Here’s a well-respected blogger’s entry for today:
A nice, simple word of mouth campaign
(Pardon me while I roll my eyes: Haven’t a LOT of resale and consignment shops offered this as a standard course of promotion for a while now? After all, secondhand shopkeepers are the Queens and Kings of Make-Do!)
And YOUR customers didn’t have to have a Facebook account to see your offer, now did they?
Looks like Andy Semovitz might wish to drop in on Sharing to Share in YOUR creativity. Damn, I wish I’d said that. 😉
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
Hi Patricia,
I wasn’t really commenting on the validity of the sale, so much as the fact that we as resalers have done “secret word” and “bring a friend” for an awfully long time, yet this blogger thinks it’s new and different. (Which actually means it IS new and different enough for consumers, since the blogger is a marketing maven, which means it’s still a valid advertising angle.)
The 29% off for Feb 29 rant, entitled Are You Giving Away the Store?, was about giving away TOO much, and for no particular long-term benefit. 20% for bringing in a friend can be well-worth it, not only because it’s
* 2 shoppers for one, and
* because Shopper #2 might not have come at all until invited by her friend, but also
* because you REINFORCE the notion of a shopping expedition as FUN…which it hasn’t been lately in many people’s minds. Girl’s afternoon out, something to do in lieu of “doing lunch”, something to look forward to right after work.
Having the “secret word” of course, helps the business gauge the reach of the medium they used to spread the word.
As for stores of any sort which consistently have %-off sales, well, we all know how that works, and most (not all!) shoppers understand the practice of “mark up to mark down” and “compare to…” pricing. If one’s target audience is not consumer-savvy, these sales can work (although, of course, even the most naive of consumers knows to “wait until it’s on sale”, which can cause problems when the sale is not running) but I don’t know about you, this “always-marked-down” philosophy feels slimy to me.
Is this approach kind of like the leap year sales many of us had offering 29% off or is the real premise the bring a friend along (hoping that more ppl will bring friends and thus fill the shop causing MORE to sell?)
I know shops locally who offfer the whole shop on sale each week for 20% off
I cannot even imagine them being busy any other day
We don’t do this, although tempted at times but stop for various bottom line reasons
Curious for a reply
Always striving to learn…