Creating and Implementing A Marketing Plan
Sandy's Savvy Chic Resale Boutique - Gainesville, FL
I started working at Sandy's during my Junior Year of College as a part time job, where I worked on the weekend as a cashier and general retail associate. I had recently liquidated the stock from my online business as it was taking up far too much time once school started, and I needed something that I could do for a few shifts a week.
After working there for 2 months, I had a pretty good idea of what the recurrent problems were, and I had ideas for overall positive growth. I compiled a list of problems, outlined solutions, and brought them to the Owner and General Manager at a dinner that we set up to go over everything. A lot of what I thought could be improved upon revolved around our marketing, creating a strategy for our social media presence, and addressing our current lack of visibility in a college town where we had to worry about people rotating out every 4 years.
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It wasn't just that I saw some problem areas, I genuinely liked the store and I thought that there were things that we could introduce to make it an even better experience for everyone involved. It isn't always about finding and fixing problems, but also about improving upon what's already there that's working. This turned out to be a long term project that I was able to work
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Putting the Plan in Place & Executing:
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We started out by creating a content strategy for posting on Instagram and Facebook that we stuck to pretty strictly, and over time we grew our audience and level of interaction. I was able to learn more about targeting and boosting ads, and we found some pretty neat personality profile breakdowns on Facebook Insights that gave us a deeper look at our average customer than we could have previously gotten on our own.
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We had a bit of clean-up work to do when it came to our reviews as most people will only leave reviews if they are extremely upset. With campaigns through social media, reward points for anyone who wrote a review (no matter what the rating), and reminders on all of our receipts to write reviews we were able to increase our rating from around 2 stars, to above 4's on Facebook, Yelp, and Google.
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We created an annual sales calendar based around our clearance cycles and holidays, and worked on creating cohesive advertising campaigns. We partnered with local businesses for events, had a few radio events, and even hit our highest sale numbers to date with what has now become a semi-annual event, the "Pack-A-Bag" event.
We changed around the layout of the store to increase revenue generation per square foot (the kids section was taking up a lot of space but not generating much income) and we added vertical racks on the walls for places that could handle holding smaller items in multiple rows (such as bathing suits and purses).
We separated out and created dedicated (and well labeled) new sections for our most popular attention grabbing items that would sell well with our customers so that they didn't have to "dig for hidden treasures" as you normally would in a resale store. For example: Lilly Pulitzer, Gators themed, Athletic Wear, Professional Wear, Plus Sized, and a rotating rack for special items of the season such as "ugly sweaters", Maxi-dressed, and Halloween Costumes.
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We were able to accomplish a TON with persistence, and I am forever grateful to Sandy for letting me put my hypothesis and skills to the test in her store. I learned a lot about working with a large group of people, I gained new skills and experiences, and we were able to completely turn around falling profits!
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Here are some examples of what we introduced and accomplished in a year:
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This event broke sale records for us, and was such a hit that it became a semi-annual sale. We emptied out almost an entire storage unit of merchandise that had been marked down at different times throughout the year, and increased sales continued for over a week after.
All hands on deck for our first Pack-A-Bag! We emptied out a ton of space in the back of the store ready to usher in the new with this one.
We boosted our reviews from 2 stars to over 4 stars on Facebook, Yelp, and Google through Social Media campaigns like this one, reminders on our receipts, and reward points for anyone who showed us a review they wrote (no matter how good or bad).
We wanted to make sure that everyone knew that we had an area for their kiddos to stay that was watched and taken care of by staff if they wanted a little quiet time while they shopped.
One of our many hiring ads for new retail associates, buyers, and managers. Retail has a large turnover, so we always liked having loyal customers who already loved Sandy's to apply with us.
As our final push to get rid of clearance clothing quickly, we created a quarterly sale that really moved items and got customers excited. With 4 of these per year, any leftovers were used for our ever popular and new, Pack-A-Bag Sale!
Our kids area had previously been taking up a lot of squarefootage, but not carrying its weight in income generation. I designed a solution that allowed us to put out 4x the kids merchandise in 1/2 the space and it was a big hit!
Every year, our owners husband played Santa for the kids, we brought in treats, and took pictures with the kids and their families. It's a popular event that we decided to add more advertising for, and paired with a local radio station to really get people coming in.
After doing a price analysis of all of our sections, we found out that our athletic wear section was one of our top sellers! So when we did the Kids section revamp we made more dedicated space for it.