Have you ever created an event or promotion that centered around one really big week… and then had the weather keep everyone indoors for that timeframe? Whether you can bank on a few snowy weekends during Q1 or hurricane season threatens some of your summer sales, every store can be affected by situations that are out of their control. And if the weather catches you off guard and throws off your sales for an entire month, you could end up playing catch up for the rest of the year.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
– Benjamin Franklin
We’ve helped our agency partners through snowy situations and unexpected store closures over the years, so we know a few tricks for getting through these tough times. Here are some ways you can get ahead of the situation so you can better weather the storm:
Utilize Flexible Medias
- Digital: This media is the ultimate quick-change vehicle. Adjust your digital dollars to a different weekend and take advantage of the inexpensive but highly targeted ads. A little goes a long way with digital.
- TV: Gauge if there is enough inventory left in the next week to push your media buy over. Otherwise, see if the station will allow you to pull those dollars out and use them for a future buy.
- Email and Social: Create a snow day email and Facebook Message. Keep your customers up to date in real time.
- Text: If you don’t have a texting tool, now is the time to invest. Send out a message keeping customer’s updated on when the sale will resume.
Keep a Rainy-Day Fund
When planning out your monthly budget, we always like to set aside a miscellaneous dollar amount. It is always accounted for in our monthly cost of advertising, but isn’t always used. This gives us more available funds to add to those flexible medias listed above without enduring more costs should the need arise.
Ride it out
There are plenty of times a big circular or direct mail investment has been made prior to any knowledge of a poor weather forecast. When we’ve already made a big investment for a few weekends of the month, sometimes it’s best to ride the storm. Those media dollars will be more valuable later in the year, and we cannot always make an immediate recovery.