In the wake
of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Washington, D.C., and
Pennsylvania, it’s time for nutritional retailers to come forward and do
what they do best - help their customers.
That’s the
message from Martin R. Baird, president of Phoenix, Ariz.-based Nutritional
Marketing.
“As nutritional
experts, you are needed now more than ever to help people make informed and
educated decisions,” Baird says. “During horrific situations, people are
frightened and confused. You need to be the voice of reason.”
Baird says there are a number of things retailers can
do.
“Your customers
are feeling considerable stress as a result of the terrorist attacks and their
effect on the country’s economy,” Baird says. “People are going to have
serious health issues from all that has happened. They will need an informed
and educated resource that they can go to and get good information. You should
be that resource.”
Seventy
percent of people surveyed in a recent CNN poll said they were depressed,
Baird notes. Those people need a nutritional resource to help them deal with
their depression, he says.
“If I were a
retailer who liked doing seminars, I would push very hard to have a number of
them over a period of a few weeks,” Baird says. “I would even consider
having them daily and allowing people to come back as often as they want.
“These seminars
are an educational tool that you can use to help people move forward. You can
use it as a venue to share ideas and information about stress, depression and
other feelings and issues that your customers are dealing with. You can have
these seminars at your store, local libraries, churches or schools.”
Retailers
should crank up their marketing, Baird says. Getting your marketing message
out is more important than ever, he says. And Baird points out that it’s
also important that you tell your customers and prospects that you may not
have all the answers to their questions but that you will always work hard to
find them.
“This a great time to share with your customers.”
Baird says “This is also a great time to build some very important trust.”
Nutritional
Marketing 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.
