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20 Dec

December Issue Feature: Strategy & Tactics - End of Year Sales Tactics

12-20-2017, Mobile Electronics -- No matter the season, strategy and attention to detail is essential in planning and goal setting. Pablo Picasso—born in 1881—is well-known for his paintings, but he was also a stage designer, poet, playwright, and sculptor. Picasso once said, “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”

A well thought-out plan, regardless of life position, is necessary to ensure success. In the 12-volt industry, passion and perseverance combine to form an unstoppable determination to succeed. In each season, strategic promotions are laid out to best attract new customers and bring back previous clients. End-of-year sales tactics can help make up for any losses in the previous year.

Sound Warehouse in Salt Lake City, Utah has three store locations and has been open for 38 years. Owner Dean Magnesen has tried many different avenues in marketing and advertising. “Luckily, our plan is based on a lot of previous years, so we kind of look at our sales volume from year to year that each campaign brings us,” Magnesen said. “If it doesn’t bring us enough business or lets us down, then we switch campaigns.”

Planned in Advance, Tweaked Along the Way

Extreme Audio is a two-store franchise with locations in Mechanicsville, Va. and Midlothian, where fall and winter sales can depend greatly on the weather. In the beginning of November, the company starts promoting for the holiday season, according to owner Mike Bartells. “We aren’t in a cold climate, so it can greatly depend on the weather to some extent. It’s been colder for a couple days, it’ll be 80 tomorrow,” Bartells said, noting how the unusual weather can affect sales of remote starts. “We can market remote starts as much as we want, but until someone goes out and gets into their car in the cold, it’s not something they think about. No matter how we try to do early sales, unless it’s something dramatic like Groupon, you don’t get the results until the weather breaks.”

For Sound Warehouse, advertising campaigns are planned out for an entire year. Everything is carefully organized. “We do what one radio station manager told me we should do: relentless advertising,” Magnesen said. On the evening of the 18th, a Black Friday ad campaign begins. On the 22nd, the business has a three-day sale, followed by an “everyone deserves a second chance” sale with Black Friday deals on the 27th of the month. “Two weeks for Black Friday,” Magnesen said, adding that by December fourth, the business is focused on leveraging Christmas sales. From November into December, advertising is aired on five or six local radio stations. “We will be on cable TV with multiple channels, alternative newspapers, and digital. It’s hard to say what works best. We get customers coming in and saying they saw it on our website, on our e-blast—I almost think it’s kind of split between digital, radio, cable and print.” Magnesen hypothesizes that this split is about 25 percent in each category. “We are very fortunate we have been in the market so long and in radio.” The way in which Sound Warehouse utilizes radio advertising is very efficient, and they are in a good geographic area for radio, according to Magnesen.

The business has found what works and what doesn’t, and in the course of a year, Sound Warehouse will run as many as 15 different advertising campaigns. “Some will be seasonal,” Magnesen said, referencing the “Max Your Tax” promotions set up by MESA. “And some we just pick a good time to do them.”

Although plans are made carefully for each part of the year, the campaigns are always tweaked along the way for effectiveness. “If the numbers are disappointing, we change it,” Magnesen said. “We will sit down somewhere in December and lay out next year. I will know our ad campaign for all of next year. We do it campaign by campaign. Sometimes we have one in a month or three in a 30 day period. It’s a lot of work, but once we’ve done it a lot, you can kind of repeat it a little bit."

Read the rest of the story HERE.

Last modified on Friday, 18 May 2018 06:49
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