Grow Your Bookstore (or Other Business) Faster
Through Successful Promotional Partnerships.
Here are 10 ways to attract more customers to your
bookstore and build community support.
1. Encourage more book sales with accompanying free
gifts.
Benefits: Generates in-store interest, increases
size of some customers' purchases, better serves the
specific interests of customers, and reaches more
prospective book buyers.
How to do it: Offer a free, relevant gift when
customers buy your "bundled" collection of books on a
similar topic. Prominently promote and display the book
collection on an eye-level counter, with a big "Special
Offer" on (bookstore's name)'s (name of collection). Free
(name of gift) from (name of partnering store). Ask your
partner to display a description of that offer in their
store or office. Your partner offers your relevant book,
card, or gift certificate when their customers buy their
"bundled" set of products or services.
Examples: A $10 dry cleaning certificate
accompanies your work and career book collection. The
purchase of your selected collection of cookbooks is
accompanied by your partner cookbook store's fun kitchen
gadget The new suit purchased from a near-by clothier has a
hanger-held gift certificate for $5 off the customer's next
bookstore purchase.
2. Find partners to co-sponsor an event or
contest.
Benefits: Free or reduced-cost bookstore
advertising and publicity, visible contribution to your
community. stronger loyalty from your customers, and
increased contact with potential book buyers.
How to do it: Find cross-promotional partners who
are also reaching your market. Design an event or contest
that would interest your market, and share costs of
producing and marketing it. More partners means less cost
and more visibility.
You provide an on-site bookstore of pertinent and
recommended books for a hospital/pharmacy-sponsored public
seminar, "Women's Wellness After 40." Ask five or six local
security, home improvement, and real estate firms to
co-sponsor a "Making Your Home Safe" class with related
books sold on-site.
3. Show your best bookstore customers you appreciate
them.
Benefits: Reinforces loyalty and involvement among
your best customers; incentive for other customers to buy
more books.
How to do it: Create dramatically designed
"frequent buyer" cards that award your customers various
gifts when they reach certain purchase levels. Exchange your
books or other products with your cross-promotional
partner—you offer your partner's product or service as the
free gifts to your customers, and your partner's customers
receive a book or other product. To build foot traffic for
you and your partner, give "frequent buyer" customers
certificates to pick up their gifts at the other store or
office.
Example: Your bookstore customer receives a
manicure, then a complete "makeover" from a nearby beauty
salon. The salon's "frequent buyers" receive a set of thank
you cards, then a set of books on beauty and fashion tips.
4. Suggest reasons for local organizations to give
your books away.
Benefits: Larger orders for books—in advance of
your need to buy them; broader community exposure to your
bookstore name.
How to do it: Offer managers of local businesses,
nonprofits, and government agencies incentives to buy books
for their staff that are relevant to their work or lifestyle
interests. Give them special treatment, bulk discounts, free
delivery, book cover stickers with their organization's name
or motto, or provide special packaging or bundling of books
and cards. Investigate ways your book subjects can help them
reach their organizational goals (increased teamwork, better
morale, fitness, or time management).
Examples: Your buyers advise a local manufacturing
company of the most relevant books to bulk-buy as gifts for
employees to or suggest an employee gift-certificate, with a
list of recommended books, for employees to use at your
bookstore. The firm buys the certificate at a discount. A
city manager gives all workers your suggested book on great
customer service. The local United Way gives all staff,
board members, and volunteers a book on the gift of giving.
Any organization gives employees an end-of-the-year gift of
a new wall or appointment calendar with their key
organizational dates marked in.
5. Help your partners use books to build their
business.
Benefits: You and your partners have an
attention-getting and cost-effective way to increase
customer involvement and loyalty.
How to do it: Suggest that managers of local
businesses, professional practices, nonprofits, and
government agencies give relevant books to their clients and
hottest prospects to gain their attention and involvement.
Examples: A real estate broker gives their agents
books to give out to new home buyers—a gorgeous photographic
look at the local area or a home repair book with a sticker
on the cover with the broker's name and service motto. A
bank or insurance company gives a book on financial planning
to those who open new accounts.
6. Create partnerships that build store traffic and
community ties.
Benefits: Provides genuine community service
related to your niche markets, creates good news, builds
bookstore foot traffic, and develops new friendships.
How to do it: Partner with as many other and
diverse groups as you can recruit to reach one of your
shared niche markets and jointly provide a valuable new
service to that market.
Example: To reach parents of young kids, partner
with a local toy store, ice cream shop, pharmacy, shopper
newspaper, hospital, and pediatricians' society to give free
pre-school immunizations at publicly announced times at the
partners' sites, with toy and snack rewards provided for the
parents to give their children.
7. Create packages of "common use" products from you
and your partners.
How to do it: Picture the mix of products and
services people generally need or want at one time. Approach
businesses offering the other services and suggest a bundled
price and packaging, targeting outreach and shared promotion
at all of your sites.
Examples: Jointly promote a back-to-school package
of a how-to-study book, book bag, school supplies, and
educational software. Offer a "Getting Back in Shape"
package for new mothers that includes your diet and exercise
book, a shopper service, free consultation, and fitness
class coupons.
8. Give bookstore customers more reasons to buy books
and to buy more.
Benefits: Establishes an interest-building,
helpful service in a flyer that customers can keep and share
with friends, that may make news, and that differentiates
your bookstore from others.
How to do it: Give customers a whimsically
illustrated, long, slender, accordion-fold checklist of 100
wide-ranging reasons to buy books, such as recognition for
work promotions, surprise announcements, special
anniversaries, common and little-known holidays, or to say
"I'm sorry." Include humorous and serious reasons and
recommended books for each listed reason. Checklists could
be displayed in acrylic holders at the other store and
office sites and sent to the media. Offer partners a
"special customer service" customized list of reasons for
their customers to buy particular books. Bookstore staff
could work with your partner's staff and interview local
experts and celebrities to create a list. All contributors
would be credited on the flyer and receive checklists to
give away.
Examples: Provide a pharmacist, medical clinic,
sports equipment store, library, and local child and adult
athletic leagues with a checklist of reasons to buy books
related to health and physical activity, from "get well
soon" and related books on sports injuries to "beginning of
summertime for families to learn a new sport together" and a
related guidebook to various kinds of sports and recreation.
9. Partner with a nonprofit or government agency to
reward volunteers.
Benefits: Gains more visibility and a deserved
"halo" in your market and closer relationships with others
in it.
How to do it: Identify effective, well-liked
government agencies and nonprofit groups that reach one of
your niche markets and offer appropriate gift books to
reward their volunteers who provide 50 hours of community
service. Give the book at one of their special events, media
invited, with a joint inscription from your bookstore owner
and the agency director. Join with partners to offer
"bundled" gifts. Also offer a special discount to all agency
staff or volunteers who buy "(name of agency) Book
Collection" of three to five books.
Examples: A nature store, your bookstore, and a
natural foods store give a package of gift certificates to
the local parks and recreation department community-cleanup
volunteers. A retirement community offers certificates to
use their golf course, and your bookstore offers a popular
management book to retired executives who mentor
entrepreneurs in the federal S.C.O.R.E. program.
10. Go where the action is.
Benefits: Provides a free way to greatly increase
the number of people who are exposed to your bookstore's
name and image.
How to do it: Partner with the manager of a
location where there is heavy foot or car traffic by
offering to provide a window display that will draw positive
attention to their site.
Examples: Design a window sign with ever-changing
questions that are answered the following day—and attributed
to an author on a topic related to the location manager's
site. A corner gas station's pumps display your tips from
books about car buying, safety, and maintenance, citing your
bookstore's name and location. A corner grocer displays
healthy foods, your list of nutritious foods to keep in the
pantry, and five books on eating, right next to your
bookstore name.
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