 501 Killer Marketing Tactics

are attractive; that your physical space is clean and tidy; that any
background music appeals to your audience; that unpleasant
sounds or odors are neutralized; that fading paint, broken door han-
dles, and any other flaws are corrected. It all sells, even sparkling
bathrooms. You may not see the grimy windows or the litter
because you pass them every day and they’ve become invisible, but
your customers will.
✹ Check the logistics. You can execute your tactics with minimum
difficulty by making sure that you have the technical know-how, the
space, and the resources to handle the promotion without disrupt-
ing customer service or staff efficiency. Plenty of otherwise success-
ful promotions have been ruined by insufficient or poorly trained
staff, poor product quality, or equipment failure.
Practice run-throughs, when appropriate, to help iron out any
kinks and increase the chances of a smooth promotion.
✹ Cheerlead. Hold a team meeting of all your employees and explain
the objectives, the rationale, the implementation, and the fun of
your upcoming promotion. Let employees know what is expected
of them, what is in it for them personally, and how much you care
about their job satisfaction and feedback. They are your customers,
too, and you should work just as hard to earn their loyalty. It’s the
right thing to do, and it pays.
✹ Plan your analysis. Successful promotional activity is a learning
process. You take lessons away from each effort, and you build on
them. Setting specific objectives allows you to measure the success
of your promotion. For example, before your promotion even
begins, you might prepare brief customer and employee question-
naires that you can use afterward to solicit reactions. Review every
aspect of your promotion, and gather the information you need to
make your next promotion even more effective.