How to Prepare a Small Shop for Promotion

Start preparing for promotion by focusing on a specific customer group: their tasks, challenges and desired outcomes. Explain how the shop’s products or services help address these challenges. Choose customer acquisition channels based on your audience, margin structure and stage of business development.

Check your shop’s information and add planned activities to a calendar. Compare costs with results to determine which activities to continue and which to scale back.

Describe the needs of a specific customer group

For the customer group you have chosen, identify:

• what task they want to accomplish;
• what challenges they face;
• what outcome they expect.

Use this as the basis for your shop’s offer: explain how your products or services make the customer’s challenges easier to overcome.

Choose channels based on your shop’s circumstances

There is no universally best customer acquisition channel. The choice depends on your target audience, margin structure and stage of business development.

For an online shop, you can consider search engine optimization, paid advertising, email campaigns and social media posts. Choose among these options based on where your customers actually spend their time.

Check your contact details, website and opening hours

In your shop’s local listing, check the phone number, email address, website link and opening hours. Include holiday or seasonal hours if they differ from your regular schedule.

Correct any inaccuracies. Complete and accurate business information increases the likelihood of your shop appearing in local search results.

Create a promotion calendar

For each planned campaign, add the following to your calendar:

• campaign name;
• promotion channels;
• person responsible;
• start and end dates;
• status;
• the goals the campaign is linked to.

Compare costs with results

Assess the relationship between promotion costs and the results achieved. This comparison helps you increase investment in effective activities and reduce spending on ineffective ones.

Ask customers where they heard about the promotion

In the customer survey in Torgsoft, you can ask shoppers where they heard about the shop’s promotion.

You can count the responses later. The process is described in the official guide to setting up and using the customer survey in Torgsoft.