FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Tom Ellis
Sept.
20, 2000
Ellis Communications, L.L.C.
Phone (623) 780-4558
E-Mail dellis@syspac.com
The holidays are fast approaching, and now is the time for nutritional
retailers to start thinking about gift giving.
While they’re at it, they also need to think about gift giving as a
marketing tool.
“Perhaps you do gifting to thank people for
being your customers and supporting you over the year,” says Martin R.
Baird, president of Nutritionalmarketing, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based full-service
marketing management firm that serves the nutritional industry.
“Maybe you’re just celebrating the season.
But think about this – gifting could be a marketing effort, a great
way to grow your business.”
When it comes to gifting, professionals in
the nutritional industry need to give serious thought to what they’re
giving, according to Baird. They
should want their gift to stand out and get noticed, he notes, adding that it
should tell the recipient about the retailer and their store.
“We use a company that makes custom gifts for us,” Baird says.
“We talk with them about 45 days before we want the gifts to go out,
and we tell them what we want to accomplish.
They then find a way to help us reach our goal.
“Each year when we do this,
we get great response from all the people who received our gifts.
Some people have even told us they didn’t want to open them because
they looked so nice.”
Baird suggests finding a gift
company that will allow the retailer to put custom labels on the items in the
gift. This keeps your message in
front of your customers and prospects for a long time, he says.
“For example, if we do a gift
that has organic fruit and different kinds of coffee in it, we know the fruit
will be eaten very quickly,” Baird says.
“We also know the coffee may last a little longer.
So we put our own custom message on the coffee.
By doing this, we not only have the impact of giving the gift, we also
get name recognition over time.”
If the gift goes to an office,
people who stop in to sample the treats are more likely to ask about you if
the gift has your store name and information on it, Baird says, adding that
this is a great way to generate new referrals.
Also consider sending gifts at
Thanksgiving rather than in December, Baird says.
“By doing this, your message gets noticed, and you have much less clutter to
cut through,” Baird says. “We
have had clients do it, and they get more calls than they ever received doing
gifts in December. Thinking about
your gifting earlier can pay great dividends.”
Effective gifting requires time and thought,
Baird says.
“Anyone can run into the mall and get a cheese pack for clients,”
Baird says. “The gifts that get
noticed are those that are special. And
they’re special because you devoted time and effort
to make them so. Hallmark says,
‘When you care enough to send the very best.’
My version of that is, ‘When you think enough to make it the very
best.’”
Nutritionalmarketing provides a variety of services to nutritional retailers
to help them improve their marketing methods and increase revenues, including
seminars and conference speaking engagements on such topics as referrals,
marketing, goal setting and customer service.
Nutritionalmarketing.com is the premiere Internet-based source for free
marketing advice, information and tools for self-driven, success-oriented
nutritional retailers who are demanding information that helps them market
their business, meet the needs of their customers and increase sales.
It offers such services as a free weekly electronic newsletter, free
reports on how to conduct different kinds of marketing and evaluation of
retailers’ marketing materials that is provided at no charge when the
critique is posted online for all nutritional professionals to read.
Nutritionalmarketing.com also offers an electronic forum where
retailers can learn from each other by discussing common problems, sharing
ideas and gaining new insights from their peers.
