Advertising For Non Attended Store?

[rem]

ok...have a new (to me) non attended store...how do you guys advertise it? promotions? etc??......thanks for the help...

[rem]

noone???...come on....

[Kitty]

Its really hard to run a promotion without attendants. You cannot run any type of wash cards nor wdf specials nor soap give aways.

[pete f]

noone???...come on....


A NICE sign , clean looking store front and parking lot are the best bets.
Make sure the inside is clean, everything working and priced competively

[mr_soap]

I have had done raffles.
I gave away the biggest box of soap and dryer sheets
it cost $ 25.00 and you ask for names and addresses
I gave away a restaurant gift certificate $ 35.00 at a choice of local places

[David]

Flashing arrow sign. Be sure to change message every month.

[Kitty]

That just reminded me, vend pak has a really cool sign that would be kind of cool for unattended mat. I took a pic at the clean show..
I'll see if I can find it tonight...

[mike]

Your "opener" could put in a cup of soap into each washer.

(if you trust the opener, and if nobody comes in to scoop up the soap.)

[pete f]

Your "opener" could put in a cup of soap into each washer.

(if you trust the opener, and if nobody comes in to scoop up the soap.)


maybe it IS certain folk, but my new store I out in a Home D. soap dispenser. I found the thing torn apart and empty many times. I told the cleaner not to fill it, as I figured people took it out of the bathroom and used that soaps to wash their clothes, Many times I see the hand soap dispenser all apart. I took it of the wall for good last week. When I rig the bathroom for card only customers I will try a hand soap dispenser again.

[Hopp]

What worked for me was a half-price wash on Wednesday's in March (or pick your slowest day/month). It's easy to change the vend price on my washers so I lowered the price on Tuesday night and raised it back on Wednesday night. I did successively more business each week until the last Wednesday did more in sales than my best Sunday. I did a one time mailing to all households within about a three mile radius, but you could tailor the mailing to just renters if you wanted. Contact your local money mailer guy and they can customize it any way you want. I also bought a big banner to hang over the door to advertise the same. Luckily my store faces a busy street. Obviously word got out because sales grew throughout the month. You could also do a free dry one day of the week, but I'm strongly opposed to giving anything away for free.

[amartlock]

Hopp,

That's a very interesting idea. As you mentioned, your biz increased on the "special" day throughout the month of the promotion. Do you have an idea as to the lasting effect, ie, what percentage did your biz increase after the promotional month? Any idea as to the number/percentage of new customers brought in by the promotion that you were able to retain?

Also, how much was the mailer?

Finally, why did you choose March? It seems that you would have wanted to choose a slower month in the summer.

I appreciate hearing more details on this promotion.

[jdjim]

maybe it IS certain folk, but my new store I out in a Home D. soap dispenser. I found the thing torn apart and empty many times. I told the cleaner not to fill it, as I figured people took it out of the bathroom and used that soaps to wash their clothes, Many times I see the hand soap dispenser all apart. I took it of the wall for good last week. When I rig the bathroom for card only customers I will try a hand soap dispenser again.

I also "had" a pump type dispenser in my unattended laundry.No one tried to remove it from the wall but kids loved to pump it and watch the soap build up on the sink.
So i moved it farther up the wall to fix the problem.
The kids just carried a chair into the bathroom and climbed on the sink to get to it.
Much of the time this was while their parents watched and smiled.

What can you do???

[Hopp]

We chose to do it as part of a "Spring cleaning" promotion. I must admit I didn't have particularly high expectations and was pleasantly surprised at how successful it was. I thought about making it a permanent special, but decided against it. We've only owned the mat just over a year so we don't have a good baseline to compare against, but I can say that this summer was better than last. Some of that may have been due to the weather as last year was unusually hot and I don't have ac in the store. The cost for the ad was around $800 and that included the banner over the store and a money mailer insert to 40,000 homes in areas around our mat that we wanted to target.