Beef Up Promotions with Wardrobe Incentives

Selected a distinctive name for your sales promotion? Ordered up the balloons or other special decorations? Laid in enough merchandise—both the high value items you’ll discount and the regularly priced merchandise you’ll surround them with? Advertised the dates for your sales promotion? Included clear instructions in those ads that the customers need to come in dressed like cows?
     Huh? Dressed like cows? That’s what Chick-fil-A restaurants are ordering for “Cow Appreciation Day,” to be celebrated July 8. Come fully dressed as a cow and you get a meal for free. To build interest in the promotion, the event website features a downloadable cow costume kit, a photo contest, and “Running of the Cows” events.
     RestaurantNews.com credits past “Cow Appreciation Day” promotions and an associated “Eat Mor Chikin” marketing campaign with giving sales a lasting boost.
     What makes it work so well, and how can you best use wardrobe incentives?

• The silly look. If your wardrobe requirements are outlandish, you’ll draw the sort of media attention that we call free publicity.
• The naughtiness. More common than the cow look are promotions giving incentives to shoppers for coming in dressed in their pajamas. People associate wearing pajamas with relaxing their inhibitions. Actually, almost any costume can work. Think about adult Halloween parties! And when consumers relax their inhibitions in your store, they buy more.
• The opportunity to express store loyalty. Contented customers will actually pay for T-shirts bearing the name of your store. Contented Chick-fil-A customers dressed like cows are witnessing to each other and those taking photos their faith in the retailer.
• The celebration. E-commerce retailers could have fans post photos or videos of themselves in costume in order to earn a price discount. Those are fine techniques. However, it’s certainly more fun to wear your crazy costume to a store where you can bask in the reactions of others to you and express your reactions to the others there.
• Compliance. This one gets deeper into consumer psychology. When the customer agrees to dress up, they are changing their behavior to follow the directions of the retailer. This is a type of foot-in-the-door technique, in which the customer becomes more willing to follow subsequent directions the retailer will give. Such as the counterperson or the store signage steering the Chick-fil-A customer in the direction of buying an extra-cost dessert treat or coming back again soon for a regular-cost meal.

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Tie In Promotions to What Folks Care About
Make the Sale a Slice at a Time