November 20, 2014

Ms. Shara Konechney, Piper store owner5604 Slide Road, Suite 700Lubbock, Texas, 79414

Hello Shara,

Our team would like to thank you for the opportunity to work with you and Daisy to develop this recommendation report for your store, Piper.

Over this past month, our team has worked closely with Daisy to find the main problem Piper faces and develop possible solutions to help remedy this issue. In our discussions with Daisy, our team found that the main problem that Piper faces is attracting college-aged customers, specifically the mostly untapped market of Texas Tech students.

In this recommendation report, we have provided possible cost-effective marketing strategies and promotional ideas that are easy to implement. We hope these strategies will help to increase Piper’s client base and raise awareness for the store.

Again, our team thanks you for letting us present this recommendation report and we wish you and Piper luck on all your future endeavors.

Best Regards,

Emily Gillen, Easton Wollney, Rey Juarez, and Mario Perez

Recommendation Report

Piper Marketing StrategiesEMILY GILLEN, EASTON WOLLNEY, MARIO PEREZ, & REY JUAREZ

November 20, 2014

Executive Summary

Our team has created this recommendation report, along with cooperation and assistance of Daisy, to help develop possible marketing and promotional strategies for Piper.

In this report, you will find the two main types of marketing strategies we have proposed, physical and in-store promotions and social media promotions. In each of these major sections we give specific recommendations.

In the physical and in-store promotions section, we suggest creating an on campus presence through a SUB table that could help raise awareness for Piper. Also, a customer loyalty rewards program that could give an incentive for current customers and new customers.

In the social media and online promotions section, we give suggestions for all the major social media sites including: twitter, Intagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and the Piper website. Social media promotions are great for reaching hundreds and maybe thousands of people at a time and are inexpensive to use.

With our recommendations, we hope that we can help Piper improve the number of its college-aged customers from Texas Tech and raise awareness for the store.

Physical and In-Store Promotions

Student Union Building (SUB) Promotional Event Table

Our team recommends that you set up a promotional table in the free speech area (Figure 1). This area is located right in front of the SUB. Hundreds of students go to the SUB before, after, and between classes to eat, study, or hang out with their peers. Because the SUB and free speech area is such a highly populated area, this would be a prime location on campus to reach a large number of potential college customers.

Figure 1: Texas Tech University “Free Speech Area”

Unfortunately, Piper does not have the advantage of being near campus like TC Ellis1. TC Ellis is a similar type of clothing boutique that is located on Broadway, right across from campus. There is also a lot of student housing in this general area, which benefits them greatly. Since Piper does not benefit from the high amount of student traffic and potential customers like TC Ellis, our team has come up with this solution to combat this competition.

The advantage from hosting this event in the free speech area is that it is free to put on. To reserve a table for the free speech area is a service available to all Texas Tech students. Since some of your employees are Tech students, this service is available to them.

In order to reserve a table, one of your employees would have to submit a request form the Student Union and Activities website. Below we have provided the website where this form is located.

http://www.depts.ttu.edu/sub/universitygrounds/SPolicy.php

This promotional booth is where you could have your employees model the clothes from your store as they run the SUB table. This would help potential client see 1 TC Elli’s website link: http://www.shoptcellis.com

exactly the type of clothing your store offers. Our team’s first meeting was with you and Daisy on October 24, 2014. At this meeting we were shown a flyer/coupon (Figure 2) your store uses for clients who purchase $50 or more in merchandise. We think that your employees at the SUB table could hand out this flyers/coupons to promote your store. By using these, you give potential clients a reason to visit your boutique when they might have not before.

Figure 2: Front of Piper coupon/flyer

Customer Loyalty Rewards Program

A second recommendation we think can help increase revenue and client base for Piper to start a loyalty card program. We make this recommend after researching how other companies have benefitted in number of customers and profits from using a rewards program.

For example, according to an article by Entrepreneur Magazine titled “Why Small Businesses Should Be Utilizing Customer-Loyalty Programs” contends, “By providing loyalty programs for current customers, small-business owners are not only saying thank you but are also motivating them to continue to be their brand ambassadors. They can easily spread the word about a business to their professional, personal and social networks, helping small-business owners increase their customer base even more”2.  

2 Entrepreneur Magazine article link: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233362

This research is why our team believes a loyalty card program could greatly benefit your business.

Our team presented our preliminary findings to Daisy in our team’s second meeting with her on November 6, 2014. She then told our team that this loyalty program is a great idea to help store growth. However, Daisy was cautious about all the different types of programs offered and asked our team if we could do further research to find an appealing program that would be easy to implement and maintain.

With the parameters set by Daisy for a possible rewards program, we continued our research. We then found an article by a professor at Penn State University titled, “Using Loyalty Programs to Attract Consumers to Value-Added Businesses”3. In the article, the author gives an example of a common simplistic rewards program we think would best fit Daisy’s request.

This simple rewards program is where clients receive a “punch card” like the example shown in figure 3. This program would reward customers with coupons, discounts, or special offers based on the dollar value of merchandise they purchase.

Figure 3: Example of store loyalty punch card

Social Media and Online Promotions

Since social media is a large part of today’s culture, we highly recommend that you use these sites to your advantage. By updating your store’s social media on a more

3 Penn State University article link: http://extension.psu.edu/business/farm/marketing/promoting-and-marketing-your-business/UsingLoyaltyProgramstoAttract.pdf

regular basis you can increase store’s recognition and grow your client base. The social media sites can we will focus on in this section are the sites that Daisy had mentioned in our first meeting with her. These sites include: Twitter, Instagram. Facebook, Snapchat, and the Piper website. Twitter

Twitter is on the rise and not many companies take full advantage of it. Piper could hold online giveaways through twitter. The way it could work is you could give away a certain item to someone who retweets the promotion. This is great for reaching mass numbers of college students. Most of people’s Twitter followers are the same age as them. One retweet could reach hundreds or thousands of people at once. Then as those followers retweet your original tweet, it will reach even more people. You could be giving away something as simple as earrings. People will jump on the opportunity for free stuff.

Also, we recommend that if you use Twitter, you emphasize your store location. Once again, your store does not have the luxury of being right across from campus. So having a retweet promotion that focuses on your location more than the giveaway itself is a good idea. Most students know where the mall is, but they may not know your store is right across the street from the mall.

Instagram Instagram is a great social media tool that Piper could take advantage of. Your store already has an Instagram account. You could gain more followers by tweeting your Instagram account name and posting the account name on Facebook. Similar giveaways like the ones you could host on twitter are possible on Instagram. However, they are a little trickier. People will have to screenshot, and then repost the picture in order to achieve the same idea as the twitter giveaway. We recommend using Instagram as a way to inform customers of new merchandise when it comes into the store. You could post a picture of the new clothing items to encourage customers to make a return visit to Piper. Instagram could also used to inform your customers of in store or online sales.

Facebook

A strong Facebook presence could attract new clients for Piper. You could give consumers incentives to like your page. For example, “Like our page and enter in a chance to win a $25 gift card!” The consumer’s friends on Facebook may then see that they liked Piper and go check out your page. If they like what they see, they will hopefully visit the store. This is a great way to lure customers in.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a little trickier because you can only view an image for up to 10 seconds. You are also limited on the amount of text you can write to go along with the image. This is why we recommend posting brief pictures of videos of new merchandise when it comes in. This way potential customers can see new merchandise quickly and easily. This may be easier for some college students than going to check the website every so often.

Piper Website and Blog

In addition to the social media promotions, we recommend you keep your store website as updated as possible. An example of this is updating the online inventory when new merchandise comes in and then updating the inventory when purchases are made. Keeping the online inventory up to date could prevent customers ordering merchandise online that you don’t actually have anymore.

We noticed that, on your store website, you have a link to a store blog. However, when we clicked on it, we saw it was blank. We recommend that you put pictures into the blog. You could have pictures of the photo shoots where your clothes are being modeled, winners of in store promotions, or videos of customers giving short testimonies recommending Piper to others.