Marketing: what are the best ways to drive more sales?

Why does this article matter?

Effective marketing grows your audience, increasing sales and bringing in new customers!

What are some key concepts?

Roughly speaking, all marketing fits into two buckets: content marketing and performance marketing

What have we seen paint & hardware stores do effectively?

Effective marketing is an art, and getting creative can pay massive dividends. That said, here are some ideas we’ve seen work well for our clients to use as a jumping off point:

Performance marketing

• Run TV ads on your local station — raise general awareness, announce promos + offers, etc.

• Purchase Google Search ads for paint in your city — your store will appear whenever anyone search for paint or hardware in your city

• Purchase Google Maps ads for paint & hardware in your zipcode — your store will appear whenever anyone searches for paint or hardware near them

  

  Sherwin-Williams and Kelly-Moore already do this (the red squares in the image above)

Content marketing

• Have an OSR hold events when new product lines come out — raise awareness, offer tips on proper application, and educate on advantages over existing products

• Write a blog or magazine — be warned, this takes a LOT of effort. However, when done successfully (like what Mallory Paint has done — check it out!), the rewards are huge.

• Add info to your website about store history and employee expertise

How can Rundoo help me improve my marketing?

Email + text marketing

The more directly you can communicate with your customers (or prospective customers) the better. This is why email and text marketing are widely viewed as best-in-class marketing techniques: you can send personalized messages straight to your customers’ computers and phones!

Rundoo stores emails and phone numbers for your customers, making it easy to create automated email + text marketing without ever leaving the POS.

• To target existing customers:

  • Decide on a slice of customers you’d like to engage (e.g., contractors with more than $10k in purchases annually)

  • Send an email to everyone in the selected slice that has an email address on file, alerting them to a new product line or announcing a targeted promotion. Or, send a text message to everyone in the selected slice that has a phone number on file

• To attract new customers:

  • Gather data from local sources (e.g., Yellow Pages) on prospective customers and enter it into Rundoo

  • Use the same email or text marketing functionality to send intro messaging to these new customers and raise awareness for your store

Web presence

Building an online presence grows in importance every year — in many markets, a modern and polished website is seen as “table stakes” if you want to stay competitive.

Rundoo’s plug-n-play eCommerce offers a sleek and personalized website that can increase sales by introducing a new channel, allowing you to reach new customers beyond your brick & mortar location.

• To run promotions:

  • Display eCommerce promotions (e.g., BOGO on select product lines) on your website

  • Purchase ads (e.g., through Google Ads, the local classifieds, etc.) to direct prospects toward your site

• To publish content:

  • Create a “Content” section on your integrated website where you can publish original content or link to content produced by your manufacturers

• To advertise your site:

  • Use the QR codes that Rundoo prints on receipts to direct customers to your website

What are the next steps here?

If you want to learn more about using Rundoo for marketing or just want to discuss general tips + tricks, book a time here or shoot me an email at max@getrundoo.com — I’m happy to chat!