GrandOpeningHelp.com

Make the Grand Opening Sale Special

No matter if this is your first or your 100^th store grand opening; people will expert some type of sale.  In fact most store grand openings use sales as a tool to lure in customers, but be creative in your sales marketing and reap profit and create loyal customers.

Many businesses try to discount the entire store thinking this will give them the greatest

exposure and the largest variety of customers.  This works great if you’re a convenience store and not specializing in a horizontal market. If you’re a specialty store, you want to make sure you attract customers who will use the products you’re selling and develop loyal customer base.  Understanding your consumer demographics is as important to your grand opening, as well to the success of your business.

Sale items should be clearly marked and should show savings.  Make it easy for the customer to see the saving you’re offering.  If you offer repair services, show a comparison chart of your rate compared to competitors.

Become creative in your grand opening sales.

• Offer useful products on sale that will brand a particular product or service to your store. The goal is to generate sales, but also create loyal customer base who will retune for future sales.
• Offer discounts on multiple product if purchased the day of the grand opening.
• Offer discounts on related products purchased together – Snow shovel, salt, and door mate reduce greater if purchased together.
• Offer free assembly or delivery on large ticket items, if purchase at grand opening.

Making your store grand opening profitable is not difficult, it just take serious planning.  The sales planning you do now; will pay off in future sales.

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Trying to figure out what marketing ideas will work and won’t, is always a difficult choice for a business.  Trial and error are how most people start a business while cleaver people do some research and find clever, innovative marketing ideas to help them achieve their financial goals.  Here is a document on Creative Marketing Ideas that can help small businesses improve their marketing along with improving their current marketing positions.

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This post was submitted by Dale Obrochta.

Going beyond the typical nuggets and fries

Going out to eat should be enjoyable, but also healthy for the entire family. Many restaurants are now catering to children and kid’s meals are becoming the competitive difference between success and failure.  In the past, kid’s meals were boring in design, presentation, and had few options; but today’s meals not only taste better, but are healthier. Restaurant owners need to address their kid’s meal design and presentation.  Parents are seeking out restaurants that are proving kid friendly service and healthy kid’s meals. So it is important that a restaurant highlight the benefits of the kid’s meal at the grand opening.  Educate parents that your kid’s meals are better for their kids than chain fast food restaurants.

Here are some 7 tips on showcasing and presenting a kids meal at a restaurant grand opening.

• Display juice options on counter – Show off kid’s drink options just like bars show off popular liquors. If seen, parents will buy it.
• Quality sandwiches – Kid’s eat more than PJ, hot dogs and burgers. Create real meals in bite size bits.
• Include soup and salads with kid’s meals – Kid’s like to eat what their parent eats. Provide them with a full course meal.
• Provide kids utensils – Many kid’s like to eat with silverware, provide small forks and spoons. Customize the utensils, so if they vanish from the table they’ll have your advertising information on it.
• Food presentation for kid’s – Design the meal so it is ready for kid’s to eat. Cut sandwiches into quarters, provide drinking in spill proof glasses and provide kid’s appetizer for kid’s waiting.
• Kid’s free appetizers – Waiting in a restaurant can be excruciating for a small child and need an appetizer to settle them down. Offer complementary Cheerio’s as a treat while parents and family wait for the meal.
• Kid’s appetizer platter – This platter would contain oranges and apple slices, crackers, cheese, Goldfish crackers and Cheerio’s. Everything is health and finger friendly giving parents an alternative meal for picky eaters.

Magical Balloon-dude Dale has been a professional balloon entertainer who works with restaurants in developing kid’s nights along with increase family participating at a restaurant.

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A Game of Chance

The goal of the game is to add fun to a grand opening and give people a reason to buy products.

Grand Opening Promotional Card Game Scenario

A customer enters the store and walks directly to a table. On the table is a deck of fanned out playing cards. The customer selects a card. The card selected will determine the customer’s discount bag — hearts 10% off, a club 15%, a diamond 20%, and a spade 25% discount on selected items that can fit into the bag. If a person draws a wild card then a 50% bag is given. Use only one deck of cards, remove the cards as the promotion progresses. Once down to the last couple cards, reshuffle the deck and start all over again.

Items needed

• Deck of ordinary playing cards
• Shopping bags of different sizes
• Sharpie Marker

Setup for Grand Opening Card Game

Discount bags will need to have discount % written on each bag.

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Grand openings are your welcome mat to the community and local businesses.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a franchise or a small business, a successful grand opening can increase the bottom line the first year.  Successful retailers will go all-out to make their presents known in the community.  They try to involve all aspects of government, newspapers, TV, radio stations, and community groups into the grand opening.  These companies have learned that the community along with local business can impact the success of a business.

My personal experiences working and planning a grand opening.

As a promotional entertainer I have worked for major retailers like Target, Ace Hardware, A.J. Wright, Cold Stone Creamery, and Barns & Noble to smaller companies like Parcels+, Lindy’s Chili & Gerties Ice Cream, and Panda Express. They all had one thing in common – they worked very hard to get the public involved in their grand opening.

Here are 18 grand opening tips and ideas for planning for your grand opening that I have seen or heard about over my 24+ years of entertaining.

Tips, Ideas, and Insight for Planning a Grand Opening

1. Create a budget for the grand opening. Creating a budget that will allow you to have a successful grand opening, but is separate for the monthly advertising budget.
2. Select a grand opening date immediately. By selecting a date you can now properly prepare, plan, and schedule special guest for the grand opening in advance. You can inform customers, vendors, and staff months earlier and create a buzz about the “big grand opening event”.
3. Check local government regulation regarding advertising signs, inflatable, or marquee that you use to advertise your grand openings. Some communities have regulations and permits maybe required to have a large purple inflatable gorilla, advertising a grand opening in parkway.
4. Make it a business-to-business grand opening. Send out special coupons to local businesses – networking with business and create business accounts. Allow owners to enter the night before the grand opening to preview the store.
5. Create customer loyalty from the beginning. Offer special incentives for returning customers who shopped prior to the grand opening. If a customer brings in a receipt dated prior to the grand opening date, give the customer a special prize or discount for being a loyal customer.
6. Hire a promotional entertainer. Promotional entertainment is about gathering crowds, getting a message heard, registering people, and for that you need a professional entertainer.
7. Have maximum staff on hand. Make sure your sales staff is fully knowledgeable about location of products, store hours, and store layout.
8. No waiting at registers. Plan for crowds to come and buy. Have all the registers open and have entertainment available to entertain the waiting customers. When people are happy they don’t mind waiting in line. Have a comedian, promotional entertainer, or band to entertain the customers waiting in line.
9. Network with adjacent business. Because you already have the grand opening date scheduled you can work with local business to create flier swap weeks in advance. Local takeout restaurants can give away fliers with each order in exchange for giving out their fliers to your customers.
10. Contact local government and the Mayors office and request they participate in the ribbon cutting ceremony. Politicians love to make public appearances for local business and you should invite as many as possible. (more…)