At the end of the last century, Who Moved My Cheese? zoomed into popularity as a best seller. Its focus was on helping people cope with change, an idea that seems more than a little dated. Today, change is no longer the issue. It isn’t “Who moved my cheese?” but “Who’s eating it?”
Perhaps as much as any industry, success in retailing can lead to serious problems. Just ask Wal-Mart, General Motors or Ford.
In the New England furniture market an innovative and creative furniture retailer dominated the market for two decades, as a string of old-line competitors closed their doors. Then, just when the “king of the mountain” seemed invincible, new competitors sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere, each one taking a bite out of the cheese.
There’s a similar story in every market in the country. The dominant furniture retailer in New England will continue to do well because it understands marketing. Those competitors who make it will do so for the same reason.
But first things first. Unfortunately, many retailers, including those in the furniture business, don’t get the marketing message. Here are a dozen issues that deserve serious attention from retailers who want to sell more furniture.
1. Just because I think I’m a marketing maven doesn’t make me one. Too many owners and managers feel they have “a handle on marketing” and know exactly what works and what doesn’t. Because egos are on the line, they avoid a careful evaluation of how they invest their marketing dollars. That eventually spells trouble.
Experienced marketers are proactive, not reactive. If you jump from one marketing idea to the next, you fail. If you go to a conference and come back with the “latest and greatest” marketing idea, you fail.
If you can’t pass that test, then get a marketer on your team who can. Otherwise, you may be spending money, but you’re not marketing.
2. What’s your niche? Before you can do any marketing, figure out who you want as customers. If that seems obvious, it hasn’t been to U.S. automakers, who have had a tough time coming to terms with producing vehicles “designed” by consumers.
If you don’t know who makes up your constituency, your marketing dollars will go in all the wrong places. You’ll be easy prey for the next salesperson that walks through the door selling direct mail, advertising or some marketing gimmick. If you find yourself persuaded by sales reps’ pitches, you’re being played for a sucker. You’re the one they’re looking for.
If you’re making marketing decisions when you don’t have the facts, you’re wasting both valuable opportunities and decimating your budget.
3. Don’t make marketing decisions by looking over your shoulder. Although many retailers refuse to admit it, they take their marketing cues from the competition. While it’s important to understand the competition’s marketing strategy, reacting to their tactics will only put you at a disadvantage. You’ll be an also ran, never leading the way or setting the pace.
4. Understand your customers. Most retailers fail to make the investment required to know exactly who their customers are and what they want. Far too often, they make the mistake of relying on anecdotal evidence. “Our salespeople keep us filled in on who is coming to the store,” is a common excuse for not undertaking independent, objective customer research. All those “customer reaction questionnaires” are useless, since they fail to measure anything important. They are usually “rigged” (unconsciously, of course) to deliver both “complete satisfaction” and “praise.”
What you want to know is what customers want in a furniture store. Who would have said there’s a huge market segment that would buy furniture that was knocked down and had to be hauled away by the customer? Every customer survey we’ve conducted for companies has uncovered information that surprised management.
5. Write out your marketing plan. When I ask to see a company’s marketing plan, most business owners say, “We know what we want to do; we’ve just never gotten around to writing it down.” That’s the politically correct way of saying, “We don’t have a marketing plan.” If the marketing plan isn’t written down, there is no marketing plan. Any way you look at it, these people practice “ready, fire.” There is no “aim.” That’s just another way to describe “shoot from the hip marketing.” It’s expensive and rarely comes close to the target.
Without a written plan, you are in a position of reacting to media reps and others coming through your door with one “great deal” after another. In effect, these salespeople control your marketing, a perfect prescription for marketing failure.
6. Provide an adequate marketing budget. A proper marketing budget starts with a marketing plan. This is the only way you know what you are going to do, when, and what it’s going to cost.
Yes, marketing costs money and if you fail to support it with an adequate budget, you’ll starve your marketing to death. So, how much should you spend on marketing? That depends on a number of factors including what you want to accomplish. Are you in a maintenance mode? Do you want to grow market share? What’s the geographical size of your market? What media are available? Are you introducing new products?
Most importantly, will your marketing budget allow you to have a consistent presence in the marketplace?
Now, what about funding your marketing budget? A basic maintenance budget may be 3 percent or 4 percent of sales and a more aggressive budget may be at the 5 percent to 6 percent level. A hit them where it hurts budget could be at 8 percent to 10 percent.
If these percentages seem high, think seriously about your marketing objective and what it takes to reach the point where you are perceived as the furniture retailer of choice.
7. Don’t forget about your customers. Since everyone wants new customers, there’s a tendency to forget about those who have been doing business with us.
Perhaps no one does a better job with current customers than Amazon.com. They send proactive email messages saying, “You bought this author’s book two years ago. Would you like to order her latest book? Read these reviews.” Or, “Customers who bought this book also order this one.”
Use what you know about your customers.
8. Play to life cycle events. There are moments in their lives when consumers want to make the most of a new beginning, and these life cycle events are occasions for new furniture purchases. New furniture sends a message to friends and family that something exciting is happening. By doing so, it can change the focus away from the past.
The list of these watershed events offers endless opportunities –– a marriage, a new home, the arrival of children, offspring going off to college, downsizing the nest, buying a second home, a career advancement, an anniversary and moving to a retirement setting. How many times do people mark a divorce with getting rid of old furniture and “buying what I always wanted”?
Calling consumers’ attention to these life cycle events gives them an opportunity to mark them the same way they do birthdays. In other words, buying new furniture is an act of celebrating.
9. Testimonials. Customer testimonials are more important than ever today. No one wants to make a purchasing mistake and testimonials help create credibility for your business and provide comfort to a customer.
That being said, most testimonials are useless in the sense that they are far too ordinary, dull and not very well written. This does not need to happen, however.
The best way to go about obtaining helpful testimonials is to identify the issues a series of testimonials should cover and then make a list of appropriate customers, based on your knowledge of them or where they live. The third step is to contact them to see if they would be interested in doing a testimonial for your store. If they are willing, let them know that someone will call and interview them. Then write-up a brief testimonial based on the conversation and have the customer review it and make any changes. Customers are not experienced writers and they welcome having someone write the copy. As a final step, obtain a signed release before the testimonial is used.
Testimonials must not be self-serving. You want to focus on the customer’s experience. This is what makes them valuable for those who see them. In effect, testimonials can help position your store as just what customers are looking for.
10. Focus on the buying experience. What counts as much as what the customer buys is the experience of making the purchase. Recently the Walt Disney Co. announced that, as The Wall Street Journal noted, “Disney is hatching plans to take its theme park experience to the masses, rather than the other way around.” Recognizing that every market can’t support a theme park, they are looking for ways, as the company says, to “deliver an immersive experience appropriate to the size of the market.”
The Disney people are opening their creative door as wide as possible. Evidently, every possibility is being reviewed, but the focus is on what draws customers back again and again to a Disney theme park.
What are people saying –– or not saying –– when they walk out your door? Is it, “I’m so glad we came here”?
11. Fun and excitement. Why do people like to go to the Rainforest Café? The food is good but the experience is exciting. That’s the Disney secret, too. Jordan’s Furniture in the greater Boston area has capitalized on fun and excitement including its popular M.O.M. 4D shows at one of its four stores. They even stand in line to pay $6 to see it! At another store, there’s a giant trapeze for kids and adults, along with a Fuddrucker’s burger restaurant. There are IMAX 3D theaters in two other stores.
In a word, the goal is to make furniture buying an entertainment.
12. Give customers what they expect. The end is the beginning. When it comes to the bottom line, the goal is to give customers what they want. Starbucks’ success is built on doing just that. The Corporate Design Foundation summarizes it this way, “The Starbucks sensation is driven not just by the quality of its products but by the entire atmosphere surrounding the purchase of coffee: the openness of its store space…the cleanliness of the floorboards….The details of the total experience mattered…from napkins to coffee bags, storefronts to window seats, annual reports to mail order catalogs, tabletops to thermal carafes….”
t’s the same with furniture stores. From focused attention on listening to the customer to on-time delivery. Both are extremely difficult –– but essential. Giving customers what they expect is what counts.
Having the right products and the right prices are critical, but having the right customer experience makes the difference between average store sales and being the leader.
John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm. He is the author of “The New Magnet Marketing” and “Break the Rules Selling,” writes for a variety of business publications, and speaks on business, marketing and sales topics for company and association meetings. He can be contacted at (617) 328-0069; fax (617) 471-1504, j_graham@grahamcomm.com. The company’s website is www.GrahamComm.com.
