Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

UPDATE 12-18-09: On the almost-exact 2-year anniversary of this post… more snow! It might be too bad, weather-wise, to do this promo today. But you might want to get prepared for the next time.

My goodness, so many of you are having terrible snow storms today. East Coast, Midwest, airport closings, traffic snarls, school closings…Why, heck, even here in Florida, I had to dig out a JACKET to go Christmas shopping today. It’s noon and only 66 degrees out! OUCH.

To the dollar store for stocking stuffers. Besides a couple of toys for my fully-mature-one-might-even-call-him-old DuH, I found the supplies for a really good promotional idea for you Snow Belt folks to drive traffic in during snow storms, whether December, January or February:

Snow Days! Yup, snow days. The dollar store had packets of 6 foam snowflakes, big 6-8″ ones, for $1. Buy a few packets and some other dollar-store goodies, and have FUN on snow days! Here’s the plan:

Advertise, bag-stuff, in-store sign, e-mail: “Any day there’s snowflakes in our windows, stop in for more fun than a barrel of snowmen!”

On these impromptu days when you are unsure if it’s even WORTH it to open, hang the snowflakes from your ceiling grids in the window, and get ready for FUN! You could have:

* Cocoa in the slow cooker. Don’t forget the marshmallows.

* Goodie bags for your target audience (quick, before the Christmas decorations are all gone, go buy those snow-man embellished goodie bags, little snowman erasers, pencils, candy canes, etc and make them up for distribution to kids. For adults, same little goodie bag and other stuff.). I reckoned each goodie bag, with 3 things in it, would cost less than 40 cents.

* Buy a snowflake self-inking stamp, and use to do one or both: Stamp the back of some price tags and offer “50% off lowest price if you find the snowflake!” (do enough items that it’s fun and not frustrating to shoppers!) and/or stamp their FBC card with an extra stamp, using the snowflake “as a bonus for being a SNOWbuddy!”

* If it were MY store, I’d give free carrots, so their snowman has a nose (and I’d have been saving, all year, anything else needed for a snowman: the raggedy mufflers you couldn’t accept, funny hats left over that didn’t sell for Halloween, even fallen branches for arms, but hey, I’m a snowman lover from way back when…”Snowman kit: $4.99 today only”, and really, you’d be giving them away free….)

So hit the dollar stores, think SNOW instead of Christmas, and prepare to build business, have fun, and increase word-of-mouth whenever the snowflakes fall!

Makes a pretty cool (pun intended) soft-news special, too, on your local station, right before or after the weather report, if you contact the TV stations!

The gorgeous winter window idea was found on Swirl Marketing. It’s one of many display ideas on TGtbT’s Pinterest Boards.