Sales are up 45%

I couldn't believe my ears.

The gentleman sitting across the table from me said two things during our meeting that just brought a smile to my inner-marketing-geek.

#1
"Fifteen people showed up for our workshop this weekend, we were delighted. And, the customers stayed in the store and actually shopped afterwards." I'll interpret this for you. Our client held a workshop in their store, fifteen customers showed up and stayed in their store for more than an hour!

#2
In response to my weekly question about sales and traffic, he responded that sales were up "45% compared to last year."


Have we changed this client's marketing strategy - yep. Can we attribute this change for the increase in participation and sales - some, but not completely.

Why? Because our client is pretty darn smart. Here's the laundry list of things we have done that have brought us to this place:

- researched his customer and determined why they buy from him
- changed the look, format and tone of his advertising to appeal to the target that is most likely to buy from him
- placed his media on channels and in formats that his target market is most likely to read and watch
- created events for his target market to activate their experience with his store and his staff
- enhanced the point of purchase materials in his entire store to make more information available to potential customers
- implemented an aggressive training program to increase the knowledge and sales skills of his sales people

The end result is that our client is spending less money on advertising and generating more sales by targeting his customer, communicating value to them and enhancing his operational sales efforts to create more opportunities for sales to occur.


PS - in case you are wondering, sales were not that bad last year, we've been able to raise the baseline.