Business SMART:

How to Get it All Together
 

By: Dennis A. Conforto
Chairman & CEO of A-Z Media Group, Inc.

Over the last month I have written a series of articles about reach, frequency, mind share and market share. These articles were mainly for the benefit of the manufacturers. This time I would like to address these four areas in one article for the benefit of retailers.

The biggest struggle that scrapbooking retailers are having today is that they are reaching the same consumer over and over again. By continuing to do this, the effectiveness decreases and the amount that the consumer will buy over time becomes smaller and smaller. The fact is that the industry is starving itself out by continuing to market to the converted and not reaching out to the unconverted scrapbooker. When looking at reach, scrapbooking stores need to work most of their ad budgets (around 75%) toward the newbie.

Since the life cycle of a scrapbooker’s activity in this hobby is seven years, it stands to reason that every seven years your whole client list will have to change. If you are not actively hunting for the new customer, you will, over time, bury your own business with shrinking sales. The whole industry is feeling it now. We at Scrapbooking.com Magazine and The SMART Group have been talking about this issue for 3 years. Now, for the first time, retailers and manufacturers are starting to actively change their advertising habits and programs at an ever increasing rate.

Yesterday. I met with a local newspaper and several scrapbooking retailers in Southern California. It was interesting to see the dynamics of the meeting change as all of us began to truly understand the lack of exposure the category has. And, on the other hand, how much exposure it deserves to have.

Through our work with The SMART Group, I have noticed that the group is getting SMARTer each day. As we in the group work with local newspapers to understand how to drive real editorial that creates significant interest in the category, we will show new potential scrapbookers how scrapbooking can help us to address the social challenges that we all face today.

In Southern California, we will shortly see the results of manufacturers and retailers in local areas working together to drive real traffic into scrapbooking stores. We will learn together how we can get new customers; we will learn how to convert them from a newbie to a beginner who will be loyal to both the retail stores and specific brands within those stores. We will learn together how to reach new consumers and solve at the same time the problem facing the newspapers - obtaining local news stories that are worthy of print space and are of interest to their readership.

At Scrapbooking.com Magazine we have started on a project called, “A Matter of the Heart.” This is where our readers tell us why they scrapbook. The stories are inspiring, every single one of them. It is these stories of why people scrapbook that will convert millions more to the hobby.

Once we learn how to reach the newbies in a cost-effective manner, we can then focus our energies on the frequency of our message. This will only happen as a result of increasing our sales so that we can spend more money to keep the pipeline full of new consumers coming to independent scrapbooking stores across North America. It’s only through frequency of message that we can reach the full potential of the marketplace.

Mindshare is the third tool that is important in our efforts to grow the industry. Mindshare will come from the industry being really good at working with large media outlets and letting them tell the story of our industry. The more we can change in the industry and lead it toward “team” marketing and to address the needs of the instant scrapbooker (a potential scrapbooker who is interested in the results, and not the craft), the more this industry will explode with unbelievable growth.

Only through reach, frequency and mindshare can we move toward obtaining the level of market share that is due the industry. Instead of 4.5 million women active in scrapbooking at one level or another, we can have 45 million women who make scrapbooking a lifestyle choice that tells the story of who they are, how they live, how they love, how they succeed, how they fail, how they cry, how they find joy and how they live a full life.

If you want to form a marketing team in your own state working with other SMART retailers and Manufacturers with the added support of Scrapbooking.com Magazine then please contact us. We will follow up with you to organize the retailers and newspapers and other marketing tools to help you reach the full potential of your business.

What do I believe about our industry? I believe the future is so bright we all ought to wear shades… Now let’s roll… And that is what being business SMART is all about.