Shopfloor FOCUS: LOCAL MARKETING


Radio Ga Ga By Matthew Todd, Partner, Herbert Todd and Son


One retailer that is experimenting with kitchen demonstration events – and doing quite well with them – is Yorkshire-based appliance specialist, Herbert Todd and Son. The retailer recently held another of its combined taste events and kitchen studio events where a chef from AEG was cooking in the store and talking about the benefits of steam ovens and induction hobs. “Looking at customers within a 15 to 20 mile radius of our three stores, we have to engage with them and give them a reason to come and shop with us,” Partner Matthew Todd tells ERT. “The demo day itself was a success but it’s really


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difficult to draw a crowd these days; we saw a good trickle of people throughout the day, between 50 and 60 people altogether, which is OK for a Saturday!”


We wanted to position ourselves as the local expert when it comes to built-in kitchen appliances. We put our messages out on social media, in local magazines and on the radio too; hopefully people


saw those messages and saw that we are trying to give something extra to the people of York. On the day itself we took pictures and videos and posted these all over social media; we did a Facebook Live video stream while the chef was cooking so everyone could see the images and messages. And hopefully they will remember this and engage with us at a later date. Elsewhere in the store, our window displays are


a big marketing tool for us and we try and update them roughly every six weeks. We try and make


A “proper glossy” magazine By Allan Will, General Manager, Booth


Independent retailer, Booth Scotland, has invested in print advertising for many years and still continues to use this method of marketing today, with good readership


figures and


delivery execution. Using a network of popular local newspapers in the region, the retailer’s latest brochure (pictured right) was distributed to 55,000 homes in North East Scotland.


“Some leaflets you’re never sure if they’re going to reach the intended reader, but we’re confident ours get through every time, which is why we still do this,” General Manager, Allan Will, tells ERT. The last leaflet we did was 12 pages, so it’s not just a small flyer that usually ends up in the bin, it’s a proper glossy small publication. We tend to promote all the big brands we work with, as well as our USPs, our ERT Awards winner logo and our chosen charities, then also our key product categories including CCTV, white and brown


goods and electrical contracting. This shows the breadth of the business


that we are and the


leaflet itself feels quite premium and substantial so it encourages people to read it.


This method of marketing


works really well for us because we have a huge customer base that wouldn’t pick up on much of our digital promotion, but when


we put out the leaflet we find that the phone calls really come flying in! Sometimes even three months later we have enquiries! We do a lot on social media too, certainly on Facebook and LinkedIn. We also associate with local charities and there’s a lot of good will towards that, so to have our name out there helps with branding. We are heavily involved in various local activities and it really helps drive a good community feel.


In terms of product demonstration areas, we only have a facility for our brown goods at the moment – we don’t have a working demo kitchen. We also don’t hold any experience evenings at the moment, although we have tried in the past but they didn’t work particularly well. I see a lot of retailers moving into experiential retail and white goods is certainly a growing market for us, so it’s something to think about for the future.


them as visually appealing as possible, especially with the windows that face the roads, you have such a small time frame to grab someone’s attention. In fact, one of our members of staff used to work in a department store and she has the aesthetic eye for designing this kind of thing. So we let her look after the displays and we bounce ideas off each other. She does a great job with it! Another area that works really well for us is radio advertising. It’s not for everyone, but it’s something we’ve got back into recently since we opened our flagship out-of-town Monks Cross store. We are much more visible here but with radio advertising specifically it’s all about subliminal messaging; when consumers link that with seeing our store it sticks in their minds. We sponsor the afternoon show on a local radio station and with that we get short strapline messages (about 12-14 words) whenever the show name is mentioned. So it’s just a trickle feed of promotion every day. We’ve also got the ability to change these words to get different messages out there, which means we can respond very quickly when different manufacturer offers come out.


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