Some Simple Tips For Planning for Holiday Promotions

The month of September should be one of the most productive months for any one in the laundry business. The kids are back in school and people have begun to wear heavier clothing, so there is more to launder. Business typically is on the upswing. The weather is cooler and all of us feel more energetic when it comes to doing projects at the -laundry. It’s also a really good time to plan for what we are going to do before the year ends. It’s the best time of year to plan ahead and set up a schedule for our promotional activity for the rest of the year. Holidays and special events make good anchor points to schedule a laundry promotion and/or sale. Depending on your neighborhood and ethnic mix of customers, virtually every religion has fall and winter celebrations that you can work into your plan. On top of that it is football season. By far the biggest, and the ones that will affect more people, are Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. These are -festive and have lots of decorations that are economical to purchase, and are well enough constructed to save and reuse each year. In addition to the decorations, one can come up with a variety of special prices and other customer benefits to increase a laundry’s business. A number of operators have regular annual promotions centered specifically around all three of these holidays. For an example, about the first of October start decorating for Halloween with ghosts, goblins and pumpkins on the laundry walls. You‘ll find these decorations at really low prices at card shops and markets. Have the attendants wear costumes too. Put out candy for the kids. Maybe you can invite all of your customers to take part in a costume contest and then offer some prizes. It can be great fun and lead you right up to Halloween night, which has become a big celebration. Couple the decor and contests with special deals, like a “Lets get ready for fall” promotion on blankets and comforters. Bringing in a little extra business never hurt. And it helps you to pay for the small cost for doing the promotion in the first place. Thanksgiving is the next holiday you can target for a promotion. As with Halloween, there are all kinds of wall hangings you can find at the store. They too are cheap and can be saved for use the following year. Christmas and New Years Eve can be the themes for the final promotions of the year. It’s the season when we all are supposed to have good feelings towards our neighbors. Why not tell them how much they are appreciated by offering them something special. And what is more special than a really good deal? For some reason, Free Dry has been one of the easiest promotions offered by laundries. It’s so easy, and yet it can be suicidal because of the high cost for natural gas. But as a very limited promotion, it works very well. One laundry operator uses the free dry, for one week of the year, as a thank you to all of his regular customers for their business during the year. This takes place between Christmas and New Years Eve. In the final analysis it costs him virtually nothing, but it brings in people by the ton. Because the amount of business increases during the week, it brought in enough extra washer income to cover his increase in the cost for natural gas. It became his best week of income for the entire year. He decorates his business throughout the entire month of December, using wall decorations showing Santa and Christmas scenes. He also does something else. He tells nearby competitors about it in advance to keep them from thinking this is a new regular policy so they don’t panic and go Free Dry too.