Home Furnishings Industry Conference Launches Sweepstakes

The Western Home Furnishings Assn. and National Home Furnishings Assn. have launched a sweepstakes for paid travel to the 2012 Home Furnishings Industry Conference.

The contest takes place on Facebook and in the High Point Market Retailer Resource Center for an all expenses paid trip to the HFIC in Palm Springs,
Calif. Participants can enter a business card into a drawing in the Retailer Resource Center during market week, or they can visit the HFIC Facebook
Page to enter online. The contest will run for 10 days, Oct, 21-31, 2011, with a winner being announced on Nov. 1.

WHFA and NHFA have teamed up with R&A Marketing, a Columbus, Ohio, marketing and advertising agency focused in furniture marketing,to help bring this promotion onto Facebook. R&A has developed numerous Facebook applications that allow retailers and businesses to bring interactive promotions to their Facebook page. One out of every eight minutes is spent on Facebook by its 750 million-plus active users, creating a powerful tool for businesses to utilize and make more money. “Social media, and especially Facebook, has become such a vital part of successful marketing programs, that it just made sense to use the power of Facebook for the HFIC contest,” said Kevin Doran, vice president of R&A Marketing.

With a theme of California Dreamin’–Gaining the Edge, the 2012 Home Furnishings Industry Conference will show attendees how to gain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace while following their dreams to build a better future for their business and the industry. Education will be created to meet the needs of all attendees; retailers, manufacturers and services providers. The two-and-a-half day event features more than 24 educational sessions, a product showcase offering exclusive pricing from top industry manufacturers and service providers, a fun filled golf tournament and networking opportunities throughout.

To enter, visit the HFIC Facebook Page and click on the sweepstakes tab on the far left side. All you need to enter is your name and e-mail address. Business-card entries also will be accepted in the Retailer Resource Center during High Point Furniture Market.

During High Point Market, R&A Marketing and WHFA teams also will be asking retailers questions, “What’s your California Dream?” and “How do you gain the edge?”. Responses will then be posted to the HFIC Facebook page.

For more information on the Home Furnishings Industry Conference, e-mail Cindi Williams, or call 916.784.7677.

1. Use a Landing Tab to Offer a Compelling Reason for People to “like” you.

When first-time visitors go to your fan page, they will initially see your Wall. That is unless you create a landing tab with one of your Facebook promotional apps.

Make your Sweepstakes, Share and Save or Fan Offer app your landing tab and use it to offer potential fans an incentive or discount. Show them why they should “like” your page and let them know what’s in it for them.

2. Share Pictures.

A picture is worth a thousand words. In fact, 750 million Facebook users share their pictures with their friends on a daily basis. So why shouldn’t you?

Share your pictures of customers, products, staff plus more and watch your fans comment on your store’s unique flair. Plus, when you sign up for a Facebook Site, we’ll share your Website’s entire product catalog full of rich pictures with 750 million people just waiting to “like” your page.

3. Make and Share Videos.

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a video is worth 10,000. Upload your 30 and 60 second TV spots or even create your own, sharing insights and interviews. Mobile phones make it easy to make videos showing you having fun with staff, customers and partners.

Be sure to upload the videos through Facebook, so that when people share the videos, their friends can “like” your page from the top left corner of the video.

4. Give away Value.

People respond well to quality information and freebies. Use the Sweepstakes, Fan Offer or Share and Save app to offer your fans plenty of value. Plus, it’s simple to provide information by sharing links to articles, podcasts, white papers, and webinars.

Potential customers will remember you and react positively to the expertise and value you can provide. You’ll become their “go-to source” for help and advice.

5. Respond to Negative Comments.

There’s a temptation to delete negative remarks or complaints from your Facebook page. But if you delete someone’s comments, they will only get louder somewhere else.

The two most important words in Facebook marketing are “I’m sorry.” Mistakes happen, so apologize, fix the problem and turn that complainer into a fan.

6. Respond to the Positive Comments, too.

A heartfelt “Thank you” goes a long way too. Make “Thank you” your two next most-important words.

Don’t pass up the chance to encourage a fan who posts something nice on your Facebook page. Give them opportunities to spread the good word about their experience, and thank them sincerely. Get creative with this; there are hundreds of ways to show your appreciation with some personality.

7. Surprise and Delight.

Elements of surprise and delight have always been a tenet of good business. But on Facebook, it’s even more important to surprise and delight fans since 750 million people are watching.

Consider giving away free stuff – our promotional apps make it simple to offer freebies and discounts. Reward people randomly and have fun with your fans.

8. Ask Questions.

Facebook is the world’s largest focus group. You can ask questions and get plenty of valuable feedback about your product or services, and opportunities or challenges. People want to know that you care about their opinion.

Consider this – it’s more important to be interested than interesting in the world of Facebook. Questions are the best way to generate comments, which will improve your EdgeRank and enable you to show up in more of your fans’ news feeds.

9. Share Stories.

People love stories. Talk about how your company got started, an interesting customer or staff member, charity or community involvement. Keep the stories short and simple, and use multimedia.

10. Be Honest and Transparent.

Honesty and authenticity go a long way. Don’t be afraid to be honest with fans. They’ll appreciate the authenticity – and even vulnerability – that accompanies it.

Share what’s going on in your store. Fans will respect it and respond.

11. Be Short, Sweet and Conversational.

Talk to your business’s fans the same way you’d talk to your friends. Short, informal statements and questions generate a lot more engagement than longer posts. You can use up to 420 characters in each Facebook post, but try to keep it to 140 or fewer.

12. Don’t Sell.

Make it easy and compelling for your customers to buy your products. If you’ve set a precedent of quality fan interaction – by listening to them, creating value and educating them about your business through storytelling – then they’ll use your products and services when they their needs must be fulfilled. Better yet, when their friends have similar needs, you’ll be the one they “like” and recommend.

Need more ideas? No problem! Contact us at rawebplus@ramarketing.com for even more great tips on how to boost your sales using the Facebook promotional apps and Facebook Site.

In this blog, I wanted to share a case study with you of one of R&A Marketing oldest clients, Hansbarger Home Solutions.

Hansbarger Home Solutions is an appliance, furniture, bedding and electronics store in Greenville, Ohio.

Every year, Hansbarger’s run their biggest sale of the year the “Hog Wild Sale” in conjunction with the Greenville County Fair. In the years past, Hansbarger’s would run radio spots as well as print pieces in the newspaper to promote the sale. This year, we decided to add a little extra ‘umph’ to the campaign. We merged online media with traditional media.

As I’ve talked in past blog “How do you combine online and offline medias to bring success?” that 62% of online campaigns are seeing an increase in return on investment when combined with offline marketing such as direct mail – Omnicon Media Group (2009). By combining both online and offline marketing techniques, we were able to increase the awareness of the sale as well as increase the awareness of the store.

The online techniques that we used were posting the print piece on Hansbarger’s website, creating a sidebar and a rotator that linked to a PDF of the newspaper insert.  We used email marketing to send the promotion to Hansbarger’s customers via email.

Besides the website and email, we also utilized social media to help get the word out. By using Hansbarger’s facebook page we helped promote the sale, as well as promoted traffic to the facebook page. In addition to the Hog Wild Sale, we wanted to give the Facebook users an incentive to ‘liking’ the Hansbarger page, thus to help increase the awareness of Hansbarger Home Solutions. We worked with Hansbarger’s to come up with a Sweepstakes promotion on Facebook. They offered to give a way a free sofa and all you was ‘like’ the Hansbarger’s Facebook page and sign up for the Sweepstakes. This allowed us to not only build our fan base on Facebook, but also collect email addresses that we could use in later promotions via email marketing.

The first day of the sale was August 1^st, that week the Facebook Sweepstakes launched as well as the radio spots. In the day, we had five people sign up for the Sweepstakes, giving us five new email addresses to add to our database. The first week we had 13 people sign up for the Sweepstakes – and remember so far the only medias being used are Facebook and radio.



Starting the second week of the sale we had inserts in the newspaper, posted the sale and Facebook sweepstakes on Hansbarger’s website and sent an email blast to Hansbarger’s customer email list. The radio continued as did the promotion on Facebook.

The sale is still going on and with one week left. Currently, 67 people have signed up for the Sweepstakes. And the interaction on the Facebook page has exploded.

Besides results from Facebook and email marketing, store traffic has increased and sales are up. All of these results are from combining both online and offline media for a campaign. The message was consistent across the board between offline and online marketing, both promoting the sale and the Facebook Sweepstakes. It was successful in helping increase the traffic on Hansbarger’s Facebook page, thus increasing the awareness of their store.

In short, Google+ is real-life sharing through Google. According to Vic Gundotra, from Google, “we believe online sharing is broken. And even awkward … We think connecting with other people is a basic human need. We do it all the time in real life, but our online tools are rigid. They force us into buckets — or into being completely public … Real life sharing is nuanced and rich. It has been hard to get that into software.” So like Facebook, where you connect with old friends, etc.

There are various parts that make up Google+:

• Circles: Google Circles allows you to organize your friends into groups such as college friends, co-workers, family, etc. “Just make a circle, add your people, and share what’s new.”
• Spark: Similar to Google Reader, Google Spark brings content you based on your interests and shares it will your “Circle.” “Thanks to Google’s web expertise, Sparks delivers a feed of highly contagious content from across the Internet. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages. Simply add your interests, and you’ll always have something to watch, read and share—with just the right circle of friends.”
• Hangouts: Hangouts are virtual video chat rooms, where you can chat with people in your “Circle.”
• Huddles: Huddle is group messaging/chat for people within you “Circle.” The Android phone has a mobile app that allows you to send messages from your phone as well.
• Instant Upload: If you have the Android phone, when you use it to snap a photo it’s automatically uploaded to your Google+.

Wow – that’s a lot of information to sort through. When reading it, you can see some similarities to Facebook. Facebook has groups, they don’t function the same way as “Circles,” but the concept is similar. You can upload photos and video from your smart phone to Facebook, similar to the Instant Upload. Facebook doesn’t have group chat, but Yahoo, AOL, meebo and a few others have group chat. The other features, Facebook does not have, but others do. For example – Hangouts, Skype allows you to do group chats and group calls.

We all know that Google is still in its testing stages of Google+, but already there is a lot of feedback – both negative and positive revolving around this new social media device.

In a recent article, Google’s Launch Of Google + Is, Once Again, Deeply Embarrassing — Facebook Must Be Rolling Its Eyes by Henry Blodget, “Google has given people little reason to think that the launch of + will be any different from the launches of its other social products, such as Wave and Buzz (Wave is dead and Buzz might as well be dead).  And the folks at Facebook must be rolling their eyes.

In another article, Repent, ye bloggers—the end is nigh: Google+ is coming to annihilate you by Shel Holtz, “Google+ is the latest alleged killer. Search the phrase “will Google+ kill” and you’ll find nearly 30,000 results speculating whether Google will kill Facebook, Twitter, search engine optimization, email, Flickr, the list goes on.” Basically he concludes to saying that of course Google+ will have an affect on blogging, but not kill it. Some may just be overreacting.

Google+ in its beginning stages looks like it’s just for personal use, not for business use. But they are starting to put together ideas for building profiles for businesses. It will be interesting to see what that will lead to.

At the moment, since Google+ it just in the testing phases and I have yet to actually use it, it is hard to have an opinion on it. I will admit, it was hard for me to join Facebook back in the day when it was brand new as well as Twitter. But then again, that’s when social media was brand new. Hopefully, I will be able to check it out and compare it as a user to the social media sites that I currently use. I believe that only then, I will be able to give an honest opinion as to whether or not I actually like it and if it would eventually replace my Facebook or even Twitter account. What are your thoughts? Is this something worth checking out? How do you think it will affect the rest of the social media world? Will it ‘kill’ Facebook and Twitter as some are saying?

Do me a favor. Grab a sheet of paper and pencil. Go to your desk, the bathroom, outside, or wherever you think the best and write down five ways you think you can sell your product through social media. You got it? Great!

Now throw it away.

There are no pat answers on how to make sales from social media. Don’t let anyone tell you they have the greatest solution to start getting you sales from social media. Social media is an ever-changing media. Every single day, something new is introduced or taken away.

You’re competing with a lot of other businesses in the social media marketplace. Facebook recently announced that there are now more than 3 million active business pages on Facebook, and the average user becomes a fan of four pages every month.

What can you do to reach and understand your Facebook marketplace? The answer to this question will help you increase sales and grow your social media presence.

Social media is exactly that: media that delivers a message. And just like traditional media, you need to get to know your costumer and your marketplace. Although social media may be free, social media marketing is not. It’s just a whole new way to do it.

“So,” you ask, “how do I get people to come to my social sites?” The answer is simple—sort of! You must embrace social media in all aspects of your marketing.

Some examples –

• Add your social media logos to your direct mail pieces and print inserts
• Announce them on your radio spots
• Include them in your TV spots
• Talk about it in the showroom
• Add them to your website
• Have a promotion solely focused on social media
• Create a direct mail campaign that embraces your offer and a Facebook contest.

Selling through social media is no different than selling face-to-face on the showroom floor. Customers must be engaged and interested. They will not respond to random information or a hard sell. Social media is about your costumer. They came to your page for a reason, so give them a reason to keep coming back.

One of social media’s best qualities is content: creating it, sharing it and engaging with it. Quality content will inspire, inform, educate or even entertain your customers (and if you’re really lucky, it does all four!). So if you’re looking to engage with your customers to keep them coming back for more, follow the tips below to implement social media cohesion:

Establish Your Brand Voice

Brainstorm with your team and establish your social media identity before you set up your social media accounts. Decide what your brand stands for and what you want to portray on your social media platforms.

Ask yourself the following questions to help identify your social media goals:

• Do you want it to be strictly a selling tool?
• Do you want it to build life-long customer relationships?
• Do you want to increase fans and followers regardless of results?

Focus on Your Topic

Your social media fans may forget a specific post, but they will remember the topics you talk about the most and your subject matter of expertise – assuming that you establish one!

An effective social media branding strategy should write, talk and share about topics related to your business and industry. This will reinforce your weight as an expert on that topic. That’s not to say you should never post about anything else, but keep your subject matter close to your area of expertise to reinforce your image as a leader in that area.

Talk about what you know. You’re a furniture store right? Talk about what you do every day. Tell your fans how this new sofa is a perfect fit for the family. Share decorating tips; give them tips on how to pick out the right bedroom suite. Show them you’re the leading voice of authority in your industry!

Get to Know Your Fans

People become fans of your page for a reason. They didn’t happen to “like” your page just because they thought it looked cool. They want relevant and expert information from you. So go ahead and give them what they want!

Pay attention to their posts—both positive and negative—and respond appropriately. Allow negative feedback and address it head on. Simply say, “I’m sorry,” and don’t make excuses. Be real with your virtual fans, and you’ll create real friends.

Update Moderately

Don’t get caught in the overload zone. Once your fall into this trap, it’s hard to escape. Overloading your followers and friends with too many updates will annoy them and can cause them to un-like your page. However, it’s important to update moderately and steadily to help keep your brand fresh and reiterate your brand personality among your customers.

Okay. Now go back to the trashcan and take out the five ways things you wrote down at the beginning. Now take the four above-mentioned ways to produce social media cohesion and apply those to the five you wrote down. It’s about finding the perfect balance between selling and building that fan (customer) relationship.

Remember, you’re a furniture store for a reason and people become fans of your page for that very reason. So give them what they want!

In my previous blog, we discussed the benefits to both online and offline marketing methods. In this blog, we will discuss using both offline and online strategies that will help bring your company success. Sounds impossible, but it’s not.

Potential clients will always look you up online after meeting you via meetings, networking events, direct mail, etc. For starters, it helps them to legitimize your business. They might see your TV ad and it will prompt them to check you out online to see what you are really about.

A few facts to ponder:

• Marketers reported an average improvement of close to 50% for personalized multichannel campaigns over traditional campaigns. – InfoTrends (2007)
• 62% of online campaigns are seeing an increase in return on investment when combined with offline marketing such as direct mail. – Omnicon Media Group (2009)

When combining the two strategies, it’s proven that you will generate more leads and have a higher and faster response rate.

One successful strategy is to use offline media to direct customers to responding online. Customers love the look and feel of a nice direct mail piece, but they want a quick and easy way to respond. This is where online marketing comes into play. Use the direct mail (offline) marketing piece to direct customers online, to your company’s website, Facebook page or a special landing page. According to PODI.org (2006 data), 42% of direct mail recipients prefer to respond online and 25% of direct mail recipients will only respond online.

Some would argue, well, if they are looking for us online, then we should only be online. While I understand the thought process behind this, there are always two sides to an argument. I would agree that yes, it makes sense to be online if they are looking for you online, but how will they know to look for you if they haven’t heard of you before? And how will they hear about you if you are only online? People still watch TV, people still read the newspaper and magazines to some degree, and people still read snail mail.

As you can see, people are using both online and offline medias to get their information, and the best thing for your business to do is to hit both offline and online strategies as I’ve mentioned above. By using offline media to direct customers to online media you are making the best out of both worlds.

(They do not have to work against each other but can work with each other to equal success)

One of the many tasks that all retailers are facing is how to utilize both online and offline marketing tactics in their overall marketing strategy, thus helping increase their sales.

There are numerous benefits to both offline and online marketing. Online marketing allows you to more accurately target your designated demographic, while offline gives you a more general demographic. Online turns your store from an 8 – 5 store into a 24-7 store. Online removes the personal customer service, while offline allows you to connect with the customer, thus building trust and more likelihood of repeat business.

While there are numerous pros and cons to both offline and online marketing, the best approach is to use them together.

So where are your customers? Online? Offline? BOTH! So how do you target them? Well, for starters, you need to put yourself in their shoes. Think of what your habits are – do you still watch the evening news? Do you still get the newspaper? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then most likely your customers are answering yes as well. Meaning that you still need to market to those traditional media sources. Many customers will see something offline. They will then research it online, and then they will buy it offline. Resources show that roughly 70% of customers will use online resources to research a product that they will buy offline.

So how does a retailer use both online and offline marketing? By integrating all their resources – for example, take a look at your ad budget. What percentage of it is used for online marketing? If the answer is less than 10%, then you are not full integrating online marketing into your overall strategy. Once you are integrated, the next step is using both offline and online strategies to bring your business success, which I will discuss further in my next blog.

Built to Serve is based upon the fact of building an organization where there is a higher power above profit and traffic.  That higher power is empowering the members of your organization to move beyond a “financial career path” and into a “servant hood career path”.

One section of the book  Sander’s outlines the concept of “players in an organization” verses “fans in an organization”.  The section explains the difference between players and fans at a United store:

…An  elderly farmer wearing tattered overalls and sporting a well worn John Deere ball cap walked into the store and came straight to me.

“I’ve come to town from my farm about an hour away, and I need my juice,” he said.  Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I could tell he had something specific in mind.  “What kind of juice do you like?” I asked.  “It comes in a bottle,”he replied.

Knowing how many juices we sell in bottles, I decided the easiest thing to do was walk with the man to the juice department so we could find it through the process of elimination.  However, before I could share my plan, the farmer said, “I had it special ordered several weeks ago for my wife.”

“Oh, I see,” I said.  “Do you know who you spoke with regarding the special order?”

The farmer through for a moment and then said, “No, I don’t have any idea.” I offered the farmer a seat and a cup of coffee and then proceeded to the office in hopes of identifying the team member who had taken his special order.  The first person I ran into was the point-of-sale-clerk.  “Do you know who might have taken a special order for juice for a farmer living outside of town?” I asked.  She thought for a moment and replied, “Yes, I remember.  Britain Brewer took that gentleman’s order.”

As you might expect, her answers provided the relief I was looking for. “Where Britain?” I asked.  “Britain is on vacation and can’t be reached,” she said.  My heart sank.  My relief was short lived.  I searched the back room for anything that looked as if it might be a special order for juice but had no luck.  By now, I was emotionally preparing myself to walk onto the sales floor and explain to the farmer that his one-hour commute to the store was going to result in no special-ordered juice.

As I gather my thoughts, one of our young sackers stopped me and asked, “Are you looking for some juice?”

“Yes I am! Do you know where it is?” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” the young man said, “Britain was leaving for vacation this morning, but he came by the store before he left and set the juice aside with a note taped to it.”

The sacker took me to the front of the store and small office used for storage; immediately, I spotted the juice with the label.

On the note was written: “This juice is a special order for Mrs. Atwood.  I expect her husband will pick it up while I am on vacation.  Britain Brewer, Assistant Manager.” The burden was lifted, thats to Britain’s conscientiousness–even in the face of a family eager to go on vacation.  I proudly presented the juice to Mr. Atwood and thank him for shopping United.  When I returned to the office, I made a note to myself regarding what had happened.  “Britain Brewer,” I wrote, “is a player, not a fan.”

This passage made me think about retail today.

We as an industry have a choice to make.  Do we want to become players in this new world of commerce where the customer controls the brand?  Or do we want to be fans of all of these new technologies but not embrace them in our industry?

Sanders made a statement regarding players and fans in organizations:

Players buy the mission; Fans undermine it

What is this new mission we all face?  Have Ms. Jones find our brand to be relevant and a cut above the rest.  If you don’t go all in you are just a fan in your marketplace and Ms. Jones will see it.

Are you ready to go all in?

She would try? Trying wasn’t good enough, I needed a promise. There were other places I could go, so I needed to know if my order would be ready by Friday at 5:00 pm for a basketball tournament, and not a minute later.

Yes, it was my fault for waiting too long. It was my fault for not calling ahead. I understood her dilemma and was sorry for her stress, but why did her problem become my problem just because I came to her to solve a problem? The real problem was, she would not say, “No.”

Do you ever tell Ms. Jones no? Is it a better service to say no than to say yes and fail? What can you do when you can’t do anything? Can you call your competitors to find what she wants? Can you rack your brain and search your racks to find an alternative? Or are you willing to sacrifice your staff and stretch your resources to “try” to leap through Ms. Jones hoops?

If that order is not done by Friday, my tourney team will kick butt in whatever I can find at Walmart, and it will be a long time before I let that store let me down again. I may not be right, but I promise I will remember if they were wrong.

The “Word of the Week” is written by Amy Lively of The Lively Merchant, R&A’s partner in providing these thought-provoking weekly witticisms.

Just as fast as the page was uploaded, the criticisms about the design of the crosstour and the price tag avalanched.  Time, money and energy that were invested into this car design were quickly becoming time, money and energy to salvage their reputation.

In a Columbus Dispatch article the execs of Honda USA talk candidly and openly about how this debut went wrong.  Dan Gearino, the journalist of this story, summarizes “The two campaigns (Ford’s Fiesta subcompact debut) show some of the opportunities and pitfalls for big companies when they make the public part of the marketing” (Gearino, D1).

The news here is not that a new product seemingly failed upon debut.  The news is what this journalist is hitting upon what the business world views the consumer as–a roadblock to making sales.

All though Honda and other fortune 500 companies may have not realized it, the consumer has always been a part of marketing efforts.

In a pre-digital world, this failed design would have affected an inner circle of buyers who would tell their family, friends and co workers “do not buy this car.”  Due to the top down communication print and electronic media bring, Honda would never have believed there would be an outcry.  They controlled the message.

In today’s world–the consumer has the platform to tell anyone they want.   Facebook pages, twitter posts, personal blogs and consumer sites all allow for a conversation between brand and consumer to occur.

How are you opening up to Ms. Jones?  Are you allowing for user reviews on your website or just letting the consumer review you somewhere else?  Do you talk openly about the under belly of your industry which sometimes affects what you can get done on an everyday basis?

The ballgame has changed.  It is now a two way.  Changing the look of your ad is not going to change your reputation—talking openly about it is.

For information, education and products related to “opening up to Ms. Jones” be sure to attend the 2010 R&A Roundtable at Deer Creek Lodge & Conference Center.  This two day educational event will talk about all things related to the web and how to market to today’s consumer.  Click here to sign up for more details.