What You Can Learn On A Saturday Trip To The Grocery Store
This morning I needed to run to the grocery store to pick up some balloons and next to the grocery store is my dry cleaner which I needed to drop in on to pick up some of my clothes I had done.
I went to the dry cleaner first. I believe this dry cleaner is a chain store. They have a very customer friendly system in there. All I have to do is give them my phone number and I can drop off and pick up in a flash. I really like that. Generally they are not overwhelmingly friendly, but not terrible. Pretty much average which means invisible.
But then I noticed it…
Something so mind boggling and so glaring and yet they don’t even realize the mistake they are making. On every freshly cleaned piece of clothing in the place they have a plastic garment bag slung over the top. And on this garment bag that everyone sees and takes home (some even hang in their own closet) they have a marketing message printed on it. The marketing message says, “Customized service to meet your every need.”
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN???
You have a prime opportunity to deliver an unavoidable message to all your customers, that makes it into their house and potentially sticking about their closet for months and that is what you put out there - “customized service to meet your every need.”
This is a bunch of amateur drivel that means nothing to anyone. This is the perfect place to deliver a huge benefit, an offer to come back, a GPS (a statement that delivers a benefit and tells what makes your cleaner the obvious choice over all the other cleaners.)
After I saw that I started looking around more – My marketing radar was on full blast and guess what? I saw more blunders that would make an “F” student blush with shame.
On the wall is a huge and I mean huge sign that discusses the different cleaning options and their features. Notice I said features. The sign shows the three levels they offer. I liked the fact that the names of the services were actually something rather than just like option 1,2 & 3. I think the options were basic, deluxe and signature.
What I didn’t like about it was it listed no benefits of having one service over another aside from the features. And on the basic service (which was pretty darn basic) they had a big EXTRA in each column that wasn’t checked. This was very odd and I think not good for customers.
This sign is a good idea but could be made a lot more effective.
So, take a look at what you're doing with both in-store and outside marketing and really scrutinize it. Ask yourself: can it be better? How do my customer's perceive this? does it serve a marketing function and should it?
