Media Solutions Media Solutions

Promoting Fresh Turkeys, Natural Turkeys, “Turkey Dinners to Go” and Spiral Cut Hams This November For Thanksgiving

As you know, selling “commodity birds” at Thanksgiving is an important ingredient to having a successful 4th quarter but selling only “commodity birds” isn’t in any of our plans.

We need the sales and incremental margins from complimentary items during Thanksgiving. Although most shoppers have their very thorough shopping list of items needed for Thanksgiving dinner, we all need to find ways to leverage more impulse items to accompany the “demand” items for Thanksgiving.

All stores have the items necessary for incremental Thanksgiving sales but we need to expose more shoppers to the easy availability of these items

This week’s Idea of the Week is intended to place some reminders for us to create some exposure to some obvious opportunities for incremental sales.

Loyalty Programs To Earn A Free Turkey Prior to Thanksgiving

Roughly 1/3rd of our customers have a loyalty based program in their stores today and many of they offer either discounted turkey prices or even free turkeys with purchase requirements during the month of November.

Pierce’s Markets in Wisconsin offer a program encouraging customers to save their loyalty points for discounted Thanksgiving turkeys.  Their offer is prominently promoted on the home pages of their store websites during October and November.

As far as your weekly Facebook postings, you’ll have plenty of Thanksgiving related posts you can use on Social Octane.  Make sure you have at least one post per week relating to Thanksgiving recipes, meal planning ideas and tips.  You’ll see all the Thanksgiving related Facebook content you can choose from the last week of October on your Social Octane site.

   

Send Out An Special Deal-ivery eBlast to Promote Fresh Turkeys

On Sunday, November 24th or Monday, November 25th consider sending out a Special Deal-ivery eBlast offer for Fresh Turkeys – $5 off with a $50 purchase.  For those who haven’t filled their freezers with commodity turkeys the previous week there is very, very little “downside” to promoting fresh turkeys a few days prior to Thanksgiving.

Staying “under the radar”

Many retailers are especially concerned about having a price on Thanksgiving turkeys that is clearly higher than competitors.  Typically this is in printed insert ads where all of their competitors are advertising as well.

However, with a Special Deal-ivery blast, your competitors will not know about your Fresh Turkey offer and if or  when they do find out, they have no time to respond to your offer.

 

Promote Higher Margin Hams in eBlasts

Most shoppers are in the market for turkeys and beef rib roast for Thanksgiving but there is also an opportunity for incremental sales with premium hams, including spiral sliced hams.

As in the example above with fresh turkeys you can send out a Special Deal-ivery eBlast four days before Thanksgiving and again…… there is no “downside” to communicating this special offer (with $50 purchase) to your customers.

Remember, the MSC Customer Service Representatives can help you with customized Special Deal-ivery eBlast customization so you can promote the item you want to use to stimulate any additional, incremental sales.

 

Promote Your “Thanksgiving Dinner In A Box” Program

Many of our customers have promoted their “Thanksgiving In A Box” program for incremental sales and one of the biggest obstacles is communicating the program offering to their customers.

The easiest way to promote the program is with 22″ x 28″ posters place in your store lobby area or near the deli department.  Bag-stuffer sheets featuring the program should be distributed at check stands beginning November 1st.

For Stores With the MSC Digital Signage Program

There are dozens of Thanksgiving related animations already in your digital signage library.  You’re paying $10 a week for the unlimited use of items in the digital signage library so begin creating new playlists with holiday party trays, turkeys, pumpkin pies, gift cards, beef roasts, hams and other Thanksgiving related items for incremental sales.

Facebook Is A Great Way To Place Thanksgiving Reminders

The first thing your customers see on your Facebook site is your banner photo at the top of your FaceBook page.  During the month of November you should change your Facebook banner photo once a week.

If you’re on the MSC Social Octane Program you have unlimited use of the Facebook banner photos and there are plenty to choose from — so change the banner photos each week to promote the holiday on your Facebook site.

---

Coming Soon:

New Options for Starting Up Digital Signage in Your Stores

So you ran out to the Apple Store a year ago to buy one of the new iPhone 5s phones only to find out a year later that you really want the iPhone 6 or the Samsung Galaxy 5 or Note 4?

If you’re like me, you buy technology items and a short time later something better, faster and even cheaper comes along but you’ve already invested in technology that you thought would work just fine for at least 2 or 3 years.

We’ve heard some feedback from retailers who want to deploy digital signage in their stores now but are wondering if digital media player technology will change soon and like the iPhone 5s, the amazing technology of today is eclipsed by even newer technology tomorrow.

Some of the mobile phone companies have introduced programs where you pay each month for the use of the new phones but you have the option to “trade up” next year if you want newer technology.

We’re in conversation with our partner wholesalers to see if there is interest in a new program that would allow retailers to use the newest technology today and have options to “move up” to more advanced technology if/when something more attractive comes along next year.   This would allow MSC retailers to pay a weekly fee for digital media players, software and bandwidth but enable them to “trade up” if they wish after the first year.

Standby for updates the coming months for even more choices to keep you at the leading edge of technology!