McCurry Associates Marketing Idea Exchange
- First Issue
ABOUT THE LIST
Newsletter 1 - Inaugural Issue
This first email discusses various ideas around contests
and customer picture displays for your retail showroom. These ideas may be
adopted for use in commercial labs. A variety of ideas for different types of
labs will be explored in the upcoming weeks. Please Enjoy, Consider and Profit
from these ideas.
All The Best,
Bill
Idea #1 - From Jim Schwarzbach, Jim’s Photo, El Paso Texas - (915) 594-9393
To increase frame sales, remove the face sheets that
come in frames and replace them with real photographs. Ask your customers if
you can use their great photos, pay them by giving them a free enlargement.
Be sure to remove the enlargements when you sell a frame
for reuse in your next shipment.
Many customers will tell their friends that their photo
is on display at your lab, what great advertising. Customers will look around
your store at all the frames to find their photo, sometimes buying a frame in
the process.
It's a cheap, effective, multi pronged promotion that
gets customers happy/proud that their photo was chosen. They tell their
friends, which is word of mouth advertising - the best kind of advertising
that money can never buy.
Suggestion - One employee must be in charge of keeping
the frames filled with real photos. That employee needs to go through the
finishing bins every Thursday to find new photos. Make a sticker to place on
the outside of the envelope to alert counter staff that a photo inside has
been honored.
DON'T LET TWO OR MORE PEOPLE BE IN CHARGE OF THE
PROGRAM, and for heavens sake don't put yourself in charge of it. It's work.
One last tip - when a frame is sold, there has to be a dedicated place in your
lab where the removed photos are to be placed for reuse.
Idea #2 – From Mike Woodland, Dan’s Camera City, Allentown, PA (610)
434-2313
We run our photo contests with themes. Our current theme
is "Things That Grow". We have pictures of kids, animals, plants,
and some critters we can’t identify. The winners are determined by a vote of
the customers. The contestants ask their friends to come in and vote for them
so that drives store traffic.
The winner gets first pick of all the prizes. Many of the prizes are things we
get with help from manufacturers. There are times the third place winner gets
a point and shoot camera because the first place winner already has a camera
and wanted a tripod while the second place winner took a flash. This way
everyone is a winner.
Idea #3 – From the "Worst Idea" file – name withheld
One of the worst things we ever did was a joint venture
for a photo contest when we didn’t run the contest ourselves. We learned
that we shouldn’t partner with someone unless both parties are very clear as
to exactly what each party will do and what each party expects out of the
deal. Then make sure everyone lives up to their part of the deal.
Newsletter 2
LEGAL MUMBO JUMBO OUR COUNSEL WANTS YOU TO READ
Your continued receipt of this Marketing Idea Exchange will indicate you agree
to the following:
1. Good taste, common decency and truth are required at all times and necessary
for the continuation of this list.
2. Each list participant is expected to send in at least two marketing ideas
each year. They can be your best ideas, worst ideas or just ideas you're
thinking of trying.
3. To guarantee sanctity of email addresses, communiqués will go through
McCurry Associates email. You agree to not share the email addresses of people
on this list with anyone and further agree to not send emails unrelated to
marketing in the imaging industry. No Spamming allowed.
4. You agree that business is an art, not a science and what works for one
organization may or may not work for another. You therefore agree to hold
harmless and release from all liability all parties (including without
limitation McCurry Associates) who are associated or participating with this
list for any and all causes of action.
5. This list is operated by McCurry Associates and is not endorsed nor
sanctioned by any organization, group or entity other than McCurry Associates.
Specifically it is not part of PMA, PRO, DIMA, IPI or any other trade
association or industry group or Photo/Image News Network. McCurry Associates is
the sole arbitrator of all issues regarding the operation of this list and may
cancel it without notice. All submissions become the property of McCurry
Associates and may be reproduced in any form at McCurry Associates' sole
discretion. Your suggestions to improve this list are heartily welcomed.
6. All content is copyright by McCurry Associates and used here by permission
ABOUT THE LIST: This is a "work in
progress" and is designed to be responsive to the list subscribers. When
this list was being contemplated, many of you asked that we not show email
addresses where they might get picked up by Spammers, thus there is no public
master list of subscribers. Additionally, some of you felt the ability for
anyone to respond to the group as a whole led to an avalanche of emails that
jammed your email systems. Thus, space allowing, we will attach to the next
newsletter any comments that are intended for broad distribution. Please let us
know if these policies make sense for you.
We look forward to hearing from you. When you send in your
submissions, questions or comments please identify yourself and let us know if
you want your name withheld when your material is published.
| 
